ABSTRACT
Immanuel Wallerstein built his analysis of the modern world-system around the notion of an intersocietal division of labor in the production of basic goods and the idea of capitalist accumulation. These ideas cannot simply be exported wholesale to different systems and must be modified significantly. This chapter draws on discussion to rethink world-system concepts and discusses the relations among modes of accumulation, world systems, and core/periphery relations and finishes with remarks on operationalization and measurement of concepts. The extension of the world-systems perspective to precapitalist settings raises questions and reopens old debates about other modes of accumulation and systemic transformations. Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the transition between feudalism and capitalism in Europe during the long sixteenth century constituted a change in mode of production. The point is that the patterns of core/periphery relations found in the modern world-system may not be typical of earlier world-systems. The problems of measuring differences in the magnitude of inequalities across social systems are well-known.
