VIEWS AND OPINIONS

Pmfessronai Geographer, 40(3), 1988, pp. 259-265

0 Copyright 1988 by Association of American Geographers

WORLD-SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
AND REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY
Peter J. Taylor
University of Newcastle

Now is an exciting time to be a geographer. The variety of approaches that has

typified the last decade has resisted pressures to conform to a sterile applied geography.
There is no applied geography paradigm; there is no paradigm in geography at all.
As long as geography remains an intellectual pursuit, uncertainty will be endemic.
Let us rejoice in our variety.
This essay considers three recent trends in modern geography: the revival of po-
litical geography (e.g., Editorial Board 1982), the rediscovery of the global scale (e.g.,
Johnston 1984), and the call for a new regional geography (e.g., Gregory 1978). I
examine the relationship between these trends with an argument that derives a re-
gional geography from a global approach that transcends the state. The framework
adopted is world-systems analysis, which unites the three trends of modern geography
into one theoretical perspective.
World-systems analysis means the attempt by Immanuel Wallerstein and his col-
leagues at the Fernand Braudel Center in Binghamton, New York, to produce a his-
torical social science (Taylor 1986a, 1986b; Wallerstein 1979). It views the modern
world as consisting of a single entity, the capitalist world-economy, which evolved
from about 1500 to encompass the whole world by about 1900. This entity rather than
the state is the prime object of analysis. The mechanisms generating and sustaining
this modern world-system are expressed geographically as a core-periphery pattern,
with a semi-periphery in between; and historically as a cyclical pattern with related
secular trends. The result is an ever changing dynamic system, experienced today as
growing material inequality between North and South in the downturn phase of the
fourth Kondratieff long-wave cycle (Wallerstein 1984b).
World-systems analysis attracts geographers (e.g., Soja 1980, 222) with its explicit
treatment of spatial pattern. Wallenstein’s key concepts of core, periphery, and semi-
periphery exclude a placeless social science. But where precisely does geography, and
in particular regional geography, fit into this scheme? Wallerstein may superficially
be “bringing geography back in,“ but many unanswered questions remain concerning
the relations between world-systems analysis and geography. I address some of these
queries in a four-part argument concentrating on regional geography. (1) World-
systems analysis forces geographers to take a fresh, almost revolutionary, look at the
data routinely used in comparative analyses. (2) The geographer’s contribution should
be to understand the places that make up the world-system. Enter regional geography.
259
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GEOGRAPHER

(3) The nature of the proposed regions is explored through the concept of “historical
region.” (4) World-systems analysis is distanced from the regional geography classi-
fication analogy under the heading “breaking all the rules!” No new regional tax-
onomy is proposed.
New Geographies, New Statistics
Incorporating geography into world-systems analysis is much more than rediscov-
ering a global perspective. It involves, among many other features, critiquing the
statistics available for studying the world. The ”data are . . . conceived of as social
products: statistics are not collected but produced” and ”their production is a social
process which is carried out for specific reasons, and in specific ways” (Irvine et al.
1979,3). The state is at the heart of that social process as the prime producer of statistics
in the modern world. This social process of data production is particularly worrying
from a world-systems perspective that tries to transcend state-centric thinking. The
“official data” that are the life blood of so much social science are even more prob-
lematic for world-systems analysts than for other critical scientists. Not only are the
social categories that the state defines unlikely to fit the needs of the analysis, but
the very territorial basis of state-generated information is challenged. A new data
production is needed with a recursive relation between new statistics and new
geographies.
Tasks undertaken by researchers at the Fernand Braudel Center illustrate needs to
collect, collate, and construct the necessary kinds of information (Hopkins and Wal-
lerstein 1977, 141). The first task simply involves ”the process of constituting bound-
aries, that is, learning to identify what is to be bounded” (Hopkins and Wallerstein
1977, 141). Nothing can be said quantitatively about world-system trends and fluc-
tuations until this task is carried out. The second task is to map the continually
changing division of labor within the newly defined bounds. This task specifies the
economic geography of the world-economy through identification of commodity chains.
The third task is to define the cyclical movements of the world-economy and their
relation to the economic geography. The fourth task involves developing sets of
indicators for different types of production processes to be classified “according to
time and place of occurrence” (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1977, 143). The fifth task is
to measure net capital accumulation in order to specify the contribution of both state
and non-monetized economic processes for accumulation and disaccumulation across
zones. The sixth and final task involves the mapping of labor force formation in
different zones of the world-economy. All these tasks require the definition of new
categories, the production of new statistics and the creation of new maps. For instance,
the sixth task considers degrees of proletarianization among households to define
new household types which can then be mapped for different places at different times.
The enormity of this task is exactly the point: A world-systems approach requires us
to recast our categories for analysis and that means many new geographies.
The research tasks do not accord special privileges to geography as a discipline.
Hopkins and Wallerstein (1977) define empirical tasks, and this concrete emphasis
brings them into geographical fields of investigation. But we should not take this
argument too far. Wallerstein’s (1983) Historical Capitalism is avowedly concrete and
hence historical: it is equally geographical on even the most cursory reading. All
social relations must occur in space and time, however, negating the argument that
the new geographies are the property of the discipline of geography any more than,
for instance, the world political map of state territories is the sole preserve of political
geography.
Hall’s (1986) contribution to the first task, bounding the system, clearly illustrates
this point. Hall tackled this most geographical question by reconsidering the nature
VOLUME 40, NUMBER3, AUGUST,1988 261

of the category periphery in the light of Wolf‘s (1982) concern to give greater weight
to non-core peoples in the making of our modern world. Hall defined four categories
to replace Wallerstein’s periphery and external arena. In addition to the dependent
or ”full blown” periphery he identified the marginal periphery as a region of refuge
incorporated into the world for future expansion but left in limbo, and the contact
periphery as part of Wallerstein’s external arena. For Hall, the influence of the core
on the contact periphery has radically transformed it, although not yet incorporated
it into the world-system. The external arena is now restricted to zones of no contact.
These categories of space are derived from a detailed study of New Mexico through
its Spanish, Mexican, and American phases. This first modification of world-systems
concepts through careful empirical study, although superficially geographical, is ac-
tually based on a new conception of social relations by a sociologist. The point is not
that geographers cannot do such work, but rather that these concrete analyses are of
general concern to all historical social scientists. One field of inquiry, however, invites
geographers to use their particular skills to contribute to historical social science.
Whereas new geographies are of general concern, new regional geographies are a
specific geographical contribution.
Understanding Places
Geographers have always been distinguished from other scientists by their detailed
knowledge of places. Although such studies have been relatively neglected in recent
years, geographers still have more empirical knowledge about different places across
the world than any other group of scholars. The problem is that this human resource
has been poorly harnessed with the demise of traditional regional geography. No
new theoretical basis has replaced the implicit physical determinism/possibilism of
traditional regional geography. As a result regional geography has largely survived
as a handmaiden of regional planning for the state. Regional synthesis has given way
to regional science, a narrow applied economic geography. World-systems analysis
offers a new theoretical basis for a new regional geography. The position of geogra-
phers today is analogous to that of the founders of modern geography, as Hartshorne
(1939)defined it, in the period 1750 to 1840. He argued that geographers in that period
moved away from practical utility-geography for statecraft-and reacted against the
ordering of data through the political map, particularly during the Napoleonic period
when the political map was so unstable. They attempted to develop a reine (pure)
geograpkie based upon a physical division of the world. Although Hartshorne argued
that by 1830 the debate had discarded fixed physical boundaries, the idea of natural
boundaries nevertheless entered modern geography and influenced the regional ge-
ography produced in the first half of the twentieth century. Most regional divisions
in textbooks, for instance, continued to be based on physical features. Geographers
eventually appreciated that physical divisions were decreasingly important bases for
socio-economic activities, and increasingly dismissed regional geography as old-fash-
ioned, leaving the state unchallenged, once again, as the spatial framework for geo-
graphical studies (Cole 1981, 271).
Any analogy drawn across two centuries must not be taken too far. Although the
world political map is challenged as the prime geographical basis for global analysis,
no new reine geograpkie is proposed. To claim that the new regional geography is not
state-centric is not to claim that it is pure in the sense of being non-political and
objective. It simply provides a rationale for regional construction within the over-
arching structure of the capitalist world-economy.
Wallerstein’s (1979, 69) tripartite concepts of core, periphery, and semi-periphery
can be viewed as a first order division of the world, which he considers necessary
for a proper functioning of the world-system. Wallerstein hypothesizes that the
262 THE PROFESSIONAL
GEOGRAPHER

proportion of the world’s population within each of these zones remained roughly
constant throughout the history of the world-economy (Wallerstein 1984a, 7). This
demographic stability does not imply a constant geographical pattern, however. The
actual places that constitute each zone will change over time with rises and falls
approximately compensating each other. For instance, incorporation of new areas into
the periphery enables the system to support a larger core as happened in the late
nineteenth century. Regional geographies as second order divisions of the world can
aid in understanding such changes within and between the first order zones.
Core, periphery, and semi-periphery delineate a hierarchal spatial division of labor
within the world-system. Each zone or category includes broadly similar production
processes, as well as important differences within a category. Variations in resource
bases, economic mixes, political structures, and other features facilitate movement of
places between categories. This variety is not random but evolves historically to
differentiate places within each category and to produce identifiable regions. By study-
ing these regions one can begin to see how the larger zones are constituted and
changed. Such a regional geography indispensably serves world-systems analysis.
Historical Regions
The traditional geographers’ natural regions were seemingly eternal. The world-
systems analyst’s regions, in contrast, are historical: they are created, exist for some
period of time, and then come to an end. From their rise to their demise, regions are
the particular outcomes of general mechanisms that incessantly reproduce the capi-
talist world-economy as core, periphery, and semi-periphery. These mechanisms op-
erate through agents of change, individuals, and institutions that function across the
world within regions and within zones. Acting through the operation of states, house-
holds, social classes, political movements, economic enterprises, and many other or-
ganizations, individuals have created, reproduced, and destroyed regions.
A concrete example will help to fix these ideas. The greater Caribbean region
extending from northeast Brazil to Maryland was a peripheral region from the sev-
enteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Wallerstein (1980,157-175) described this region
as a product of the second major phase of the capitalist world-economy, the stagnation
period from 1600 to 1750. In the rest of the periphery this was a time of retrenchment,
reorientating economies to local markets. In the Caribbean, however, there was ex-
pansion. A new peripheral region developed which concentrated on some of the
growth commodities of the period, such as sugar and cotton. This process began with
the conversion of the original imperial powers, Spain and Portugal, to semi-peripheral
status. Although the Caribbean islands originally served as centers for contraband in
this transfer of power to northwest Europe, the coming of legitimate trade generated
the new region. Plantation America used indentured servants and slaves to serve the
new tastes of the European core for sugar and tobacco. The relations between planter,
banker, and merchant secured most of the benefits of this enterprise to the core in
northwest Europe. The greater Caribbean region, more than any other section of the
periphery, sustained the core in the crucial and difficult consolidation stage of the
capitalist world-economy .
During the next growth phase of the system, however, the greater Caribbean fared
poorly and much of the region became surplus to the core’s requirements. The region
declined under the destructive effects of the Napoleonic Wars and the development
of an alternative crop, the sugar beet, in Europe. The region disintegrated in the
nineteenth century. The northern mainland section converted from European pe-
riphery to United States periphery. Most of the region stagnated and even reverted
to a backwater status like its position before its expansion. The greater Caribbean
region was no more.
VOLUME40, NUMBER3, AUGUST,1988 263

The greater Caribbean example illustrates three characteristics of regions in the

world-system. Initially and obviously, it shows the rise and demise of a region: no
region is eternal. It locates the region within the wider context of happenings in the
system as a whole: no region is autonomous. It also shows a region comprising several
political sovereignties: no region has to be a political unit, although regions can be
political units. The discussion now returns to the question of the state and regional
geography.
Choosing Political Boundaries
I have argued against automatically accepting the state as the basis for comparative
analyses but the argument does not preclude choosing political boundaries for regions
(eg., Agnew 1987). Political boundaries may coincide with important economic bound-
aries, or else, in a particular context, political boundaries may be more important than
the economic boundaries. The United States as a region illustrates both these cases.
The nineteenth century territory of the United States could be viewed as covering
all three zones of the world-economy: an increasingly core-like Northeast, a peripheral
South, and an emerging semiperipheral West. A view of the United States as one
region enables the monitoring of relations between the zones in one polity to see
how the "power-container" organizes, protects, and uses its particular combination
of zones. This polity was successful: all the major sections of the United States became
core-like by the second half of the twentieth century. While this outcome justifies the
use of the United States as a region, the boundary with Canada does separate two
core-like territories. The designation of two regions as states (United States and Can-
ada) is a rejection of a single Anglo-American region. Despite the empirical evidence
for the importance of this political boundary (e.g., Goldberg and Mercer 1986; Reitsma
1987) there is no simple right or wrong decision to be made here. Different emphases
in studies explaining the rise of this first non-European sector of the core zone may
suggest alternative boundary decisions. The same choice, however, seems far less
problematic for the United States-Mexico boundry. This boundary so definitely co-
incides with a zonal boundary that nobody confuses Mexico City and Chicago as
North American cities in the way Goldberg and Mercer (1986) criticize confusion over
Toronto and Chicago. Anglo-America possibly is a region, but North America is not.
Political processes need not be neglected by a world-systems analysis, but they
should be evaluated alongside other processes in determining regions. The only clue
to the likely propensity of political boundaries in regions in world-systems analysis
is Wallerstein's (1979,117) suggestion that conflict is heightened in the semi-peripheral
zone, where political processes are consequently more important.
Breaking All The Rules
If most regions are not to be politically defined, how are geographers to identify
them? This age-old geographical problem of region definition illustrates one final
point concerning the study of places. How far should the regionalization-classification
analogy be taken? Regional construction has always sat uneasily with the strict rules
of classification. Although regional taxonomy was produced during the quantitative
revolution, geographers lost more than they gained by trying to be more "scientific."
Places are not like species: understanding places is a different type of knowledge from
taxonomy.
In world-systems analysis each region is shaped by a singular combination of general
mechanisms. Definition should proceed, therefore, by identifying the combination of
mechanisms that characterizes a particular region, enumerating their expected out-
comes, and then mapping their range. Such an exercise will inevitably produce an
inner area containing most of the expected outcomes and an outer area where a smaller
264 THE PROFESSIONAL
GEOGRAPHER

proportion appear. Other regional theories have noted this pattern. One should not
be overly concerned to produce rigid boundaries, which are important primarily for
precise quantitative and comparative analysis between regions and over time. But one
must recognize generally that adjacent regions do not meet at a simple boundary but
rather merge together across border zones. The fluidity of regions and outcomes
demands flexibility. The outcomes will be stable enough to depict patterns, but the
patterns are by no means fixed.
Translating flexibility into the greater Caribbean region example indicated the
Caribbean sugar islands developed by the major core powers typified plantation Amer-
ica, whereas both mainland adjuncts constituted outer areas of the region. The north-
ern outer area, for example, always had important differences with the islands and
these increased with the new political processes set in train by US.independence.
The set of mechanisms and their outcomes that had generated a new distinctive
periphery region became severely disrupted and the region finally disintegrated. The
greater Caribbean example also illustrates the varying utility of political boundaries.
The political processes on either side of the US.southern maritime boundary became
of vital importance, but the different and changing sovereignties of the sugar islands
became much less relevant. The fact that Jamaica was British and Guadeloupe was
French does not assign them to different regions, even though differences between
English and French forms of imperialism cannot be ignored.
One of the implications of this treatment of the greater Caribbean region is that it
can share places with other regions. The Florida to Maryland area obviously functioned
within both the greater Caribbean and U S . regions. The definition of a single set of
regions covering the world is not proposed. This admission of overlap is anathema
to regional taxonomy. But then the purpose of this new regional geography is not
the production of some sort of ultimate geography as a complete description of the
world, but rather an understanding of places within the wider compass of the world-
economy. Overlapping regions contradict only the belief in a simple world of neat
divisions. The world is a mosaic, to be sure, but it is not a stone one. It depicts the
variability of institutions, individuals, and their mechanisms in particular places that
reproduce the overall world-economy.
Conclusion
The implications of this essay for the study of a contemporary region are some new
questions to be asked and some old questions to be resurrected. For instance, where-
abouts on the route from rise to demise can a region be located? What was the role
of outside forces in the creation of the region? How does the region fit into the global
division of labor? How will the demise of the region affect the status of its territories?
Today the southern Africa region more than any other highlights the importance of
such questions (Martin 1986). Regions may be neither eternal nor autonomous, but
their analysis remains vital to understanding our world. Not only must we know the
location of a region in the world-economy to fully understand it, but in order to
properly understand the world-economy we must know the places that constitute its
whole.
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PETER J. TAYLOR (Ph.D., Liverpool University) is Reader in Political Geography, University of Newcastle
upon Tyne, England, NE1 7RU. His research interests include political geography, history of geography, and
world-systems analysis.