World-Systems Analysis after Thirty Years: Should it Rest in Peace?

Abstract

World-systems analysis has had a major impact on the social sciences over the past three decades. Although originally developed within sociology, its influence has not only been extensive in that field, but has spread to such fields as anthropology and political science as well. This article attempts a new critical assessment of the world-systems paradigm. Its major accomplishments are seen as sixfold: its insistence on understanding the modern world historically, its employment of modes of historical analysis that encompass very long periods of time ( la longue durée), its highly interdisciplinary nature, its rigorous materialism, a conception of capitalism that is broader and more useful than the traditional Marxian conception, and its situation of the current phase of globalization in its proper historical context. On the negative side, I identify five major problems: its tendency toward teleology and reification; its overemphasis on exogenous forces at the expense of endogenous ones; its misrepresentation, in its classical form, of the effect of foreign investment on the periphery; its underestimation of the developmental prospects of the periphery; and its relative helplessness in understanding the nature and collapse of state socialist societies and the future prospects of socialism. I conclude with some suggestions for rebuilding world-systems analysis.