World System

SUMMARY: Chapter 9, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the various types of trade and exchange in past societies, and how one may assess it, including different types of interactions (e.g., gift exchange), various scientific techniques (e.g., microscopic examination of materials; trace-element analysis; isotopic analysis), studying material and/or artifact distributions, assessing production and consumption, and analyzing the various means of exchange and interaction.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED/REVISED March, 2021, some editing and new formatting, minimal new materials.

This article engages critically with an emerging Brazilian research programme, ‘Varieties of Capitalism and Development in Latin America’, a perspective which seeks to ascertain the institutional chances of, and limits to, implementing state-led ‘national development strategies’. Adopting a critical political economy viewpoint, the text discusses the deficiencies inherent to this perspective and its neoinstitutionalist and neodevelopmentalist fundamentals. In particular, it questions the vision of the world economy as an arena of free competition and that of the nation-state as a ‘collective actor’, both of which are politically and analytically problematic. These criticisms are substantiated through evidence drawn from a case analysis of the recent trajectory of the Argentine neodevelopmentalist project.

Авторы теории последовательности человеческого развития Р. Инглхарт и К. Вельцель утверждают, что модернизация является одним из основных процессов, формирующих ценностные установки населения. В статье исследуется соотношение
ценностей и модернизации с использованием некоторых элементов методики Инглхарта и Вельцеля на данных Ш. Шварца. В обследовании Шварца выделяются две основные оси ценностей: «сохранение — открытость к изменениям» и «забота о лю-дях — самоутверждение». Нами выявлена разная направленность корреляций между этими двумя ценностными осями в западном мире (включающем страны Европы и бывшие переселенческие колонии обеих Америк и Океании) и афразийском мире.
Действительно, в обоих макрорегионах модернизация (аппроксимируемая через такие показатели, как ВВП на душу населения и доли занятых по секторам экономики)
сопровождается уменьшением ценностей сохранения и ростом ценностей открытости к изменениям, но в западном мире рост открытости сопровождается ростом заботы об окружении, а в афразийском мире — ростом самоутверждения. Мы выдвигаем две гипотезы, позволяющие объяснить противоположную направленность корреляций в данных макрорегионах — нахождение на разных стадиях модернизации и различие в цивилизационных паттернах. Дальнейший анализ показывает, что
обнаруженное различие между Европой и Востоком можно объяснить через стадиальный фактор лишь очень частично. В значительно большей степени речь, видимо,
идет о различных цивилизационных паттернах модернизации ценностей.

This paper examines the background of the first English translation of the Chinese text, Chao Ju-kau's Zhu fan zhi (completed in circa 1225). One translator, W. W. Rockhill, was an American diplomat who contributed to the American Open Door policy in Asia in the early twentieth century. The other translator, Friedrich Hirth, worked for the Chinese Maritime Customs before serving as a faculty at the Chinese Department of the Columbia University. Hirth and Rockhill emphasized the Arab connections, while Chinese intellectuals underscored the Chinese contribution. The paper is concluded by a warning of the nationalist claim of global history.

The text presents a new interpretation of the Old Rus’ Primary Chronicle through the lens of I. Wallerstein’s and A.G. Frank’s World(-)System Theories, combined with social constructivism and historical anthropology, which will allow the author to elaborate on the utility and advantages that this concept offers for the large-scale study of pre-modern literature.

¿Afronta actualmente el capitalismo el “fin de la naturaleza barata”? Si así es, ¿qué podría significar esto y cuáles con las implicaciones para el futuro? Estamos, de hecho, siendo testigos del fin de la naturaleza barata en un sentido específico histórico. En vez de contemplar el fin de la naturaleza barata como la reafirmación de “límites de crecimiento” externos, sostengo que, a día de hoy, el capitalismo ha agotado la relación histórica que la produce. El fin de la naturaleza barata se comprende mejor como el agotamiento de las relaciones de valor que han restaurado periódicamente los “Four Cheaps”: trabajo, alimentos, energía y materias primas. Fundamentalmente, estas relaciones de valor son coproducidas por, y a través de, humanos con el resto de la naturaleza. La cuestión decisiva, por lo tanto, enciende las relaciones que envuelven y despliegan las sucesivas configuraciones de la naturaleza humana y extra-humana, simbólicamente capacitadas y materialmente realizadas, a través de la larga duración del sistema-mundo moderno. Significativamente, la apropiación de trabajo no remunerado —incluyendo los “regalos gratuitos” de la naturaleza— y la explotación del trabajo asalariado, forman una unidad dialéctica. Los límites del crecimiento enfrentados actualmente por el capital son suficientemente reales, y son “límites” coproducidos a través del capitalismo como ecología-mundo, uniendo la acumulación de capital, la búsqueda de poder y la coproducción de naturaleza como un todo orgánico. El límite de la ecología-mundo del capital es el capital en sí mismo.

Hogyan képzeljük el a magyar társadalom osztályszerkezetét? Terhes babapiskótaként? Piramisként vagy körteként? Az összetett és elvont jelenségek megértését megkönnyíti, ha már ismert dolgokhoz hasonlítjuk. A metaforák egy határig mozgósítják a képzelőerőt. E könyv a félperifériás magyar társadalom osztályszerkezetét egy olyan csepphez hasonlítja, amely az elmúlt négy évtizedben mindinkább széthúzódott. Egyaránt nőtt a távolság a felül és az alul levők, az uralkodó és az alávetett helyzetűek, a tőkések és a munkások között. Vajon mi okozza az egyenlőtlenségek növekedését, az élethelyzetek eltávolodását, a társadalmi felemelkedés és lecsúszás esélyének alacsony szintjét? A kötet válaszai szerint egyfelől a globális kapitalizmus, a tőkés világrendszer dinamikája, másfelől a magyar államot elfoglaló osztályok és osztályfrakciók politikája. A magyar társadalom osztályszerkezete csepp a kapitalista világrendszer tengerében. Egyetlen apró alkotóelemként sűrítve foglalja magába az egész valamennyi feszítő ellentmondását. A könyv célja, hogy közelebb vigyen a változáshoz. A félperifériás magyar társadalom osztályszerkezetének feltérképezésével átalakításának ügyét kívánja előremozdítani. Azért akarja működését feltárni, hogy egyesült erővel, közösen változtathassuk meg.

The authors suggest to view the origins of Islam against the background of the 6th century AD Arabian socio-ecological crisis whose model is specified in the paper through the study of cli-matological, seismological, volcanological and epidemiological history of the period. Most so-cio-political systems of the Arabs reacted to the socio-ecological crisis by getting rid of the rig-id supra-tribal political structures (kingdoms and chiefdoms) which started posing a real threat to their very survival. The decades of fighting which led to the destruction of the most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms (reflected in Ayyam al-`Arab tradition) led to the elabora-tion of some definite "anti-royal" freedom-loving tribal ethos. At the beginning of the 7th cen-tury a tribe which would recognize themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super-tribal polit-ical authority, a "king", risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the authority of another type, the "celestial" one. At the meantime the early 7th century evi-dences the merging of the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist "Rah-manist" tradition which produced "the Arabian prophetic movement". The Monotheist "Rahmanist" prophets appear to have represented a supratribal authority just of the type many Arab tribes were looking for at this very time, which seems to explain to a certain extent those prophets' political success (including the extreme political success of Muhammad).

The main point of departure for this article is the incapacity of current international relations theorizing to explain both change and continuity without shifting between levels of analysis. The previous research agenda on system studies was renounced before it realized its potential. The concept of a subsystem has great potential for resolving this challenge. This article argues that the properties of the international system, including anarchy, are not constant, and show variation. To factor in this variation, first we need to identify subsystems (e.g. geographical or functional) that diverge across issue areas and functions. Then we need to look at the interactions between subsystems, which is a neglected aspect of the literature on subsystems. This article contributes to the debate by setting out a new research agenda to study the interactions between subsystems and their effects on the general system; that is, to identify when the system is stable and when it changes. This agenda suggests a particular focus on the inconsistencies, contradictions, and challenges that lie at the intersections of different subsystems

A kötet, amelyet az olvasó a kezében tart, az ELTE Társadalomtudományi Kar szociológia alapképzésén Társadalmi szerkezetek, társadalmi folyamatok I. címmel meghirdetett kurzus jegyzeteit tartalmazza. A tizenhárom órára bontott tanmenet első nyolc előadása a társadalmi egyenlőtlenségek, osztályok, rendek, rétegek és elitek fogalmait, illetve azok kutatásának alapjait ismerteti, de kitér az individualizáció, a szubkultúrák, az életstílusok, a miliők és a hálózatok szociológiai vizsgálatára is. Az utolsó öt előadás a magyar társadalom szerkezetének kutatástörténetét tekinti át a második világháború végétől napjainkig.

A jegyzetek, azon túl, hogy felvázolják mások mellett Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, C. Wright Mills és Pierre Bourdieu vonatkozó munkásságát, majd összefoglalják Ferge Zsuzsa, Hegedüs András, Kolosi Tamás és Szelényi Iván kutatásainak fontosabb eredményeit, megidézik azt a kort is, amelyben e szerzők alkottak, s amelynek értelmezésére vállalkoztak. A jegyzet tehát, akárcsak az előadássorozat, szintetizáló látásmódot kínál: társadalomtörténeti, gazdaság- és politikatörténeti ismereteket kapcsol össze tudománytörténeti, szociológiaelméleti, eszme- és kutatástörténeti magyarázatokkal.

Az előadást sokáig Ferge Zsuzsa, majd Angelusz Róbert, később Gecser Ottó tartotta, szociológusok nemzedékeivel ismertetve meg társadalomszerkezet, újratermelés és átalakulás alapfolyamatait. A szerző, Éber Márk Áron 2010 óta vezeti a kurzust, évről évre csiszolt jegyzeteit ez úton adja közre.

The Popular Anthropocene limits our thinking about possible answers —
and the stories they’re embedded in — before we can really get started. By asking us to return to view of environmental problems premised on “humans” against “nature,” this Anthropocene returns us to the thinking that created these crises in the first place. Far from an innocent binary, the binary of “man” and “nature” has been fundamental to colonial rule, environmental change, and genocide ever since Columbus landed on Hispaniola. The idea of Humanity as the agent of environmental crisis —
today crystallized in the language of anthropogenic change — has been an indispensable weapon in capitalism’s arsenal.

This book gives a clear synthesis of Marx’s theory of Capitalism and its relation with economic theory as it evolved over the course of the last 300 years. It places Marx’s though in perspective, comparing it with the main aspects of the economic theories that preceded it, including not only the Classical Adam Smith and David Ricardo but also economists like Cantillon, Turgot, and Ramsay that Marx chose to ignore with respect to the crucial issue of entrepreneurship because it was incompatible with his Theory of Surplus Value. But the book also contrasts Marx’s theory with Walras’, the Neoclassical economist whose influence on contemporary mainstream economic theory was most lasting.

The analytical aspects of Marx’s theory are rigorously expressed by means of the technique of Input-Output Analysis, which is explained from the most elementary level in order to make the book self-contained. Each of the multiple topics of Marx’s complex and refined theory is explained in detail, including his theory of money, the heterogeneity in kinds of labor and in productive techniques, the turnover of capital, Simple and Extended Reproduction, his theory of the economic cycle, his theory of ground rent, his theory of productive and unproductive labor, and his view of the main tendencies of capitalist society.

The book is structured in accordance with the development process of Marx’s thought. Hence, it begins with the life project he generated in his youth and drove him from the study of history and philosophy to that of Political Economy, on the one hand, and political praxis, on the other. Hence, Parts I, II, and IV of the book respectively address A) the philosophical-methodological foundations of his scientific endeavor (his Historical Materialism); B) his scientific theory of capitalist society as expressed in Capital; and C) his political thought and praxis, which had enormous effects over the course of the 20th century. Part III of the book addresses our critique of Marx’s theory of Capitalism. Beyond our criticisms, however, the book shows that Marx made important contributions to the comprehension of the functioning of Capitalism in the more conventional part of his theory, which we denominate ‘exoteric’ in order to contrast it with his ‘esoteric’ Theory of Surplus Value which was the foundation of his view of the exploitation of wage labor in Capitalism.

Source: Актуальные проблемы глобальных исследований: ценности глобального мира / под ред. И.В. Ильина. – М., МООСИПНН Н.Д. Кондратьева, 2018. C. 92-118.

Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, the authors of the Human Development Sequence Theory, suggest modernization to be one of the main processes forming the value structures in a population. The current paper investigates the relation between values and modernization applying some elements of the method proposed by Inglehart and Welzel to the data of Shalom Schwartz. The values survey by Schwartz specifies two main value axes, namely conservation/openness to change and self-transcendence/self-enhancement. Our research has revealed that the correlation between these two value axes differs in its direction when estimated for " macro-Europe " (including Europe and former settlement colonies of North and South America and Oceania) and " Afrasia " (including Asia and Africa). In the Western world there is a significant positive correlation between openness to change and self-transcendence, while in the Eastern world this correlation is strong, significant, and negative. We investigate the possible impact of modernization on this difference. To do this, we approximate modernization through such indicators as GDP per capita and the proportions of the labour force employed in various sectors of the economy. We find that in both megazones modernization is accompanied by increasing openness to

The “world” in film studies has been the “other” of the world’s empire, with Hollywood taking American exceptionalism. It unfolds as the stage of identity politics representing all the rest of the world as postcolonial, peripheral, or merely different than Hollywood. However, this “political” model becomes challengeable as the world’s ongoing homogenization blurs old boundaries while causing “ethical” deadlocks such as the vicious interlocking between (neo)liberal multiculturalism and fundamentalist terrorism. The notions of subjectivity and society also undergo new crises and changes permeating the entire world beyond the established national or transnational frames of the world. Against this backdrop, world cinema can be reframed not for a world tour of territorialized national cinemas or transnational deterritorialization but a critical remapping of many contemporary films reflecting global phenomena even in localized narrative space. Locality functions here less as the basis of identity, referring to a unique reality that both resists and requires the center’s endorsement, than as a contingent springboard for addressing the concrete universality of the world system, including the center. This approach brings a global frame of world cinema.

Human society is a complex nonequilibrium system that changes and develops constantly. Complexity, multivariability, and contradictoriness of social evolution lead researchers to a logical conclusion that any simplification, reduction, or neglect of the multiplicity of factors leads inevitably to the multiplication of error and to significant
misunderstanding of the processes under study. The view that any simple general laws are not observed at all with respect to social evolution has become totally predominant within the academic community, especially among those who specialize in the Humanities
and who confront directly in their research all the manifold unpredictability of social processes. A way to approach human society as an extremely complex system is to recognize differences of abstraction and time scale between different levels. If the main task
of scientific analysis is to detect the main forces acting on systems so as to discover fundamental laws at a sufficiently coarse scale, then abstracting from details and deviations from general rules may help to identify measurable deviations from these laws in finer
detail and shorter time scales. Modern achievements in the field of mathematical modeling suggest that social evolution can be described with rigorous and sufficiently simple macrolaws.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of public opinion patterns among Muslims, particularly in the Arab world. On the basis of data from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer Project and the Arab Opinion Index, it compares the dynamics of Muslim opinion structures with global publics and arrives at social scientific predictions of value changes in the region. Using country factor scores from a variety of surveys, it also develops composite indices of support for democracy and a liberal society on a global level and in the Muslim world, and analyzes a multivariate model of opinion structures in the Arab world, based on over 40 variables from 12 countries in the Arab League and covering 67% of the total population of the Arab countries. While being optimistic about the general, long-term trend towards democracy and the resilience of Arab and Muslim civil society to Islamism, the book also highlights anti-Semitic trends in the region and discusses them in the larger context of xenophobia in traditional societies. In light of the current global confrontation with radical Islamism, this book provides vital material for policy planners, academics and think tanks alike.

Simandan D (2009) Industrialization, In R Kitchin & N Thrift, (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography , Oxford: Elsevier, volume 5, pp. 419-425.
ABSTRACT: This article (1) defines industrialisation and indicates ways in which it can be measured, (2) highlights the importance of the timing of industrialisation and the inherent limits to the proper scientific explanation of this phenomenon, (3) disentangles the often confused conceptual relation between industrialisation and capitalism, (4) explicates the causal links between industrialisation and modernisation, (5) undertakes a brief assessment of the relative costs and benefits of industrialisation, and (6) discloses the defining contours of scholarship on industrialisation in Anglo-American human geography and illustrates it with a recent attempt to integrate the field with the help of a master metaphor called ‘recursive cartographies’. Its portrayal of economic reality as interplay of legacies, rhythms, and events conveys the usefulness of spatial thinking in industrialisation research.

The 20th century revolutionary process had a big impact on the World System and significantly changed its entire configuration. However, there are essential gaps in terms of theoretical approaches, in particular, in terms of the typology of revolutions. Moreover, there is clearly insufficient research related to qualitative and quantitative analysis and consideration of the revolutions of the 20th century in their entirety. This article aims to fill those gaps by pursuing three main goals: (1) comparison of revolutions of the 20th and 19th centuries, highlighting the important characteristics of the former; (2) classification of revolutions of the 20th century; (3) identification of the main revolutionary waves of the 20th century and their essential characteristics.

Анализ длинных экономических циклов помогает понять долго-срочную динамику развития Мир-Системы, позволяет строить прогнозы, но также очень многое проясняет в понимании прошлых кризисов и современного глобального экономического кризиса. В статье рассмотрена история исследования К-волн, которые представлены как особая форма цикличности, возникающая в ин-дустриальный период, а также проведен анализ взглядов на их при-роду. Дается исторический и теоретический анализ динамики конд-ратьевских волн в рамках Мир-Системы, в частности анализирует-ся влияние длинноволновой динамики на изменения мирового ВВП в течение последних полутора веков. Показываются взаимосвязи между кондратьевскими и жюгляровскими циклами. Статья осно-вана на большом статистическом материале, используется мате-матический аппарат, приведены многочисленные диаграммы и гра-фики. На основании проведенных исследований делаются некоторые прогнозы развития мировой экономики в ближайшие 10–20 лет. Завершает статью раздел, в котором высказывается предпо-ложение о том, что чередование фаз А и В кондратьевской волно-вой динамики значимо коррелирует с фазами флуктуаций во взаи-моотношениях центра и периферии Мир-Системы. Ключевые слова: циклическая динамика, жюгляровские циклы, кондратьевские волны, К-волны, мир-система, длинные волны, фа-зы длинных волн, мировая экономика, Николай Кондратьев, миро-вой ВВП, технологические инновации, центр и периферия, лиди-рующий сектор, технологическая система, технологический стиль.

Abstract. This conceptual paper describes world-systems theory that is a socioeconomic and political approach that explains the economic development and dynamics of capitalistic world economy. In particular, this study clarifies international market trade, economic division of labor and other relationships between core and periphery areas. Some limitations of this approach conclude this study. Keywords. World-Systems Analysis, World Economy, World Market, Capitalistic World Economy, Core-Periphery areas. JEL. F63, O10, O20.

This article considers the emergence of world environmental history as a rapidly growing but undertheorized research field. Taking as its central problematic the gap between the fertile theorizations of environmentally-oriented social scientists and the empirically rich studies of world environmental historians, the article argues for a synthesis of theory and history in the study of longue dureesocio-ecological change. This argument proceeds in three steps. First, I offer an ecological reading of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-System. Wallerstein's handling of the ecological dimensions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is suggestive of a new approach to world environmental history. Second, I contend that Wallerstein's theoretical insights may be effectively complemented by drawing on Marxist notions of value and above all the concept of “metabolic rift,” which emphasize the importance of productive processes and regional divisions of labor within the modern world-system. Finally, I develop these theoretical discussions in a short environmental history of the two great “commodity frontiers” of early capitalism – the sugar plantation and the silver mining complex.

Human society is a complex nonequilibrium system that changes and develops constantly. Complexity, multivariability, and contradictoriness of social evolution lead researchers to a logical conclusion that any simplification, reduction, or neglect of the multiplicity of factors leads inevitably to the multiplication of error and to significant
misunderstanding of the processes under study. The view that any simple general laws are not observed at all with respect to social evolution has become totally predominant within the academic community, especially among those who specialize in the Humanities
and who confront directly in their research all the manifold unpredictability of social processes. A way to approach human society as an extremely complex system is to recognize differences of abstraction and time scale between different levels. If the main task
of scientific analysis is to detect the main forces acting on systems so as to discover fundamental laws at a sufficiently coarse scale, then abstracting from details and deviations from general rules may help to identify measurable deviations from these laws in finer
detail and shorter time scales. Modern achievements in the field of mathematical modeling suggest that social evolution can be described with rigorous and sufficiently simplemacrolaws.
This book discusses general regularities of the World System growth. It is shown that they can be described mathematically in a rather accurate way with rather simple models.

This article offers a mathematical model describing the influence of one of the major factors of the World System's macrodynamics throughout most of its history (since the 'urban revolution')-the interaction between civilizations and their tribal peripheries. The proposed mathematical model is intended to describe the possible influence of the interaction between the World System civilizational core and its tribal periphery on the formation of the specific curve of the world urbanization dynamics. It simulates completion of the phase transition, behavior of the system in the attraction basin and beginning of the phase transition to the attraction basin of the new attractor and is aimed at identifying the role of the factor of interaction between the civilizational core and barbarian periphery in the formation of attractor effect during the completion of phase transition, that is for clarification of the reasons why there was observed not only the slowdown of growth rates of the main indicators of the World System development after completion of phase transitions during its development, but also their falling with the subsequent temporary stabilization near some equilibrium level.

As world-systems theory came to the fore in archaeology during the 1980s and 1990s, it became evident that the analysis of pre-capitalist core/periphery relations required modifications of this theory for its further use in the discipline. As a result, the comparative approach for world-systems analysis (Chase Dunn and Hall 1997) discerned four interaction networks that defined pre-capitalist world-systems. The appearance of the comparative approach coincided with archaeology’s detour into the diverse inquiries of postmodernism, for which conceptual advances in world-systems analysis went largely unnoticed by the discipline. The present study applies the nested network interaction framework of the comparative approach to examine material evidence for core/periphery relations between on the one hand two state level societies of central Mexico: Teotihuacan and Tula; and, on the other, West Mexico, one of the largest subareas of Mesoamerica. The operationalization of the nested networks as a material culture model for the Early Classic and Early Postclassic periods indicates that West Mexico was integrated into macroregional developments and change between 200-1200 CE. The present study represents one of the first comprehensive applications of the comparative approach in areal research undertaken in Mesoamerica.
 

Purpose – A substantial number of researchers have investigated the global economic dynamics of this time to disprove unconditional convergence and refute its very idea, stating the phenomenon of conditional convergence instead. However, most respective papers limit their investigation period with the early or mid-2000s. In the authors' opinion, some of the global trends which revealed themselves particularly clearly in the second half of the 2000s call for a revision of the convergence issue. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Several methodologies for measuring the global convergence/ divergence trends exist in the economic literature. This paper seeks to contribute to the existing literature on unconditional b-convergence of the per capita incomes at the global level. Findings – In the recent years, the gap between high-income and middle-income countries is decreasing especially rapidly. The gap between high-income and low-income countries, meanwhile, is decreasing at a much slower pace. At the same time, the gap between middle-income and low-income countries is actually widening. Indeed, in the early 1980s GDP per capita in the low-income countries was on average three times lower than in the middle-income countries, and this gap was totally overshadowed by the more than ten-time abyss between the middle-income and the high-income countries. Now, however, the GDP per capita in low-income countries lags behind the middle-income ones by more than five times, which is largely the same as the gap (rapidly contracting in the recent years) between the high-income and the middle-income countries. This clearly suggests that the configuration of the world system has experienced a very significant transformation in the recent 30 years. Research limitations/implications – The research concentrates upon the dynamics of the gap in per capita income between the high-income, the middle-income, and the low-income countries. Originality/value – This paper's originality/value lies in drawing attention to the specific changes in the structure of global convergence/divergence patterns and their implications for the low-income countries. Various aspects of convergence and the catch-up effect have attracted considerable scholarly attention, including the questions of unconditional (absolute) convergence vs conditional convergence; global convergence vs local or club-convergence; The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

Extremely simple mathematical models are shown to be able to account for 99.2–99.91 per cent of all the variation in economic and demographic macrodynamics of the world for almost two millennia of its history. In this article we show that it is in no way coincidental that the world GDP dynamics in 1–1973 is approximated so well with a quadratic hyperbola, whereas the world population one does with a simple hyperbola. This appears to suggest a novel approach to the formation of the general theory of social macroevolution.

The idea that in the near future we should expect “the Singularity” has become quite popular recently, primarily thanks to the activities of Google technical director in the field of machine training Raymond Kurzweil and his book The Singularity Is Near (2005). It is shown that the mathematical analysis of the series of events (described by Kurzweil in his famous book), which starts with the emergence of our Galaxy and ends with the decoding of the DNA code, is indeed ideally described by an extremely simple mathematical function (not known to Kurzweil himself) with a singularity in the region of 2029. It is also shown that, a similar time series (beginning with the onset of life on Earth and ending with the information revolution – composed by the Russian physicist Alexander Panov completely independently of Kurzweil) is also practically perfectly described by a mathematical function (very similar to the above and not used by Panov) with a singularity in the region of 2027. It is shown that this function is also extremely similar to the equation discovered in 1960 by Heinz von Foerster and published in his famous article in the journal “Science” – this function almost perfectly describes the dynamics of the world population and is characterized by a mathematical singularity in the region of 2027. All this indicates the existence of sufficiently rigorous global macroevolutionary regularities (describing the evolution of complexity on our planet for a few billion of years), which can be surprisingly accurately described by extremely simple mathematical functions. At the same time it is demonstrated that in the region of the singularity point there is no reason, after Kurzweil, to expect an unprecedented (many orders of magnitude) acceleration of the rates of technological development. There are more grounds for interpreting this point as an indication of an inflection point, after which the pace of global evolution will begin to slow down systematically in the long term.

This article offers a comparison of sociopolitical instability forecasting systems. It compares systematically their efficiency by correlating their predictions for particular years with actual levels of destabilization in the respective years. It is demonstrated that the predictive capacity of those systems dropped dramatically after 2011. This is shown to be connected with the fact that the Arab Spring in 2011 acted as a trigger for a global phase transition, resulting in the World System making a transition to a qualitatively new phase, with the emergence of new patterns that are not taken into account by forecasting systems developed before its beginning.

Представление о том, что в ближайшее время нас ждет некая «Сингулярность», стало в последнее время
достаточно популярным, прежде всего благодаря деятельности технического директора Google в области
технического обучения Рэймонда Курцвейла и его книге The Singularity Is Near (2005). Показано, что
математический анализ приводимого им ряда событий, начинающегося с возникновения нашей Галактики
и заканчивающегося расшифровкой кода ДНК, действительно практически идеально описывается
(неизвестной самому Курцвейлу) крайне простой математической функцией с сингулярностью в районе
2029 г. Показано также, что составленный в начале 2000-х (совершенно независимо от Курцвейла)
российким физиком А. Д. Пановым аналогичный временной ряд (начинающийся с возникновения жизни
на Земле и заканчивающийся информационной революцией) также практически идеально описывается
(не использованной А. Д. Пановом) математической функцией (крайне сходной с вышеупомянутой) с
сингулярностью в районе 2027 г. Показано, что эта функция также чрезвычайно сходна с уравнением,
открытым в 1960 г. Х. фон Ферстером, показавшим в своей знаменитой статье в журнале Science, что она
практически идеально описывает динамику численности населения и характеризуется математической
сингулярностью в районе 2027 г. Все это говорит о наличии достаточно строгих глобальных
макроэволюционных закономерностей, которые могут удивительно точно описываться крайне простыми
математическими функциями. Вместе с тем продемонстрировано, что в районе точки сингулярности
нет основания вслед за Курцвейлом ожидать невиданного (на много порядков) ускорения темпов
технологического развития; имеются бóльшие основания интерпретировать эту точку как индикатор зоны
перегиба, после прохождения которой темпы глобальной эволюции будут систематически в долгосрочной
перспективе замедляться.

Our article draws attention to a crucial factor frequently omitted from the global development agenda, namely the explosive population growth inevitably expected in Tropical Africa in the nearest decades as a result of the region's laggardness in fertility transition. Population doubling (or even tripling) in the next decades can seriously undermine the development prospects of Tropical African countries and lead to sociopolitical destabilization or even large-scale violent conflicts with possibly global consequences. Bringing down the population growth rates (mainly through substantially reducing the fertility rates) appears to be crucial for the achievement of the 1977 " Goals for Mankind, " as well as the Millennium Development Goals, and, as we proceed to show, can be most effectively achieved through substantially increasing female secondary education, which, in turn, should be achieved by introducing compulsory secondary education and making it the first-rate development priority.