Ages of "Systemic Chaos" Compared: The Early Twenty-first Century in World-historical Perspective

• In Event: 285 - Regular Session. Comparative Historical Sociology: The Changing Structure of Geopolitics and the Global Political Economy

Abstract

The premise of this paper is that sometime between 2003 (the US invasion of Iraq) and 2008 (the US-centered financial crisis) the world transitioned from what could be fruitfully understood as a period of "crisis of US hegemony" to a period of global "systemic chaos". Moreover, the paper departs from the premise that our understanding of the dynamics of the early twenty-first century can be enhanced through a systemic comparison with earlier analogous periods of "systemic chaos" that accompanied the transitions from Dutch to British hegemony and from British to US hegemony. Arrighi, Silver et al's 1999 book (Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System) was written in the period of "crisis of US hegemony" with an eye to learning the lessons needed to avoid a fall into a period of "systemic chaos" and deep human suffering. Writing almost 20 years later, the problem of avoiding the fall into systemic chaos is (unfortunately) mute, and the comparative frame must shift to what we can learn from past pathways out from the periods of systemic chaos. This paper identifies an evolutionary patterning to historical capitalism and its implications for thinking about contemporary dynamics.

Author

• Beverly Judith Silver, Johns Hopkins University