Immanuel Wallerstein - Theory

Theory

Wallerstein began as an expert of post-colonial African affairs, which he selected as the focus of his studies after an international youth conference in 1951. His publications were almost exclusively devoted to this until the early 1970s, when he began to distinguish himself as a historian and theorist of the global capitalist economy on a macroscopic level. His early criticism of global capitalism and championship of "anti-systemic movements" have recently made him a éminence grise with the anti-globalization movement within and outside of the academic community, along with Noam Chomsky and Pierre Bourdieu.

His most important work, The Modern World-System, has appeared in four volumes in 1974, 1980, 1989 and 2011, with two planned volumes still forthcoming. In it, Wallerstein mainly draws on three or four intellectual influences:

• Karl Marx, whom he follows in emphasizing underlying economic factors and their dominance over ideological factors in global politics, and whose economic thinking he has adopted with such ideas as the dichotomy between capital and labor, the view of world economic development through stages such as feudalism and capitalism, belief in the accumulation of capital, dialectics and more;
• French historian Fernand Braudel, who had described the development and political implications of extensive networks of economic exchange in the European world between 1400 and 1800;
• Dependency theory, most obviously its concepts of "core" and "periphery";
• Ilya Prigogine;
• Frantz Fanon, and — presumably — the practical experience and impressions gained from his own work regarding post-colonial Africa.

Wallerstein has also stated that a major influence on his work was the 'world revolution' of 1968. He was on the faculty of Columbia University at the time of the student uprising there and participated in a faculty committee that attempted to resolve the dispute. He has argued in several works that this revolution marked the end of 'liberalism' as a viable ideology in the modern world system.

One aspect of his work that Wallerstein certainly deserves credit for is his anticipating the growing importance of the North-South divide at a time when the main world conflict was the Cold War.

He has argued since 1980 that the United States is a 'hegemon in decline'. He was often mocked for making this claim during the 1990s, but since the Iraq War this argument has become more widespread. Overall, Wallerstein sees the development of the capitalist world economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world's population. Similar to Marx, Wallerstein predicts that capitalism will be replaced by a socialist economy.

Wallerstein's theory has also provoked harsh criticism, not only from neo-liberal or conservative circles but even some historians who say that some of his assertions may be historically incorrect. Some critics suggest that Wallerstein tends to neglect the cultural dimension, reducing it to what some call "official" ideologies of states which can then easily be revealed as mere agencies of economic interest. Nevertheless his analytical approach, along with that of associated theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank, Terence Hopkins, Samir Amin, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Giovanni Arrighi has made a significant impact and established an institutional base devoted to the general approach. It has also attracted strong interest from the anti-globalization movement.

Wallerstein has both participated in and written about the World Social Forum.