Social Cycles
Description
Joshua Goldstein:
"I will start with a dictionary definition:
"Cycle: an interval of time during which one sequence of a regularly recurring succession of events or phenomena is completed."This definition contains two elements: an interval of time and a repeating sequence. If the time interval is fixed in length, the definition corresponds toperiodicity,but if the time interval varies, then the repeating sequences define the cycle."
(http://www.joshuagoldstein.com/jgcyc08.pdf)
Characteristics
Periodicity versus "Cycle Time"
Joshua Goldstein:
"I distinguish two general approaches to social cycles. The first defines cycles in terms of "periodicity" relative to a fixed external time frame. The second approach defines cycles as repeating sequences best measure in "cycle time."
Time itself is always relative to some referent, not absolute. Time is always measured by a repeating change of state in some phenomenon and is thus inherently cyclic. Physical time is measured by physical cycles the rotations and orbits of atoms and planets. "Social time" may likewise be measured by such social cycles as long waves. Allan (1984; 1987) suggests the desirability of building "social clocks" in which the succession of social phenomena is timed against its own internal dynamic rather than against a fixed external time line.
The regular periodicities of the physical world make possible a variety of measurement and statistical analysis techniques that are appropriate only to cycles defined by fixed periodicities.6These techniques include spectral analysis, Fourier analysis, and related approaches that use sine waves as the underlying model of cyclicity.7 But periodicity is not appropriate to the social world. While physical phenomena underlie social phenomena, the latter constitute a higher level of analysis, exhibit greater complexity, and contain the added elements of intention and choice. Complex social phenomena are not well described by physical laws of mechanical motion (see Alker 1981). Kondratieff ([1928] 1984:81—82) argues that "in social and economic phenomena, there is nothing like strict periodicity."
Kondratieff holds that the "regularity" of long waves should refer not to periodicity but to "the regularity of their repetition in time" and to the international synchrony of different economic series. Trotsky8 suggests that the long cycle does not resemble the fluctuations of a wire under tension (periodicity) but might better be compared with a heartbeat.9As Sorokin (1957:563) puts it: "History seems to be neither as monotonous and uninventive as the partisans of the strict periodicities... think; nor so dull and mechanical as an engine, making the same number of revolutions in a unit of time. It repeats its `themes' but almost always with new variations."
Wallerstein (1984a) suggests an analogy between social cycles and the process of breathing in animal life: Physiologists do not argue about whether breathing occurs. Nor do they assume that this regular, repetitive phenomenon is always absolutely identical in form or length. Neither do they assume that it is easy to account for the causes and consequences of a particular instance.... [Nonetheless,] all animals breathe, repetitively and reasonably regularly, or they do not survive.
Critics will say that what I call a cycle is not a cycle but just a series of ups and downs, a "random walk." Only periodicity would satisfy them that a cycle exists. But periodicity is only the superficial aspect of a cycle the essence of the cycle isa (sometimes unknown) inner dynamic that gives rise to repetition. In a single time series variable, there is, no way (other than periodicity) to distinguish superficial ups and downs from a deeper cyclic dynamic. But when ups and downs correlate throughout a worldwide political-economic system, it is safe to conclude that there is a deeper systemic dynamic at work, not just a scatter of random ups and downs. Past studies of social cycles have had little success when using a mechanistic definition of cycles as fixed periodicities and the statistical techniques appropriate to such a definition. In the long wave field, Bieshaar and Kleinknecht (1984:281) note that "research experience has shown that spectral analysis is not a very promising method for the analysis of long waves."10And as I noted in chapter 5, the search for war cycles based on periodicity was a self-proclaimed dead end."
(http://www.joshuagoldstein.com/jgcyc08.pdf)
Typology
Joshua Goldstein:
"Cycles of many lengths are woven into social life. Braudel (1972:892) refers to a "web of vibrations which makes up the economic world."
In existing research on all long cycles (real or imagined), the greatest interest lies in two clusters:
1) economic cycles of roughly 50 years' duration (long waves), and
(2) longer cycles of hegemony and hegemonic war."