ABSTRACT
The classical European tradition of social theorizing centres on the analysis
of complex change:1 nineteenth-century work was legislative;2 con-
temporary analysis is oriented towards the reflexive elucidation of the
dynamics of change;3 definitive positions are eschewed; provisional state-
ments are available; so too dialogic exchanges with denizens of other cul-
tures and/or intellectual traditions; theorizing change is contested.4
Substantively, complex change embraces systematic change in all areas of
the social world: political-economic, social-institutional and cultural. One received strand of work, one expression of this preoccupation, is the mate-
rial of political economy; the approach offers an holistic analysis of change;
cast in economic terms in the nineteenth century, dismissed by mainstream
economics in the marginalist revolution, it has found continuing expression
in the Marxist tradition, development theory and recently international
political economy.5 Shifting patterns of change can be grasped in terms of
the crucial agents and their projects, the contexts which shaped phases
of development, the breaks marking abrupt redirections and the slow shifts of power within regional and global systems.
