Immanuel Wallerstein Research Articles

Escape from the periphery. World-system of cinema and Polish film

The main aim of this text is to outline the possibilities of applying Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory to the analysis of cinema. Concepts developed by Wallerstein, especially the notion of the relationship between the core and the periphery of international political-economic systems, can be useful in trying the hegemony of Hollywood cinema in the global circulation of film content, as well as the positions smaller film industries occupy in relation to it. The assumptions of this theory will be tested using the example of the cinema of Central and Eastern Europe in recent decades, making it possible to determine its relative hierarchy in the global chain of production and consumption of audiovisual content. Special attention has been focused on Poland, presented as a model example of a local film industry attempting to emerge from the peripheral position it occupied after the political transformation of 1989.

Размышляя над связями: одновремен-ность и расхождение между теорией зависимости и мир-системным анализом

This article is an exercise in intellectual history whose objec-tive is mainly to reveal the almost simultaneous origin be-tween dependency theory in Latin America and world-systems analysis in the United States since the second half of the 1960s. Here we offer in great detail and textual evidence the reasons why the world-system perspective (before having been baptized as such) is not a mere US-American (or “grin-go”) copy of dependency theory. This will be addressed, first of all, with an analysis of the “formal” aspects in the main dependency works—Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina (1969), by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Fa-letto; Dialéctica de la dependencia (1973), by Ruy Mauro Ma-rini; and El capitalismo dependiente latinoamericano (1974), by Vania Bambirra—through the theoretical, methodological and epistemological lenses of the essay “The Comparative Study of National Societies” published by Terence K. Hop-kins and Immanuel Wallerstein in 1967 regarding the VI World Congress of Sociology in 1966 in Evian (France). Sec-ondly, we will delve into the “substantive” aspects—that is, the methodological as well as epistemological discrepancies—between both approaches. Although they are not completely antagonistic, we want to make it clear, on the basis of their methodological and epistemological foundations, not fully discussed until now, that the lines of research in dependency theory and in world-systems analysis have divergent implications.

Paradigms of Statehood and National Sovereignty in Sociological Discourse

The article aims to study the paradigms of statehood and sovereignty in sociological discourse. Studies of statehood, national sovereignty and national security are important areas of modern sociology, especially in the context of globalization processes that significantly affect these concepts. The authors of the article examine the prospects of sociological research on these issues by analyzing a number of factors, including methodological approaches, the impact of international politics, new security challenges and the transformation of political institutions. The article analyzes in detail two key sociological paradigms – «world-systems» by Immanuel Wallerstein and a four-level model for studying the phenomenon of statehood by Neil Joseph Smelser, that allowed us to describe the role and functions of nation-states in the new realities of the global political crisis, in particular the impact of globalization on sovereignty, economy, politics, and social structures, as well as the search for effective models of political and social governance. The authors attribute the growing scientific interest in the study of geopolitical processes to the specific features of the development of the nation-state institution and the transformation of state sovereignty, which in today's realities is accompanied by a change in worldview paradigms. The active introduction of scientific discourse on the role and place of the nation-state in the modern world contributes to the intensification of sociological research on nation-building.

Periodicals beyond Hierarchies: Challenging Geopolitical and Social ‘Centres’ and ‘Peripheries’

This special issue of the Journal of European Periodical Studies emerges from the 10th International European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) conference and postgraduate workshop, held in September 2022 at the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) in Budapest, Hungary, in collaboration with the Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum. Focused on the theme of ‘Periodicals beyond Hierarchies: Challenging Geopolitical and Social “Centres” and “Peripheries” through the Press’, the conference attracted scholars from diverse backgrounds who explored core–periphery tensions in various contexts. The essays included in this issue, stemming from selected presentations at the Budapest conference, offer an introduction to the spatial breadth and historical dimensions of the centre–periphery lens within periodical studies. Building upon theoretical foundations dating back to Raúl Prebisch’s recognition of core–periphery disparities in the 1920s, and subsequent critiques such as Immanuel Wallerstein’s identification of semi-peripheral regions, these essays critically engage with the evolving discourse surrounding core–periphery dynamics. Ultimately, this collection encourages a nuanced understanding of periodicals as cultural maps that survey the complexities of collaboration, competition, and conflict across diverse geographic landscapes. By doing so, it prompts critical interrogation of the centre–periphery model, questions its utility in enriching our understanding of periodical dynamics, and challenges preconceived notions of centrality and peripherality within periodical studies specifically, and cultural studies more generally.

Opening the Social Sciences: Questioning Eurocentrism and Implementing Contextualized Open Science

In this paper, we analyze two global projects, twenty-five years apart—the report of the Gulbenkian Commission, published for the first time in Spanish in 1996, and the open science project, known more widely since the approval of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science of 2021—from the perspective of Latin America. In the first section, we revisit the program proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein in the Gulbenkian Report to “open the social sciences” and its main pillars. We then relate this project to the idea of citizen science, the FAIR and CARE principles, and the need to advance participatory science practices with informational justice. Afterwards, we analyze the Latin American path for open science and collaborative infrastructure that has been developing since the 1950s. We analyze the intellectual, institutional, and political conditions that allow our region to carve its own path for open science—and the extent to which the social sciences participate in that process and are affected or promoted by it. Finally, we discuss the critical role of the region’s evaluation systems in producing a transformation that reaches the magnitude of open science, without subalternizing the communities that participate in the co-production of open knowledges.

Sombart’s history of capitalism and contemporary world, global and transnational history: Similarities and differences

With the great wave of global integration in economy, society and culture, historiography began to acknowledge the importance of interpreting the past at the highest - world level. Under the influence of numerous historians (primarily in the United States and Western Europe) during the 19th century, and to a much greater extent after 1945, rather innovative directions of world, global and transnational history were created trying to overcome contradictions and a narrow interpretation of the history of international relations, national states and local communities. These focused both on local identities and on states as key factors in the past. In the search for phenomena that permeated world societies, historians, under the influence of other social sciences, began to recognize capitalism as par excellence supranational, that is, a world phenomenon. Although it may seem that the interest in capitalism as a building block of global history (that is, the world system as Immanuel Wallerstein said) is more recent and under the influence of the post-Cold War era, the world-historical significance of this phenomenon was first recognized by authors from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Among them, the German economist, sociologist and historian Werner Sombart (1863-1941) has a special place, since he devoted several decades of his career to the study of this phenomenon.

다중언어적 공간을 향하여

This paper endeavors to undertake a critical examination of Franco Moretti’s theory of world literature, elucidating its limitations, and subsequently proposing an alternative approach. Specifically, it proposes the establishment of a multilingual world literary framework as a counterpoint to the monolingualism emphasized within Moretti’s conception of a world literary ‘space.’
 While Moretti’s pioneering “distant reading” method once sparked controversy and marked a transformative juncture in the field of world literature studies in the United States, it has since evolved into one among several critical methodologies in the discipline. In Korea, conversely, Moretti’s theory has attained mainstream recognition within academic research. This prevalence, coinciding with the ascent of digital humanities, quantitative research, and interdisciplinary approaches, may inadvertently lead to an uncritical acceptance of the inherent limitations within Moretti’s theory of world literature. For Moretti, who draws inspiration from Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system theory to conceptualize the world literary space, the paramount objective is to ‘explain’ the complexities of ‘one and unequal’ global literary landscape. However, world literature theory should not only seek to ‘explain’ the unevenness within the world literature space but also engage in a critical analysis of the mechanisms perpetuating these inequalities, ultimately striving to effect change.
 In this regard, Gayatri Spivak’s notion of ‘planetarity’ and Emily Aptor’s concept of ‘untranslatability’ offer valuable insights, enabling us to envision a multilingual world distinct from the homogeneity often associated with globalization. While their focus centers on exploring the presence of the ‘world in literature,’ Francesca Orsini’s alternative perspective offers a critique of the inherent monolingualism within Moretti’s theory while advocating for the adoption of the concepts of ‘multilingual local’ and ‘significant geographies’ to unravel and elucidate the interrelationship between ‘literature in the world’ and the ‘world in literature.’ Orsini’s argument may provide a reference point for critically engaging with hierarchical center-periphery dynamics by empowering numerous independent local voices. This approach can enable us to reposition Moretti’s theory of world literature as one of the available methodologies, paving the way for a more nuanced and enriched understanding of world literature.

Immanuel Wallerstein Travels to Romania: Ideological Fit, Leftovers, and the Future of Decolonization

Abstract A growing body of work has investigated the travel of neo-Marxist theorists and theory to state socialist contexts such as Romania and China, but this scholarship has not focused on successful strategies of indigenization. While several explanations for this process have been proposed, this article advances the concept of “ideological fit” to illuminate how a new body of work is successfully popularized and integrated into national conversations. I explore the relationship between the indigenization of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory in Romania within the context of Cold War ideological conflict. This study compares the popularization strategies of a group of U.S. social scientists (Daniel Chirot and Katherine Verdery) with local attempts (Ilie Bădescu) to promote Wallerstein’s theory in Romanian academia. World-systems theory advanced a critique of global capitalism in the United States, whereas in Romania, it was integrated into and discussed as a contribution to anticolonial struggles around the world. As a result, Bădescu’s assertion that Romanian national poet Mihai Eminescu was an anticolonial thinker became generative in local sociology. I conclude by discussing how key theoretical elements of Wallerstein’s theory, which I call the “leftovers,” have been redeployed in new scholarship on decolonization and discuss the risks of such an approach.

Political Economy of the Carnation Revolution (1974–75)

Following the military coup of April 25th, 1974, Portugal experienced a revolutionary period characterized by unprecedented levels of labor unrest and political radicalization. As the social landscape suffered a profound transformation, key-sectors of the economy were nationalized, many firms went into self-management, and large areas of the south were swept by land occupation. When the country’s democratic Constitution was brought to vote on April 2, 1976, it contained numerous references to “socialism,” “self-management,” “planning,” and “agrarian reform,” bearing witness to a widespread commitment to build a “classless society.” What eventually took shape, however, was a mixed economy under a parliamentary regime, very similar to that of countries like Greece and Spain, both of which experienced far less dramatic democratic transitions. Drawing on the writings of Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, this article analyzes the plans and strategies devised to ensure a socialist transition in the semiperiphery of the capitalist world-system during the 1970s.

Regionalisation and Economic Resilience in a Pandemic: Making a Case for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)

Economic resilience during a pandemic is a critical phenomenon that attracts the attention of scholars, governments, economic planners, and businesses. The adaptability and resilience of an economy to shocks largely depend on its pre-shock health. This article, relying on the narrative review method and Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory, situates the diminished capacity of South countries to adequately respond to economic shocks when they occur in the core-periphery, globalised economic order. The article argues that this underlies the disproportionate vulnerability of these countries to global economic shocks and the paucity of economic promise. In addressing this concern, the article posits that economic cooperation and regional integration among peripheral countries present an opportunity for them to boost economic resilience. For instance, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a veritable model for regionalisation in Africa, providing a pathway for self-reliance and economic self-determination, thus strengthening resilience to global economic shocks, especially those occasioned by public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The task of regionalising Africa’s trade cannot be devoid of initial challenges such as revenue losses from lower import tariffs and disruptions in the labour market. However, the commitments of member countries to the AfCFTA will eventually place the African continent on the trajectory of competitive economic growth and development.

Premises and Problems: Essays on World Literature and Cinema

Premises and Problems: Essays on World Literature and Cinema

Role of the Armenian Intelligentsia through the Prism of the Problems of Post-Soviet State Governance

The article deals with the theoretical understanding of the role of the Armenian intelligentsia in the context of the problems of post-Soviet public administration. The author considers that the key mission of intelligentsia is the contribution to the development and implementation of the national ideology capable to become the necessary basis for state policy and public administration. In order to achieve this result the state authorities have to stop treating the intelligentsia as an object of control, and the post-Soviet intelligentsia should free itself from ideological clichés of a pseudo-democratic nature imposed from outside. The author’s analysis is based on the methodological approach of Immanuel Wallerstein who considered liberalism as an ideology fundamentally different from democracy. The ideas of Jürgen Habermas regarding the dimensions of the modern state also serve as a methodological guideline. Conclusions about the typological inconsistency of the post-Soviet Armenian state with the criteria of modern statehood are based on the author’s study of school practices of identity politics.

Race, Nation, Class: A Neo-Marxist Critique

Racial discrimination is a phenomenon, which can be experienced in individual lives, in groups and communities, and in the structures of a global society. Racial discourses and the performance of discrimination are historical issues that are based on colonial and global relations. That’s why the topic of racism needs to be laid bare as an individual sensitisation as well as a structural – political, social, institutional, etc. – challenge. Often, education is held up as the solution to this. By this we mean education in a wide sense that addresses people of all ages, knowledge or social groups. According to Étienne Balibars and Immanuel Waller-stein’s book Race, Nation, Class - Ambiguous Identities (1991), we want to add a neo-Marxist perspective on the discussion of racism in issue 13 of on_education. We recognise a marginalization of historical and structural voices because some articles in the volume risk individualising a structural phenomenon – that of racism. To unpack our critique, we begin with a short overview of what a neo-Marxist perspective on racism comprises. In the second step, we outline how our perspective can enrich the discussion by summarising the main points of the volume's texts and critiquing them. In the final step, we conclude our argument with reflections on speaking about racism and education.

From Historical Social Science to the Historical Study of Crime

This article develops a sui generis account of the genesis of the historical study of crime that resists the temptation to attribute the beginning of the social history of crime to the emergence of the “History from Below” movement of the 1970s. Written from the point of view of a historical criminologist, the article argues that studying crime historically requires giving equal weight to the “historical study of crime” and to the “criminological study of the past”. By arguing that the study of crime in historical perspective is best understood as a particular instantiation of what Immanuel Wallerstein called “historical social science”, the article develops a characterization of the historical study of crime that moves beyond its conventional representation as a history specialization.

Отношения «центр-периферия» в мир-системном анализе: политические аспекты

The article is devoted to the consideration of the «center-periphery» relations in the world-system analysis. It is considered how one of the founders of the world-system analysis, Immanuel Wallerstein, borrowed the provisions of the dependence theory. Using retrospective and hermeneutic methods, we reproduce the origin and development of center-periphery relations, and with them the entire capitalist world-system. Particular attention is paid to the semi-periphery – the territories located between the center and the periphery. Introducing the concept of a semi-periphery, Wallerstein solves a number of problems associated with his application of the theory of dependence. At the same time, with the introduction of the semi-periphery, a number of problems arise - how to determine the state belonging to the semi-periphery, as well as the problem of the role of the semi-periphery in the functioning of the capitalist world-system. These problems are caused by the absence of intermediate zones in the dependence theory. A separate problem is related to the political status of the periphery and semi-periphery. In the case of the periphery, this is the problem of political subjectivity within the framework of a long historical time (historically, not every state of the periphery is a colony, but the colonies are the periphery) in relation to the semi-periphery - primarily its stabilizing role. This function, as the study showed, is attributed to it erroneously. Based on this, it is necessary to revise the theoretical paradigms of world-system analysis.

The Controversy with Immanuel Wallerstein: the Industrial Revolution and Globalization as the Great Turning Points of Modern Times

Wallerstein states that the only social revolution, or the «great turning point» of Modern Times, is the formation of the European capitalist world–economy during the «long» XVI century. Contrary to this, the author argues that two more great fractures can be distinguished in the history of Modern Times. The first of them was the industrial revolution of the XIX century, when three processes coincided, pro­voked by the invention of the steam engine – the mechanization of factory production, the energy rev­olution and the change of logistics. The emergence of globalization required a combination of several circumstances that developed into a single complex at the end of the twentieth century: the absorption of the remaining large external zones by the capitalist world system, the information and communication revolution, the establishment of geopolitical unipolarism, the dominance of the ideology of neoliberal globalism on a global scale.

“Twins in Spite of Themselves”: Spanish and Ottoman Empires’ “Issues of Decline” in XVIIIth Century

Spanish and Ottoman empires had more similarities that could be found at first glance. Both experienced the take-off as leading force in Europe and Asia respectively, being for a while the most fearful and powerful states during XVI, faced economic and political blunders in XVII century and slightly ended with stagnation in XVIII century (as conventional wisdom says). Using comparative method and cultural analysis, article tries to answer a question – how unique or regular was that issues which stroke Spain and Ottoman Empires, how deeply they were engaged in so called decline narrative, created in XIX century European historiography and is it possible to create common trend for empire`s stagnation using not only historical sociology method (sociology of revolution used by Jack Goldstone and Teda Skocpole) and world-system analysis provided by Immanuel Wallerstein, with emphasis on history of ideas or begriffsgeschichte by Reinhardt Kosseleck. Main results are going to provide a more correct view on the status of Spanish and Turkish Empires during the XVIII century. Despite that Ottomans and Spaniards had obvious differences in political distribution, economic capabilities, warfare tactics and external actions, almost simultaneous decline was based on clear and exact reasons: lack of industrialization (production with high surplus value), hush incorporation of Ottoman and Spanish Empires into World-Economy, lack of defending tariffs, ineffective fiscal system and policy, devastating and lasting wars, decreasing price for agricultural products, down warding Kondratieff cycle, rigid political and social units, which constrain strict political actions. These gaps made the Empire’s decline possible notwithstanding those problems which they had previously. Oppositely, major European states (England, France, Prussia) had made reversed actions, which took a long time, but made European “take-off” inevitable, assured their economical breakaway to further domination over the Ottomans and Spaniards as well.

Reflections on the Transformation of the World Order: Emerging Trends and Impending Perspectives

The article analyzes the latest trends of the started process of transformation of world order, trying to explain it by various concepts, bringing forward by researchers and scientists, substantiating for many decades the urgent need for the existence of a dominant state - a hegemon which plays a role of a stabilizer of the international relations. The article focuses on the concept of hegemonic stability, arguing that existence of hegemon especially in the political and economic system is a necessary condition for maintaining global peace and stability. 
 Special attention is paid to the conditions that contribute to the decline of hegemony. Drawing parallels between today's realities and the concepts, highlighted by Charles Kindleberger, Robert Gilpin, Immanuel Wallerstein and other researchers, the article proves that even based on the concepts of the mentioned researchers who for many years justified the “stabilizing role” of the US hegemony, after the global fanatical crisis of 2008 a new phase of development is becoming more and more noticeable. Referring to the point of view of I. Wallerstein, the article concludes that even maintaining dominance to a certain extent in a number of areas, such as military, political, the unipolar world order has already gone down in history.

Immanuel Wallerstein’s Legacy in Southern Europe

This paper is a farewell and an intellectual tribute to one of the greatest masters of contemporary Marxist thought and one of the major references in contemporary social science. Immanuel Wallerstein died August 31, 2019, leaving a theoretical, historical, and intellectual legacy that is to be read, rethought, and actualized by social scientists in the coming decades. His world-systems theory gave rise to a whole new understanding of the genesis of the capitalist world-system. This contribution reviews the sources that inspired the world-system theory, as well as showing its main contributions and its dialogues with other proposals of critical social theory, such as the epistemologies of the South and decolonial thought. This article is also a new formulation of the perspectives that the world-systems theory opens for the historical and sociological research on Andalusia and southern Europe in the context of the historical genesis of world capitalism.

Immanuel Wallerstein's Theory of the World System, Geopolitics and Geoculture

A world system theorist, Immanuel Wallerstein attempts to describe a modern world system covering economic, political and cultural areas. In his theory, he argues that the conflicts between the countries which determine the world order in these areas are not true conflicts because the modern world system is built on a capitalist economic basis. He regards powerful states such as the United States of America, Russia, Japan and European States, which seem to be engaged in a competition, as global collaborators of a single modern world system. At the head of this cooperation is the United States of America and the world system is based on the hegemony of the United States of America. Wallerstein maintains that the modern world system is fragile due to economic crises that are likely to arise and regards the period we are in as a post-liberalism period where this hegemony has begun to collapse.