Articles in vol. 21(2) and later of 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-SYSTEMS RESEARCH Editorial Note Modern Inventions Andrej Grubačić California Institute of Integral Studies agrubacic@ciis.edu “It is imperative to remain less interested in who or what we imagine ourselves to be than in what we can do for one another, both in today’s emergency conditions and in the grimmer circumstances that surely await us.” Paul Gilroy This issue of JWSR features a book symposium on Nandita Sharma’s Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants. This outstanding book analyzes the interstate system built on an organizing binary of Migrant and Native, a separation that not only conflates migration with violence of colonization, but also serves as an fundamental principle of capitalist modernity. As Sharma writes in her response, Home Rule is organized around the following questions: what is the genealogy of the Native/Migrant binary? What kind of social relations did/does the deployment of this binary organize? What does its acceptance reveal about the structures and cultures of ruling relations today? In the symposium, Bridget Anderson, ISSN: 1076-156X | Vol. 27 Issue 2 | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2021.1078 | jwsr.pitt.edu Vol. 1 | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.1 http://www.library.pitt.edu/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/articles/digpubtype/index.html http://upress.pitt.edu/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mailto:agrubacic@ciis.edu Journal of World-System Research | Vol. 27 Issue 2 | Grubačić 357 jwsr.pitt.edu | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2021.1078 Marina Tazzioli, Victoria Hattam, Radhika Mongia, Zachary Levenson, and Rinaldo Walcott problematize the relationship between racism and nationalism, between national liberation and capitalist social relations, between immigration controls and the struggle of social movements. In their respectful but critical comments and in Sharma’s thoughtful reply, the contributors to the symposium ensure that the problems of nation, race, citizenship, and (planetary) commons receive the analytical and political attention they deserve. Seven research articles in this issue bring forward the importance of world-historical scholarship in conceptualizing the present moment. Drawing on Jason W. Moore’s scholarship, Tomaso Ferrando, Gabriela De Oliveira Junqueira, Marcela Vecchione-Gonçalves, Iagê Miola, Flávio Marques Prol, and Hector Herrera focus on green bonds, a supposedly miraculous “fix” that brings together growth and sustainability. In the analysis offered here, however, green bonds represent a subtle and violent form of debt that opens up new frontiers of accumulation and fortifies those already in existence. More than a financial instrument, green bonds conceptually and materially reinforce the distinction between nature and society. In another world-ecology inspired essay, John Peter Antonacci proposes a new concept, polemocene, to demonstrate how capitalism is a military regime, as there is always a military moment—a process, a relation—involved in the bellicose violence of capital accumulation. In other words, there is no endless accumulation without “endless wars.” This argument should influence both the way we approach the environmental historiography of warfare and the capitalogenic nature of modernity. Zachary Lavengood takes us to a very different place, to the Arctic, and the evolving geopolitical, environmental, and economic situation of the region, situated within the context of the world-system. This fascinating paper concludes by outlining further directions in Arctic research from a world-systems perspective. Daniel Blinder, Lautaro Zubeldía, and Sofya Surtayeva write on the importance of analyzing Covid-19 from the semi-periphery. This well researched article on the vaccine production dependency shows how Argentine pharmaceutical production capacities were systematically undermined with the loss of technological and health sovereignty. Lipon Mondal theorizes dispossession by bringing to life the busy and colorful Panthapath Street in Dhaka. As he demonstrates, four logics of dispossession—transformative, exploitative, redistributive, and hegemonic—have been at play in this corner of Dhaka since 1947, prompting the transformation of a completely rural agricultural region into a mixed economy with both agricultural and traditional capitalist enterprises. In the first part of his theoretically innovative essay on Outlines of a Global Power-Field (GPF) Theory Part 1: Mapping the Dynamics of the Modern World-System and Its Penetration in the Middle East c. 1850-1950, Omer Awass connects political economy with Bordieuan and Foucaultian concepts. Using the historical example of the nineteenth and twentieth century Ottoman Empire, the essay proposes a reconceptualization of the modern world-system as a global field of power. The evolution and transformation of this global power field will be the subject of the second part of his research essay to be found in the Winter/Spring 2022 issue of the journal. Salimah Valiani contributes valuable insights into Samir Amin's Dar es Salaam period. Her close examination of Amin's work shows us that he was no Marxologist, but a revolutionary theorist whose world historical analysis was central Journal of World-Systems Research | Vol. 27 Issue 2 | Editorial Note 358 jwsr.pitt.edu | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2021.1078 to the formulation of world-systems perspective. Amin’s analytical ability to balance structure, specificity, and historical contingency is itself balanced, tested, and refined by his dedication to revolutionary politics. Lastly, our book reviews include a review of Brendan McQuade’s Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision by Corey R. Payne. In the next issue, we will introduce a new section to the journal, Commentaries. This section will address issues around the globe in a manner that is more timely than a typical journal article, but deeper and more scholarly than journalism. Commentaries will include one or more essays on pressing topics or events that are lightly refereed, and that use world-systems research to address critical issues in the contemporary world rather than theoretical issues in the social sciences alone.