JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH ISSN: 1076-156X | Vol. 22 Issue 1 Page 1-2 | http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.638| jwsr.org Editors’ Introduction Vol. 1 | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.1 Jackie Smith Jennifer Bair Scott Byrd George Weddington We are pleased to offer this especially rich and timely issue of the Journal of World-Systems Research. Readers will find not only a special symposium on Race in the Capitalist World-System, compiled by William I. Robinson, but also a special collection of papers on Ireland in the World- System edited by Aidan Beatty, Maurice Coakley, and Sharae Deckard. The juxtaposition of these sections highlight the ways Ireland has served as a “testing ground” for techniques of capitalist exploitation of people and the natural environment, shaping the development of racist ideologies and practices in the world-system. As the media headlines feature daily reports of racial tensions and protests in numerous countries, and as xenophobic, Islamophobic, and racist discourses permeate electoral campaigns in the United States and other core countries, it is critical for us all to reflect on how the organization and operation of the global political economy contributes to these trends. In addition, as political leaders grapple with how to manage the deepening global financial and ecological crises, it is very instructive, as our special issue editors point out, to offer a “radical reappraisal” of Ireland’s economic development. Contributors to the symposium and to our special issue on Ireland add a great deal to efforts to better understand the processes that reproduce all forms of racism and other exclusions, and their work points in the direction of much-needed strategies for re-structuring human relations and the world-system more broadly. Moreover, the articles in our special issue on Ireland in the World- System demonstrate how focused attention on a particular world region can illuminate broader New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. This journal is published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Journal of World-System Research | Vol. 22 Issue 1 | Editors’ Introduction 2 processes related to the world-system’s operation, enhancing our understandings of its impacts in other parts of the world. Continuing the theme of how racial hierarchies drive the capitalist world-system, our regular research articles feature a contribution from Jonathan Leitner, who offers a rich historical perspective on the emergence of capitalism in the northeastern United States. His analysis documents how geographic conditions and proximity to New York City created labor mobility that empowered tenants, and how this, along with the region’s ability to trade with regions depending slavery and other more exploitative labor relations, contributed to the region’s core emergence. Nicolas Grinberg then offers us a perspective on global commodity chains that draws insights from the New International Division of Labor theory. His analysis of the global semiconductors industry illustrates how the operation of global hierarchies contribute to capitalist accumulation. Our book review section features a special symposium on food and food politics in the world- system. This themed section includes reviews of six books: Jennifer Clapp’s Food (reviewed by Jill Harrison); Alana Mann’s Global Activism in Food Politics: Power Shift (reviewd by Philip McMichael); Stefan Ouma’s Assembling Export Markets: The Making and Unmaking of Global Food Connections in West Africa (reviewed by Andre Nickow); Nora McKeon’s Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations (reviewed by Laura Raynolds); Lambek, Claeys, Wong and Brilmayer’s edited volume, Rethinking Food Systems Structural Challenges, New Strategies and the Law (reviewed by Tomaso Ferrando), and Philip McMichael’s Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions (reviewed by Gerardo Otero). We hope you enjoy this issue, which reflects the work not only of the authors and our editorial teams, but also our reviewers, whose invaluable contributions to the journal are greatly appreciated. As we close, we remind you that the Journal of World-Systems Research is an open access journal, which makes us part of a global movement to protect and preserve what is known as the knowledge commons. We encourage readers to support open access publishing through financial support, by serving on editorial boards, conducting reviews, and publishing your work in open access journals like ours. For more information see the Public Library of Science’s (PLOS) “The Case for Open Access.” We encourage readers to support this journal, and you can do so by making a donation (see www.jwsr.org), or by volunteering to help as a reviewer, copyeditor, or translator. If you’re interested in volunteering, please send an email to: [email protected]. Also, given the international scope of our audience, we would like to include reviews of non-English language books in future issues. If you know of any foreign-language books that you think would be of interest to JWSR readers, or would like to offer your services to review books in a foreign language, please contact us at [email protected]. jwsr.org | http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.638 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH ISSN: 1076-156X | Vol. 22 Issue 1 Page 3-8 | http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.606 | jwsr.org Introduction: Globalization and Race in World Capitalism William I. Robinson University of California at Santa Barbara [email protected] Abstract Scholars of world-systems and global political economy have wrestled for decades with the genesis of 'race' as a social construct and its historical significance for the system of world capitalism. Transformations in the world capitalist system pose a new challenge to Western theories of race. Older colonial structures may be giving way in the face of capitalist globalization. Racial or ethnic dimensions of the relations of exploitation in the capitalist world-system need to be reconceptualized. This symposium aims to generated debate and interchange among scholars on such a reconceptualization and to contribute to real world struggles against racial inequities. Keywords: Race and Capitalism, Race and Globalization, Racism New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. This journal is published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Journal of World-System Research | Vol. 22 Issue 1 | Symposium 4 Scholars of world-systems and global political economy have wrestled for decades with the genesis of “race” as a social construct and its historical significance for the system of world capitalism.1 Though much neglected in recent years with the rise of identitarian theories that give little weight to political economy, Oliver C. Cox’s 1948 work Caste, Class, and Race, remains a classical study. Despite its well-known limitations (especially its discussion on caste), it has not, in my view, been surpassed as a foundation text on the matter. Cox grounded his analysis of race in the imperative of an outwardly expanding capitalist system to recruit cheap labor for world accumulation to which was subordinate the need to rationalize and legitimate the racial systems put into place through European colonialism. It is worthwhile to reproduce Cox’s central argument: Our hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice developed among Europeans with the rise of capitalism and nationalism, and that because of the world-wide ramifications of capitalism, all racial antagonism can be traced to the policies and attitudes of the leading capitalist people, the white people of Europe and North America…. If we should put our finger upon the year which marked the beginning of modern race relations we should select 1493-94. This is the time when total disregard for the human rights and physical power of the non- Christian peoples of the world, the colored peoples, was officially assumed by the first two great colonizing European nations. Sometimes probably because of its very obviousness, it is not realized that the slave trade was simply a way of recruiting labor for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of America. This trade did not develop because Indians and Negros were red or black, or because the cranial capacity averaged a certain number of cubic centimeters; but simply because they were the best workers to be found for the heavy labor in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic. Although this peculiar kind of exploitation was then in its incipiency, it had already achieved its significant characteristics. As it developed and took definite capitalistic form, we could follow the white man around the world and see him repeat the process among practically every people of color. But the fact 1 This assumes that the very term and concept of “race” is unproblematic. I make no such assumption. As well, there is the problem that ethnicity tends to become conflated with race. But these are discussions for elsewhere. jwsr.org | http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.606 Journal of World-System Research | Vol. 22 Issue 1 | Robinson 5 of crucial significance is that racial exploitation is merely one aspect of the problem of the proletarianization of labor, regardless of the color of the laborer. Hence racial antagonism is essentially political-class conflict (Cox, 1959 [1948], 321, 331-333). In the 1960s and 1970s – a time of decolonization and militant mass struggles around the world – scholars engaged in heated and unresolved debates on the matrix of race, class, and capitalism. Subsequently, social scientists who study race would argue that race cannot be reduced to or subsumed into class; others would go so far as to explain race as an immanent category.