Definición de la variable dependiente

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During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, evolutionary theory suffered because of the failure of evolutionists to differentiate clearly between propositions that applied to the global system of societies and those that applied to individual societies. Too often it was assumed by proponents and critics alike, that the same propositions applied, or were meant to apply, on both levels.

Today, we know better. Patterns of continuity and change in individual societies are not always paralleled by those in the global system. Sometimes they are, but often they are not, and it is dangerous to assume that they are. Even when similar patterns can be observed on both levels, there may be exceptions among individual societies that are theoretically important.

Marshall Sahlins was the first to address this problem directly. In an impor- tant essay published in l960, he advanced the thesis that there are two kinds of evolution and they operate on different levels of social organization (Sahlins and Service, 1960). Specific evolution, according to Sahlins, is the process of change whereby each individual society adapts to its own unique environment, and it is this kind of evolution that is responsible for the diversity of social and cultural patterns that have intrigued anthropologists for so long. General evolution, in con- trast, refers to the directional changes that have occurred in the universe of human societies, such as the long-run growth of world population, the long-run growth in world economic output or GWP, and the long-run increase in the global divi- sion of labor.

Many of the problems associated with evolutionary theory in the past were the result of overly facile attempts to explain the characteristics of individual societies

using principles derived from analyses of the evolution of the global system. When evolutionists did this, their ideas were often vulnerable to easy falsification.

Sahlins’s “solution” to the problem was an important step forward, but it left something to be desired, since directional change has not been entirely lack- ing in individual societies, nor is the process of adaptive radiation entirely absent in the universe of societies. Despite this difficulty, Sahlins’s distinction between general and specific evolution sensitizes us to the necessity of specifying the level, or levels, of organization to which propositions apply.

During the 1970s, and later, the importance of Sahlins’s distinction became even more apparent thanks to the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and his follow- ers. Wallerstein’s world-system theory brought home to sociologists and others the fact that the processes of change operating at the global level are more than the sum of the processes operating within individual societies. The universe of con- temporary societies is, indeed, a system composed of interdependent and inter- acting parts and not simply an aggregation of independent and unrelated entities. It is easy to conclude from the writings of Wallerstein and his followers, how- ever, that the formation of a social system of global dimensions is a relatively recent development in history, a product of the modern era. For, while Wallerstein has writ- ten about earlier “world” systems, none of them was close to global in scope; none of them ever included more than a small minority of the societies of their day.

There is another sense, however, in which the concept of a global system of societies predates the modern era and extends far back into the past. For hundreds of thousands of years, human societies have interacted with one another and have exchanged important elements of information. Although direct contacts and ex- changes, prior to the modern era, were limited to societies that were neighbors, or at least in close proximity to one another, many elements of culture (e.g., the spread of various technologies and religions) diffused more widely. Sometimes this was the result of migrations of entire populations (e.g., the Germanic peoples and the Mongols), sometimes because of the movement of individuals (e.g., mis- sionaries and merchants). And sometimes it was the result of the operation of extended chains of communication that linked societies whose members never came in direct contact with one another.

Because of mechanisms such as these, one is forced to recognize that the process of information-cumulation has been operating on a global basis for thou- sands of years. Already during the Lower Paleolithic, the Acheulean toolmaking tradition was shared by societies throughout all of Africa and Europe and much of southern Asia—in other words, throughout virtually all of the then-occupied world (Hawkes, 1963: 117ff.). Later, the Indo-European family of languages spread from India to Ireland, and Islam spread from Spain to China. If we could trace the diffusion of all the many elements of culture, we would almost certainly find that no fully human society ever failed to participate to some extent, however spas- modically, in this global system and to enjoy at least some of its benefits.

Clearly, then, the existence of the global system is not new. What is new is the nature of the system. Because of advances in transportation and communica-

Characteristics of the Global System of Societies 113 tion technologies, contacts between societies have become far more frequent and far more sustained than in the past. In addition, societies that are far distant from one another geographically are now able to maintain direct and continuous con- tacts. And, finally, the exchanges between distant societies are no longer limited to information: They often involve exchanges of goods and services and the exercise of political influence (as illustrated by the recent exercise of American power in the Middle East in the wars with Iraq). Thus, the global system of societies has become far more important today than it ever was in the past.