World-System, International Order and Social Roles
This chapter sets out the book’s conceptual and analytical frameworks. In the first half it presents a holistic conceptual framework which draws on world-systems theory, the English School and neo-Gramscian state theory. The intention is to provide an acc
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World-System, International Order and Social Roles
The introduction to this book made an ontological claim regarding the ability of social roles analysis to bring together important insights on ASEAN and the regional division of labour from realist, constructivist and critical scholars. To realise this requires a holistic conceptual framework married with an analytical framework that can capture the dynamics of social role negotiation. This chapter takes up such a task and is split into two parts. The first provides a theoretical discussion of the book’s conceptual framework, which brings together world-systems, English School and neo-Gramscian state theory to outline the principal structural dimensions of international life within which role negotiation takes place. The second part then outlines the book’s role negotiation framework which will be operationalised in the three empirical chapters.
Conceptual Framework: World-System, International Order and Social Roles There are two conceptual categories that are relevant for understanding the overarching structures within which social roles negotiation is situated: capitalist world-system and international order. The former refers to the material capitalist context and its shifting geographical
© The Author(s) 2019 R. Yates, Understanding ASEAN’s Role in Asia-Pacific Order, Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12899-9_2
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distributions of economic and military capacity. The latter refers to the social arrangement between states that is both shaped by and shapes the broader capitalist system. World-System During the timeframe covered in this book, the capitalist world-system can be divided into two main periods. The first ran between 1945 and 1970 and was characterised by the hegemony of the US as the centre of global production, commerce, finance and military power, as well as state-managed capitalism as the dominant regime of accumulation. The second runs from 1970 to the present and is characterised by US hegemonic decline as the centre of production and its shift to financial hegemony through floating the dollar as the global currency. This has led to a shift to a neoliberal financialised capitalism, whereby financial liberalisation and deregulation are promoted throughout the system alongside the diffusion of production through increasingly global networks. The massive financial expansion since 1970 has led to competition between states to attract mobile capital, leading to a convergence around neoliberal reform as the dominant growth model. The speculative nature of financialised accumulation has also meant that this period is increasingly volatile. As Arrighi and Silver (1999) have demonstrated, during the peak of its hegemony, a hegemon seeks to organise expansion within the system through a wider and deeper economic division of labour and specialisation of functions, which requires cooperation between the principal states in the system. In the case of the US, this meant seeking to revive Western Europe an
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