Pillangóhatás a túloldalról (G. Arrighi: Adam Smith in Beijing)
Butterfly-Effect from the Other Side

Summary/Abstract: Adam Smith in Beijing is Giovanni Arrighi’s last work in a row, addressed by the author as a synthesis of all his previous researches. Thus, we must also see it as a sort of opus magnum, the source of which consists of two of his major studies: Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System and The Long Twentieth Century. Throughout his life, Arrighi was among those scholars, who sought to answer the question: is there a general tendency of economic and social convergence among the nations of the South and the North in the global capitalism, or what we see should be described rather as a great divergence. Given that the challenge to answer such a question is so great, the reader will never get the proper answer from Arrighi, despite his eff orts to draw a conclusion. Instead, what he does in the reviewed book, is that he provides a detailed insight into the working of the historical phenomenon of hegemony shift in a broader European context, combined with a comparative study of the inter-state system in the medieval Far-East. His argument in this regard is that there are two long-trajectories at the end of the 20th century, namely what Arrighi calls the parallel hegemonic decline of the United States and the emergence of China as the new hegemonic power. However Arrighi’s attempt to introduce China as an alternative source of power, the agent of the new non-capitalist world order, fails to be convincing. He himself discovers the challenge of the apologia that results from the possible misinterpretation of the contemporary shift in the world order, the conclusion of which is that the author needs to rebalance his argument in order to fi nd a more critical approach. In his fi nal comments, Arrighi successfully manages this rebalancing, but as a consequence, he fails to answer his original question. Hence, we recommend Adam Smith in Beijing as a rich book from the fi eld of international comparative social history

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