Halfway to Paradise? Making Sense of the Semi-Periphery

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to examine critically the concept of the semi-periphery, in the context of the evolution of global capitalism over the last 30 years or so. Since the semi-periphery became a particular focus of world-systems theory (WST hereafter) in the 1980s, the first part of the chapter looks at how this concept fits into the development of development theory, starting from the well-known conflicting paradigms of modernisation and dependency, moving on to the more specific relationship between the latter and the world-systems approach, and from there to the concept of semi-periphery itself. The second part examines the concept in detail, focusing on the work of Arrighi (1990), Chase-Dunn (1989, 1990) and the contributors to Martin (1990); here it is argued that the world-systems approach had considerable difficulty in adapting to the rise of neoliberalism and the political economy of globalisation, and that the origins of this difficulty lies in a flawed understanding of the dynamics of global capitalism. The final part outlines an alternative approach which deploys a different understanding of capital, class and the state in making sense of recent changes in the regions and countries chiefly seen as being semi-peripheral.