The World System According to Andre Gunder Frank: Hegemony and Domination Annamarie Oliverio Arizona State University annamarie@asu.ed Pat Lauderdale Arizona State University pat.lauderdale@asu.edu Andre Gunder Frank is still recognized world-wide for his research and activism, including his contributions to dependency theory in the 1970s and world-system debates in the 1980s, as well as for his book ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age in the 1990s (Lauderdale and Harris 2008). 1 And now in his latest contribution, Frank further explores the argument that the contemporary world system is part of a continuous five-thousand-year-old history, providing yet more evidence to contest conventional theories that continue to place Europe at the center of economic development. In contrast, Frank contends that the rise of Western societies is a historical blip in an otherwise Asian-centered economy. As Frank's research challenges, for example, the Marxist and Weberian theories on the rise of capitalism as well as Wallerstein's world-systems analyses, there is no doubt that his work, at a minimum, continues to intrigue, provoke and excite scholars in multiple fields. Frank's research also impacts world-systems scholars by suggesting that they examine the world as one world system, rather than the current search for several world-systems, as he is critiquing theories of Eurocentrism and even the concept of capitalism ( cf. Wallerstein 1999). Al Bergesen, in his essay "World-System Theory After Andre Gunder Frank," aptly explains the differences between world-systems/PEWS (WST/PEWS) theory and Frank's perspective of the world economy. Bergesen (2015) notes: To do this, begin with a sense of the world economy as economic relations between continents, which means relations over large bodies of water, which are achieved by shipping. In the 21st century as in earlier ones, 90 percent of all international/world economic activity transpires through shipping ... This brings us to the theoretical challenge of Frank: If the world economy has to be between continents, which by definition is more about trade than production, and if world trade relations historically preexist the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, does this suggest that the modern world-system is not, in fact, based 1 We appreciate the substantive and editorial comments by Jennifer Bair. We also want to thank Paul Frank for his thoughtful comments on earlier ideas about this paper. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. Journal of World-Systems Research, Volume 21, Number 1, Pages 184-192, ISSN 1076-156X Hegemony and Domination 185 upon the capitalist mode of production, but is part and parcel of a much larger and historically longer world economic system of multilateral trade relations? To understand this point in the context of ReOrienting the 1