Historical Social Structures

Population dynamics as based on procreation are essential topics in the analysis of historical structures. This concept is central to world-systems analysis, founded by Immanuel Wallerstein: the historical structures are the world-systems, which are the main units of analysis of social science—not the states and not society, the twin concept of state. Comparative analyses that consider countries as case studies are problematic also due to the different numbers in their populations, which makes quantitative research uncertain. Is it legitimate to consider states as independent and comparable entities, as if they were different “cases” drawn from a single population? Can China and India really be considered on par with tiny city-states like Andorra or San Marino (Babones 2014)? Of course, the states are the entities that collect and provide uniform statistical data on the national territory, ready for analysis, so it is easier to use them. But how can the connections between the states and especially their stratification be ignored? For example, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, to which Wallerstein applied his new analytical tools, certainly did not happen independently in one state after another, as those who reason in terms of national histories implicitly consider, as if borders were insurmountable. Capitalism is not established by replicating its process of modernization in every new state in which industrialization has reached a certain threshold, because the dynamics of the spread of both capitalism and industry are supranational. Industrialization often (perhaps normally in non-hegemonic countries) occurs with foreign capital, its inputs are often imported and its outputs exported. Nowadays analysis that merely compares states cannot determine the mechanisms of a world-economy in which many companies are multinational giants with a turnover larger than the GDP of medium-sized states. A study by Global Justice Now (2016) shows that 69 of the 100 largest economic entities in the world are multinational corporations. In the list of the 200 largest entities the proportion rises: 153 are companies (Inman 2016).

The colonized countries, producers of raw materials used in First World industries, are by no means in a “backward” position in a hypothetical race of states toward Modernity & Progress.