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Special Contribution: Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein “Retrospective on the Origins of World-Systems Analysis

Journal of World-Systems Research

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Title Special Contribution: Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein Retrospective on the Origins of World-Systems Analysis
 
Creator Williams, Gregory P.
 
Description Nearly four decades ago, in 1974, Immanuel Wallerstein published the first volume of his magnum opus, The Modem World-System. That same year, Perry Anderson, British historian and editor of the New Left Review, released the first two installments of his own large-scale history on the origins of modernity. The coincidence of publication invited many scholarly comparisons of their macro-historical perspectives. It is noteworthy that both writers think in terms of totalities. To totalize is to insist on methodological holism. Wallerstein conceives of totality in terms of world-systems, while Anderson advocates for totalization. This is a meaningful contrast. World-systems are closed totalities in the sense that they are historical systems, with a beginning, an end, and identifiable geographical boundaries. Totalization is historically open-ended, and thus invites analyses, in Anderson's case, beginning in Antiquity and without a specified end. While they each write about the modern world, Wallerstein and Anderson conceive of that world in drastically different terms. Neither scholar, however, has asserted his view as a singular paradigm of social analysis. Wallerstein has instead claimed world-systems to be a "call for a debate about the paradigm."
 
Publisher University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
 
Date 2013-08-26
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/491
10.5195/jwsr.2013.491
 
Source Journal of World-Systems Research; Volume 19, Number 2, Summer 2013; 202-210
1076-156X
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/491/503
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Gregory P. Williams
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0