Editor's Introduction to Volume 2 of JWSR

Christopher Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
chriscd@jhu.edu

The second volume of articles and thematic sections in JWSR will be published during 1996. The first batch contains an article by Political Scientist Daniel Whiteneck on epistemic communities and global leadership and a special thematic section focussing around the ideas of W. Warren Wagar regarding the future of the world-system and global politics. Wagar presented a summary of his ideas (developed more fully in his A Short History of the Future (Chicago 1992) at the American Sociological Association meeting in Washington DC in August of 1995. Included with his essay are thirteen comments by Sociologists, Political Scientists and activists who discuss and criticize Wagar's ideas, and a response to the critiques from Wagar.

The Journal of World-Systems Research is primarily dedicated to the presentation of scholarly research on world-systems. Considerations of the future and of political practice are not generally included, but the ideas of Wagar and his critics and supporters are so relevant for both our collective future and for our understanding of the contemporary global system that we will make this exception without thereby transforming JWSR into a political magazine.

The second batch of papers in Volume 2 has been edited by P. Nick Kardulias of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Kenyon College. This special thematic section focusses on anthropological and archaeological approaches to the study of world-systems. The papers were presented at the American Anthropological Association meeting in Washington DC in November of 1995 in two sessions on "Leadership, production and exchange: an evaluation of world systems theory in a global context." Nick Kardulias has written an editor's introduction to this thematic section.