World-Systems Analysis

Abstract

World-systems analysis (WSA) is a historically focused, large-scale, transdisciplinary, and critical approach to the study of human interactions. It emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s in response to ahistorical state-centric social science. This essay identifies its founding scholars and ideas. Special attention is focused on the intellectual precursors attributed to Immanuel Wallerstein, its prime mover. Key early insights, especially contributions to our understanding of the rise of Western Europe as a core area, and subjugation of Eastern Europe as a peripheral area, are examined. The major social processes identified in WSA include core/periphery differentiation, cyclical processes (economic rise/fall, hegemony/rivalry, and labour/capital domination), and secular trends (geographic expansion, mechanization, and commodification). Two major revisionist positions are considered: comparative world-systems and world system history. Ongoing world-systems research in anthropology, archaeology, geography, history, political science, and sociology is briefly reviewed. Finally, three ways in which WSA and historical international relations interact are considered.