Islam in a Globalizing World or Rise and Demise

Islam in a Globalizing World

Author: Thomas W Simons Jr

This book takes a historical approach to examining Islam's role in globalization. The author identifies complex historical and geopolitical trends in Islamic history, and constructs from these a clear assessment of contemporary Islam. Most important, the book examines historical trends from a perspective that contributes to an understanding of Islam in the aftermath of September 11.

The author takes us through a review of the first Islamic millennium and Islam's role as a globalizing force, to subsequent changes in the Muslim world, through a comparison with earlier radical movements in Russia, and finally to trends in contemporary political Islam and projections for future developments. Along the way, the author points out many of the challenges Islamists have faced, some of their pitfalls, and some modernizing attributes of contemporary Islam.

This accessible, timely book should be of strong interest to anyone with a desire for greater understanding in this transformed global environment.

About the Author
Thomas W. Simons, Jr. is Consulting Professor, Center for international Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He was the Ambassador to Pakistan from 1996 to 1998.

University of Virginia, Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Fomer ambassador to Libya and Indonesia and the Philippines - Newsom,David,D.

Today, in an era in which the world of Islam is suddenly in the forefront of public concern, this impressive application of history should help readers to an intelligent understanding of the dynamic and, at times, conflicting forces at work in that world.

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Rise and Demise: Comparing World Systems

Author: Christopher K Chase Dunn

Spanning ten thousand years of social change, this book examines the ways in which world-systems evolve. A comparative study of stateless societies, state-based regional empires, and the modern global capitalist political economy, it reveals the underlying processes at work in the reproduction and transformation of social, economic, and political structures.Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall show that stateless societies developed in the context of regional intersocietal networks that differed significantly from larger and more hierarchical world-systems. The processes by which chiefdoms rose and fell are similar to the ways in which states, empires, and modern hegemonic core states have experienced uneven development. Most world-systems exhibit a pattern of political centralization and decentralization, but the mechanisms and processes of change can vary greatly.Looking at the systematic similarities and differences among small scale, middle-sized, and global world-systems, the authors address such questions as: Do all world-systems have core/periphery hierarchies in which the development of one area necessitates the underdevelopment of another? How were kin-based logics of social integration transformed into state-based tributary logics, and how did capitalism emerge within the interstices of tributary states and empires to eventually become the predominant logic of accumulation? How did the rise of commodity production and the eventual dominance of capitalist accumulation modify the processes by which political centers rise and fall?Rise and Demise offers far-reaching explanations of social change, showing how the comparative study of world-systems increases ourunderstanding of early history, the contemporary global system, and future possibilities for world society.

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations
	Preface
	Introduction	1
1	A Hundred Flowers Bloom: Approaches to World-Systems	11
2	Defining World-Systems	27
3	Two, Three, Many World-Systems	41
4	New Territories: The Problem of Incorporation	59
5	The Semiperiphery: Seedbed of Change	78
6	Iterations and Transformations: A Theory of World-Systems Evolution	99
7	A Very Small World-System	121
8	The Unification of Afroeurasia: Circa 500 B.C.E.-1400 C.E.	149
9	The Europe-Centered System	187
10	Cross-System Comparisons: Similarities and Differences	200
11	The Transformation of World-Systems	233
12	Conclusions, Questions, Speculations	247
	Notes	255
	Glossary	271
	References	276
	About the Book and Authors	307
	Index	309