2024 ASA PEWS Section Award Winners

We are pleased to announce the 2024 PEWS Section Award Winners!

PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award:
Radhakrishnan, Smitha., Solari, Cinzia D.. 2023. The Gender Order of Neoliberalism. United Kingdom: Polity Press.

Honorable Mention, Book Award:
Gates, Leslie C. 2023. Capitalist Outsiders: Oil's Legacies in Mexico and Venezuela. United States: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Distinguished Professional (Faculty/Postdoctoral Fellow) Article Award:
Levenson, Zachary and Marcel Paret. 2023. “The Three Dialectics of Racial Capitalism: From South Africa to the U.S. and Back Again.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 20(2):333‐351.

Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Joosse, Paul and Dominik Zelinsky. 2023. “Charismatic Mimicry: Innovation and Imitation in the Case of Volodymyr Zelensky.” Sociological Theory 41(3):201-228.

Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Pandian, Roshan K.. 2024. “The Decline of Global Inequality in the 21st Century: Reconsidering the Industrial Transformation Thesis.” American Journal of Sociology 129(5):1493-1534.

Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Jorgenson, Andrew K., Brett Clark, Ryan P. Thombs, Jeffrey Kentor, Jennifer E. Givens, Xiaorui Huang, Hassan El Tinay, Daniel Auerbach, and Matthew C. Mahutga. 2023. “Guns versus Climate: How Militarization Amplifies the Effect of Economic Growth on Carbon Emissions.” American Sociological Review 88(3):418-453.

Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Movahed, Masoud. 2023. “Varieties of capitalism and income inequality.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 64(6):1-37. (Written and accepted for publication when still a student.)

Distinguished Teaching Award:
Beverly Silver, Johns Hopkins University Sociology Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all the members of the award committees for their service!

PEWS @ ASA 2024

Check out the great sessions for ASA 2024!

Paper Sessions:
Political Economy of the World-System: Continuity and Change

Sun, August 11, 12:00 to 1:30pm, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Level 5, 511D

Session Organizer: Vilna Bashi, Northwestern University
“Of Crashing Bicycles, Spaghetti, and Lost Teeth: The Diminished World Trade Organization”
Joseph A. Conti, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Racialized and migrant workers in US Amazon warehouses -- old theory impacts contemporary globalized supply chains”
David A. Smith, University of California-Irvine; Paul S. Ciccantell, Western Michigan University; Elizabeth Alexis Sowers, CSU Channel Islands; Spencer Louis Potiker, University of California-Irvine; Luc McKenzie, University of California-Irvine

“Revisiting and Re-Theorizing “Universality” in the Modern World-System”
Jason C. Mueller, Kennesaw State University

“The BRICS+ And The Middle-Run Futures Of The Global System”
Sakin Erin, University of Science & Arts of Oklahoma; Christopher K Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside

“World-System Hierarchy, Economic Productivity, and Global Economic Downturns: Analyzing Trade Networks Post-2008 Global Financial Crisis”
Martín Jacinto, California State University-Chico

Refereed Round-tables:

Sun, August 11, 10:00 to 11:00am, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Level 7, 710A

Session Organizers: Vilna Bashi, Northwestern University; Jeremy Louis Levine, Stony Brook University

“Argentina and Brazil Political Economy of Soy-Meat Complex and implications of the Trade to China”
Maria Jose Haro Sly, Johns Hopkins University

“Japanification of the Chinese Economy? A Tale of Two East Asian Miracles”
Mingtang Liu, Johns Hopkins University

“Making Expensive Coffee Cheap—Food Regimes, Social Reproduction, and Agrarian Politics in Colombia and Kenya”
Phillip A. Hough, Florida Atlantic University; David Osorio Garcia, Departamento de Sociología, Universidad de Caldas, Colombia; Patrick Mbataru, Public Policy and Administration, Kenyatta University, Kenya

“Religion, Primitive Accumulation and Colonialism-Nationalism Nexus in the Long-Sixteenth Century: The Spanish-Habsburg Bid for Global Supremacy”
Sahan Savaş Karataşli, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

“The Evolution of Inequality Overshoots Within Polities and in Interpolity Systems”
Christopher K Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside; Hiroko Inoue, University of California-Riverside

“The relationship between within-country and between-country inequality in globalization”
Hiroko Inoue, University of California-Riverside; Teruki Sanada, Doshisha University; Yoshimichi Sato, Kyoto University of Advanced Science; Christopher K Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside; Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz, University of Maryland-College Park

“Transforming Epicenter of Antisystemic Movements in the Global South with the Long Durée”
Chungse Jung, SUNY-Cortland

“Urban disadvantages in maternal health care utilization in postcolonialized sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Tanzania”
Neema Langa, University of Houston

Other ASA PEWS Events

PEWS Business Meeting

When Sun, Aug 11, 11:00-11:30am

Where: Palais des Congrès de Montré al, Level 5, 517C

ASA Reception!

The PEWS Section will hold a joint reception with the Labor and Labor Movements, Collective Behavior and Social Movements, Marxist, and Development ASA Sections.

When: Mon, August 12, 7:00-11:00PM

Where: Headquarters of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN)/Confederation of National Trade Unions (CNTU)
1601 Av. De Lorimier, Montréal, QC H2K 4M5, Canada

Journal of World Systems Research (JWSR) Invites Applications for New Editor

The new JWSR editorship term is for 2026-2028. The deadline to submit editor proposals is November 1, 2025. Please click HERE for details on this position and submitting an application.

Latest Edition of PEWS News!

The latest edition of PEWSNews (Spring 2024) is out! Thank you to our editor, Jason Mueller, for his expert job of putting this edition together so efficiently during these turbulent and difficult times! You can read the latest edition (and past editions) here.

PRE-ASA PEWS WORKSHOP

World Systems Analysis at a Critical Juncture II

August 16, 2023, 12-6 pm
Temple University Center City
1515 Market Street, Room 321 (3rd floor)
Philadelphia PA (USA)
Organized by: Political Economy of the World System Section (PEWS) of the American Sociological Association and the Arrighi Center for Global Studies.

The workshop continues with the theme of the 44th Annual PEWS conference (2020) and volume (2022)—World Systems Analysis at a Critical Juncture—interrogating the current critical juncture both for the world system and for the world-systems approach. The workshop format is designed so as to provide ample space for discussion and exchange of ideas. Each of the three (75 minute) roundtable sessions will begin with a set of short presentations on the roundtable theme, leaving 40 minutes for a combination of shorter pre-arranged interventions and open discussion from the floor. The roundtables will combine invited presenters and presenters selected from submitted abstracts. If you are interested in making a formal presentation (either in the initial part of the roundtable or a shorter prearranged intervention in the open discussion period), please send an approximately one-page abstract (including which roundtable[s] would be the best fit[s]) by July 16, 2023 to (pewsworkshop@gmail.com). Important note: it is not necessary to send an abstract in order to attend the workshop or participate in the open discussion. All are welcome!

Please click here to RSVP.

Please click here to access the full schedule, roundtable information, links to RSVP for lunch and the Happy Hour Reception, and other details.

Finally, as a reminder, we are currently accepting proposals for hosting the 2024 and 2026 PEWS conferences. Please write to us (korzen@umd.edu and silver@jhu.edu) if you are interested in hosting a future 'even-year' PEWS meeting. The historical format of these conferences, which we aim to emulate in the new bi-annual model, is that, once a proposal is selected, an open call for papers would go out. The conference itself would be held in the spring (e.g., 2024, 2026), with conference organizers raising money to cover at least some expenses for participants. Papers presented would be revised for a conference volume edited by the conference organizer(s) and published in the Routledge PEWS Annual series.

ASA PEWS Section Election Results

We are pleased to announce the 2023 ASA Election for PEWS Officers and Council Members. Congratulations to those elected and thank you to everyone who volunteered to run!

Chair: Vilna Bashi, Northwestern University
Chair-Elect: Sahan Savaş Karataşli, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Past Chair: Lu Zhang, Temple University
Section Secretary/Treasurer: Nikhil Deb, California State University, San Luis Obispo
Council Members: Melanie E. L. Bush, Adelphi University / Alvin Camba, University of Denver / Marcel Paret, University of Utah / Kristen Shorette, Stony Brook University, SUNY / Zachary Levenson, University of Texas at Austin / Corey Payne, Johns Hopkins University
Student Representative: Nefratiri Weeks, Colorado State University / Michelle Lee, Northwestern University

PEWS @ ASA 2023

Check out the great sessions held for ASA 2023!

Paper Sessions:
Global Resistance, Systemic Crises, and Alternatives Beyond Historical Capitalism

Fri, August 18, 8:00 to 9:30am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: 100 Level, 104A

Co-organizer, Ricado E Jacobs, University of California-Santa Barbara
Co-organizer, Beverly Judith Silver, Johns Hopkins University
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, there has been a worldwide explosion of social protest, unfolding with an intensity and scope that has been rare in the history of the capitalist world-system. Such periods have been intertwined with periods of deep system-level crises of capitalism. In the present period (as in past analogous periods), we witness an array of movements, ranging from ones that are predominantly exclusionary (including genocidal) to ones that are pointing (explicitly or implicitly) towards alternatives paths out of the deepening crisis and toward a more just and equitable post-capitalist world system. Papers in this session will focus on social protest from below as a lens through which to understand the multiple crises of global capitalism and vice-versa. We welcome papers that link concrete local struggles to world-systemic dynamics; that place the current global wave in historical perspective; and that analyze the ways in which current resistance from below may signal the interstitial emergence of routes out of the deepening global crisis and alternatives beyond capitalism.

Crisis, What Crisis? Dynamics of Global Crisis in the 21st Century

Fri, August 18, 2:00 to 3:30pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: 100 Level, 104B

Co-organizer, Sahan Savaş Karataşli, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Co-organizer, Sefika Kumral, University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Since the turn of the 21st century, there is growing awareness that our world is experiencing interlinked crises at social, economic, political and environmental spheres. In critical sociological studies, it has almost become impossible to talk about ecology, geopolitics, finance, reproduction or health without referring to the term “crisis.” Yet, there is no consensus on the exact nature of these crises or why we have been experiencing different forms of crises around the world in great synchrony. Some scholars tend to view these crises as different manifestations of the crisis of neoliberalism. For some scholars, these simultaneous crises are linked to the crisis of the U.S. world hegemony and the post-1945 world order as a whole. For others, they are symptoms of the crisis (and demise) of the capitalist world-economy as a whole. This panel aims to investigate the nature of crises we have been experiencing, their causes and consequences from a global and macro-historical perspective.

Refereed Round-tables:

Fri, August 18, 4:00 to 5:00pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: 100 Level, 113B

Organizer, Jeremy Louis Levine, SUNY at Stony Brook
The Refereed Roundtables will include front-line empirical research offering new and refreshing ideas about our world-systems using global, political, and economic theoretical perspectives. As our world continues to become more interconnected and many of the remaining challenges call for solutions that require nation-states and people to work together, research and dialogue from different areas of expertise within the field of Sociology is essential. Abstracts and paper submissions received online will cover a variety of themes, including Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Gender Inequality, Racial Inequality and Justice, Stratification, Labor Rights and Migration, Refugees, Human Rights, Interstate and Intrastate Conflicts, Nationalism, Populism, Mass Media and Social Media, and more.

Roundtable 1: Colonial Knowledge, Austerity, and Racial Capitalism
Roundtable 2: Political Economy and Global Perspectives
Roundtable 3: World-Systems and Asia in the Neoliberal Political Economy

Other ASA PEWS Events

PEWS Business Meeting
Time: August 18, 5:00-5:30pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: 100 Level, 113B

ASA Reception!

The PEWS Section will hold a joint reception with the Marxist Sociology and Labor and Labor Movements sections.
Time: Friday, August 18, 6:00-9:00PM
Location: Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center
(210 S 45th St, Philadelphia)

The Journal of World Systems Research (JWSR)

The Journal of World-Systems Research (JWSR) is the official journal of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association. JWSR is an open access scholarly journal that reaches a global audience and consists of unidisciplinary scholarship on topics relevant to the world-systems perspective. We seek the work of political scientists, historians, sociologists, ethnographers, archaeologists, economists and geographers.

We especially encourage works that take theory seriously by confronting problems of conceptualization and making definitions of concepts explicit, by formulating hypotheses, constructing axiomatic theories and causal models. Theoretical research programs that combine theory construction with comparative research are badly needed to take the world-systems approach beyond the stage of a perspective.

JWSR will consider studies that utilize a wide range of methods, including both qualitative and quantitative research. We also consider studies based on community based research (see Guidelines for Community Based Research). Empirical studies that are deemed relevant to world-systems analysis may be published even if it uses a very different conceptual framework.

Authors are encouraged to submit completed articles between 8,000 to 10,000 words for review. For consideration for the Winter/Spring 2024 issue authors should make their submissions by November 15, 2023. For consideration for the Summer/Autumn 2024 issue, authors should make submissions by April 15, 2024.

We also welcome proposals for special issues on themes that fall within the scope of the journal. All proposals should be sent to the journal editor (jwsr@ciis.edu). More information about this process can be found in the About section on the website.

Call for Reviewers: In an effort to expand our database of potential reviewers, we invite people to create an account on jwsr.pitt.edu and make sure to mark the box that you would like to be contacted with requests to review submissions to this journal, and edit your account to include keywords for your academic interests. Alternatively you can fill out this form and your information will be entered for you.

"We must overcome the colonial denial: Wallerstein versus the woke" by Professor Charles McKelvey

Professor Charles McKelvey published a Substack Column titled "We must overcome the colonial denial: Wallerstein versus the woke." It discusses the significance of the work of Immanuel Wallerstein. In subsequent postings to the column, Professor McKelvey will be analyzing the world-economy and contemporary events from a world-systems perspective.

2023 ASA PEWS Section Award Winners

We are pleased to announce the 2023 PEWS Section Award Winners!

PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award:
Hough, Phillip. 2020. At the Margins of the Global Market: Making Commodities, Workers, and Crisis in Rural Colombia. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Honorable Mention, Book Award:
Plys, Kristin and Charles Lemert. 2022. Capitalism and its Uncertain Future. Routledge.

Honorable Mention, Book Award:
Parvulescu, Anna and Manuela Boatca. 2022. Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires. Cornell University Press.

Distinguished Article Award:
Mallard, Grégoire and Jin Sun. 2022. "Viral Governance: How the US Unilateral Sanctions Against Iran Changed the Rules of Financial Capitalism." American Journal of Sociology 128(1):144-188.

Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Liu, Jiaqi. 2022. “When Diaspora Politics Meet Global Ambitions: Diaspora Institutions Amid China's Geopolitical Transformations.” International Migration Review 56(4):1255-1279.

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all the members of the award committes for their service!

Remembering Immanuel Wallerstein

The PEWS section has set up webspace for section members to post their remembrances or stories about Immanuel Wallerstein. You can access the webspace here. To post your story, go to the webspace and scroll down to the section that says, "Remembering Immanuel Wallerstein." Click on the "Read More" button and then go to the comment box to enter your remembrance. You will also be able to read everyone's stories on that page. If you have any technical problems with the webspace, please contact PEWS webmaster, Nayla Huq at nayla.huq@stonybrook.edu.

Political Economy of the World-System Interuniversity Consortium

In the Spring of 2018, Torry Dickinson approached the Council with the idea of establishing an interuniversity consortium to support PEWS research and teaching. Chris Chase-Dunn, Valentine M. Moghadam, and Beverly Silver graciously accepted the Council invitation to serve on an ad-hoc PEWS Interuniversity Consortium (PEWS-IC) Committee to explore this idea. The Committee has developed the following proposal and is now soliciting feedback from the membership. The proposal is at this link. If you have comments on the proposal or if you would like to be involved in the consortium, please contact the committee: Chris Chase-Dunn (chriscd@ucr.edu), Val Moghadam (vmmogha@yahoo.com), Beverly Silver (silver@jhu.edu).

PEWS Survey Report

At the PEWS Council meeting in August 2016, the Council decided to conduct a survey to assist us in our efforts to deal with the problem of declining membership. The Council created a committee to conduct the survey consisting of Rob Clark, Matthew Mahutga, Victoria Reyes and John Talbot. The committee developed a survey instrument designed to ascertain the impressions of the PEWS section among current PEWS members, former members, and ASA members who had never been PEWS members but who might be interested in joining. The survey was distributed in November 2016 to PEWS members and was sent to the chairs of fifteen ASA sections that we identified as having some overlap of interests with PEWS. The chairs were asked to send the survey to their members. We received a total of 398 responses. The results of the survey are posted here.