Revisiting Culture and Meaning-Making in World-Systems Analysis: A Dialogue with the Cultural Political Economy Approach

• In Event: 4149 - Current Topics in World-Systems Research

Abstract

World-systems analysis (WSA) understands socio-cultural phenomena as crucial to the continued operation of global capitalism, whether through geo-cultures that sustain liberal centrism, the emergence of capitalist subjectivities, or by generating structures of knowledge that bound political possibilities. Nonetheless, many scholars critique WSA’s treatment of culture and meaning-making as reductive and epiphenomenal. How can we theorize culture’s relationship to global capitalism without assuming that culture merely ‘dupes’ participants into reproducing exploitative structures? In this article, we offer a critical evaluation of WSA’s treatment of culture to date and argue that its alleged failings can be partially ameliorated by adopting a cultural political economy (CPE) framework, an analytical approach that has largely developed separately from world-systems analysis. To do so, we outline WSA’s two major theorizations of culture; namely, its discussion of global geo-cultures and structures of knowledge. Departing from existing cultural critiques of WSA, we discuss the applicability of a CPE approach, which examines how discourses both influence and are shaped by the material world. Taking the study of anti-systemic movements as an example, we demonstrate how a CPE-oriented approach might allow WSA to address its major cultural critiques by connecting meaning-making to issues of collective action. Broadly, we call for a theoretical co-mixing of CPE and WSA that will allow researchers to address the alleged cultural failings of world-systems scholarship.

Authors

• Jason C. Mueller

• Steven Edward Schmidt, University of California, Irvine