[Re] periphalization, [re] incorporation, frontiers and non-state societies

Too often discussions of political and dynamic cycles rooted in world-systems perspectives commit the common ‘error’ of thinking that reading Immanuel Wallerstein’s Modern World-System (1974) is sufficient. In fact, the Modern World-System (1974) would be one of the worst places to start such a discussion, primarily because Wallerstein did not address such issues. Rather, one would be better equipped to read many of the recent works on such topics, and to follow through with the literature they cite (Kohl 1979, 1987a, 1987b, 1987c, 1992, 1994; Allen 1992; Frank and Gills 1993; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Kardulias 1999; Cline 2000; Denemark 2000; Denemark et al. 2000; Peregrine 2000; Thompson 2000; Chew 2001; Hall 2002a). In all these writings, one would find many nuanced, critical and empirically grounded attempts to probe the limits of world-system models, including versions with and without the hyphen, and with or without the plural (Thompson 1983a, 1983b; Frank and Gills 1993).