ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses many of the issues about the nature and boundaries of world-systems. It argues that prestige goods exchanges are important in reproducing and changing power structures and thus they cannot be considered epiphenomenal. The book provides the issue of the mode of production, which they call "accumulation." It discusses that the world-systems perspective can be thought of as evolutionary once the many pitfalls of prior evolutionism have been exorcised. The book also argues that European and Japanese feudalism were institutionally unique compared to all the other decentralized tributary systems on Earth, and that this uniqueness accounts for the strong development of European and Japanese capitalism. It shows how a complex chiefdom system can be analyzed as a world-system and explores how archaeological data can be used to examine the nature of a regional division of labor.
