Immanuel Wallerstein Research Articles

Remembering Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the leading founders and promoters of world-systems analysis, died on August 31, 2019. Given the importance of his scholarship to the Journal of World-Systems Research, we plan to publish in future issues research articles based on conferences and symposia that are now being planned to honor Wallerstein’s work and legacy. In this essay, JWSR founding editor, Christopher Chase-Dunn, is joined by current editor Jackie Smith incoming editor Andrej Grubacic, and World Historical Information section editor Patrick Manning offering reflections on some of Wallerstein’s contributions to both scholarship and practice.

Fear of a Yellow Planet: The Gilets Jaunes and the End of the Modern World-System

The emergence of the Gilet Jaunes has seen a section of the popular classes present a significant challenge to the elite-driven ideological frameworks that have dominated since the end of the cold war: neoliberalism and the Clash of Civilisations. What Immanuel Wallerstein calls ‘centrist liberalism’ has been the dominant ideological foundation of the modern world-system since the late nineteenth century. Its current form, neoliberalism, is in crisis across the core of the world-system, intensified following the Great Recession of 2008. This has invited new challenges from revived and reconstituted political formations of both right and left. Populist movements are a part of this process of ideological reconstitution, and the Gilets Jaunes are an important example of progressive populism calling for social and economic justice. What was triggered by a protest directed at increased fuel taxes rapidly escalated into a much broader protest movement whose influence has spread beyond French borders. Importantly, the Gilet Jaunes have brought a layer of the French working-classes into the public realm in dramatic fashion, raising issues such as equality, public welfare, and participatory and direct democracy that challenge neo-liberal norms. The agenda that has emerged from the Gilet Jaunes illustrates the way in which a working-class left is being reconstituted in opposition to forces of the political right. The article addresses three main questions: Why have the Gilet Jaunes emerged? Who makes up these protests? What do they mean?

Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism by John K. Noyes

Reviewed by: Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism by John K. Noyes Beate I. Allert John K. Noyes. Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism. Toronto: The U of Toronto P, 2015. 402 pp. In his helpful introduction, John K. Noyes gives an astute account of cultural history during Herder's time in order to document a growing awareness of the [End Page 377] various dimensions of globalization and the development of an anti-imperialist aesthetics. He argues that "although Herder does not use the word imperialism, it is clear that he talks about what Christopher Bayly calls the 'first age of global imperialism,' beginning around 1760—that is, around the time Herder started to write." Noyes also draws from theoretical works by Dimas Figueroa on the three structural conditions that make globalization possible, from Immanuel Wallerstein's description of "the second era of the great expansion of the capitalist world economy," and from Reinhard Koselleck's 1959 Kritik und Krise with the observation that "in the eighteenth century, the modern subject became increasingly defined as encompassing all of humanity," and that its "field of action was the unitary world of the globe." Noyes emphasizes that Herder followed the latest discoveries by James Cook and Georg Forster, and explains how "the changing picture of the world and its inhabitants," due to many scientific advances in geography, biology, ethnography, and anthropology, made the world then more imaginable as a whole, but also less imaginable, considering its infinite complexity, arguing that Herder considered "the threats which unchecked commercialism posed to the global environment—whether we take this as an environment of cultural and linguistic diversity, or that of biodiversity." Noyes maintains that Herder's writings can be interpreted as "an ongoing exercise in crisis management related directly to globalization." While Herder's writings are replete with many interesting and sometimes conflicting observations, Noyes has a talent for making even Herder's most speculative ideas appear to be logical, philosophically stringent, and grounded on materiality and cultural study. Noyes discusses how contemporaneous developments, in terms of globalization, made Herder aware of "the Atlantic slave trade and the decimation of the indigenous population throughout the New World," which he clearly condemned. As Noyes clarifies, Herder also opposed such "ideas as the superiority of European civilization, the primacy of reason, and the progress of humankind," while drawing attention to more complex notions that defy any simplistic interpretation. According to Noyes, Herder also rejected the idea that "artistic expression can be universalized, reduced to a set of a priori rules" as was implicit in the philosophical rationalism of his time and especially in "the academic school that dominated German philosophy at mid-century." As Noyes explicitly states, Herder had "a deep-seated aversion to any form of exploitation or domination of one culture by another," a contention that Noyes, however, then begins to unravel by elaborating on what he calls "several dimensions to his anti-imperialism." Especially striking is Noyes's exploration of aspects of Herder's biography in the context of his philosophical work—in particular, his important sea travels that led to a new methodological approach connecting the movement of the mind with that of the body. Noyes attributes a concept of "embodied thought" to Herder, which I find fascinating, stating, for example, that "Herder speculates on the migration of fish, and he uses the resulting figures of motion to think about the long history of migrating humanity that gave rise to Europe as he knows it." One of Noyes's primary achievements is to show how Herder's approach to aesthetics is extremely relevant to recent debates in postcolonial studies. Noyes explicitly engages with theorists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present, 1999), A. G. Hopkins (Global History: Interactions between the Universal and the Local, 2006), and Dipesh Chakravabarty (Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 2008), among others, and also addresses the important [End Page 378] book by Vicki A. Spencer, Herder's Political Thought: A Study on Language, Culture and Community (2012), adding important nuances to its interpretation of Herder. In his treatment of Sonia Sikka's Herder and Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism (2011...

Colonial Reality and Postcolonial Instrumentalization of the Overseas Expansion of the Duchy of Courland

The article is devoted to the theoretical understanding of the history of colonial policy of the Duchy of Courland in 1645–1731 through the prism of the phenomenon of a “colonial reality” based on Fernand Braudel’s concept of three levels of historical time and Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis. The article also examines with the help of the postcolonial approach the practice of applying a colonial episode of the history of Courland by some modern nations in the context of “postcolonial instrumentalization” of this issue. The following conclusions are as made: 1) at the level of “event history”, colonialism of Courland organized in a typical way of the 17th century in the form of “point” settlements in Gambia and on Tobago (it included also iron mines in Norway leased from Denmark) was part of Jacob Kettler’s (years of reign 1642–1681) project of turning his state into a “second Holland”; 2) within the “time of very long duration”, Courland had convenient geographic but unfavorable geopolitical conditions for the overseas expansion; 3) within the “time of long duration”, colonial policy of the Duchy faced insurmountable obstacles connected with its ethnosocial structure and its peripheral position within the 17th century world-economy; 4) from 1698 to 1731, Duke Jacob’s heirs contested vainly the Island of Tobago as part of the “Courland inheritance”; 5) at the present stage, we can see how some modern nations use this episode to overcome their “postcolonial syndrome” (Latvians, Belarusians) and justify their “imperial” ambitions (Poles). At both levels (“colonial reality” and “postcolonial instrumentalization”), attempts to escape from the periphery into the core are evident.

POLISH FUTURISM AND ITS PROJECT OF EMANCIPATION

The aim of this article is to present the forward-looking project of Polish Futurism, seen as a radical critical movement. It focuses on the concept of the “futurization of life”, one of the main ideas postulated by the Polish Futurists, also referred to as the quasiaccelerationist modernization of the social reality of interwar Poland, which served as a response to the semi-peripheral status of the country. Taking recourse to Jacques Ranciere and Immanuel Wallerstein, the article discusses the postulates of the Polish Futurists and the ways in which they wanted to achieve the following goals: to intervene in language in a revolutionary manner, to break free from the bourgeois culture, to democratize art, to emancipate women, to extend the notion of a nation, and to abolish the division of the world into the core and its periphery.

Neither conflict, no concord: Performing ideology in contemporary Russia

Authors interpret the results achieved by analyzing the content of Russian political parties’ manifestos that managed to enter the State Duma after 2011 and 2016 elections. Our conceptual framework is based on Immanuel Wallerstein’s assumption that only three ideologies—liberalism, conservatism and socialism — were the key ones to 20 th century experience and, hence, that any particular ideology might be reduced to that list. Firstly, we build a matrix of content analysis to analyze texts of officially published political parties’ programs. As a result we could show that values at the core of any program at any stage were hybrid in nature and that there was increase in liberal rhetoric in 2016. Further we interpret the empirical results by applying both classical (M. Seliger) and modern (J. Schwartzmantel) models of ideology. By using Seliger’s conception of ideology we demonstrate that our political parties choose not to defend the coherent value core of their programs in order to fulfill ‘technical’ task of generating sufficient electoral support. Schwartzmantel’s idea that neo-liberalism as a “classical” state-oriented ideology is attacked by a plenty of non-classical, network-organized ideologies nowadays does not fit our reality, because there is no. pronounced opposition between neo-liberal and critical political discourses. Thus, we argue there is no. normative foundation either for conflict or concord among ideological projects and, moreover, that ideological struggle on the Russian political arena has left classical political domain. It requires social sciences to renew its methodological implements for analyzing ideology properly, while philosophy faces with self-description challenge.

Immanuel Wallerstein In Memoriam (1930-2019)

La muerte de Immanuel Wallerstein ha provocado un profundo vacío intelectual en las ciencias humanas en general. La reflexión y el acercamiento a su obra se torna un compromiso obligado para poder comprender la multiplicidad y complejidad de procesos históricos que aparecen en medio de la presente etapa de caos sistémico o bifurcación histórica.

Notes from the Editors, November 2019

buy this issue
 Immanuel Wallerstein, the celebrated world-systems theorist and longtime contributor to Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press, died on August 31, 2019. Wallerstein first achieved international fame with the publication in 1974 of his The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (the first in a four-volume masterwork on the Modern World-System. We pay tribute to Wallerstein in this new issue of Monthly Review.

U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony

Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press author and celebrated world-systems theorist Immanuel Wallerstein died on August 31, 2019. In his memory, we republish an article that first appeared in Monthly Review 55, no. 3 (July–August 2003).

Obituary: Immanuel Wallerstein, public intellectual and leader of progressive social science, passes

Obituary: Immanuel Wallerstein, public intellectual and leader of progressive social science, passes

Teoria systemów-światów Immanuela Wallersteina i jej recepcja w archeologii: część III – okres wpływów rzymskich

Immanuel Wallerstein’s centre-periphery model lies at the root of many archaeological studies, particularly studies of romanisation. One of them has been an article written by Peter S. Wells, but we have also studies done by Richard Higley concerning Roman Britain, Susan Frankenstein and Michael Rowland concerning the social hierarchy in Roman Germany. Actually several archaeologists tried to study these topic according to the Wallerstein’s world-systems theory. We can observe that the application of the theory into archaeology has always very important heuristic value.

Andre Gunder Frank: from dependency theory to the theory of world system

The article deals with the evolution of Andre Gunder Frank’s views through the prism of his biography.His life had an elective affinity with his academic and ideological interests in his capacities of a scholar and an activist.The article identifies the challenges once faces when attempting to reconstruct and evaluate his research program. Evaluation of Frank’s ideas has been oscillating between mutually exclusive extremes – cult like following versus bashing of his ideas. Rejection of his ideas has been mostly based on accusing Frank in being an ideologue.It is noted that Frank was one of the pioneers of dependency theory. Frank viewed dependency theory as a third-world response to Eurocentric modernization theory. While modernization theoreticians interpreted developing world problems as the outcome of its internal dynamics, Frank suggested to view the developing nations failings as the result of its structural disadvantageous position within world capitalist system. Frank radicalized dependency theory assumptions having produced the thesis on the development of underdevelopment. His version of the dependency theory became an important source for Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory.Frank’s last book titled “Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age” was published in 1998. In that book Frank re-invented himself. Frank transfor med himself from being predecessor of Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis into Wallerstein’s successor with his Asia-centric theory of a single five thousand years world system. Frank’s Asia-centric research program goes beyond more general theorizing and has a high degree of political and policy relevance to post-Leninist nations.

Concept, peculiarities of constitution and functions of civil society as a structural element of the modern world-system

The article proposes to look at civil society from the standpoint of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis. Of course, Wallerstein can hardly be considered a theoretician of civil society. Still, his works can offer theoretical provisions that concern this topic as well. The ar- ticle suggests the study of civil society as possibly the third structural element of the modern world-system, which, along with two other structu- ral elements — the axial division of labor and the state and the system of interstate relations, — regulates social relations in it. It is shown that civil society consists of two dimensions: institutional and discursive. In gene- ral, features of creation and arrangement of each of these dimensions are characterized. The functions performed by civil society in the European capitalist world economy are highlighted.

David versus Goliath: Tanzania’s Efforts to Stand Up to Foreign Gas Corporations

This article presents and analyses how Tanzania, a country on the global “periphery” with a natural resource sector dominated by capital from the Global North, has thus far failed to transform its mineral wealth into sustained economic development. Using Immanuel Wallerstein’s “world systems theory” as the theoretical framework, we exemplify how the “core” exploited gold reserves in the 1990s and into the new century – and what techniques and mechanisms (e.g. asymmetry of information, imposition of inadequate management structures) it now currently uses to develop the nascent gas sector to its advantage. Scrutinising actions undertaken by the Tanzanian president to concentrate power, root out corruption, and to stand up to profit-maximising foreign corporations – or what we call the “Magufuli effect” – as way of illustration, we also demonstrate how Tanzania is trying to change its role within the international division of labour and how the core attempts to maintain the status quo meanwhile.

Emerging Asian Economies: Are they really a challenge to the current Status Quo?

The gradual shift of economic power towards Asia and in particular towards China is explored in this article using Immanuel Wallerstein’s and Fernand Braudel’s models of “world-economy” and of “historical capitalism”. Although some raw macro-economic data would suggest that economic power seems to have been gradually and inexorably shifting away from the Western economies and towards China, a more subtle analysis shows that a number of other factors, such as the difficulty to deal with the limits to growth in China as well as its limited institutional capacity seem to undermine the challenge to the current status quo.

The diffusion of public private partnerships: a world systems analysis

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the diffusion of neoliberal policies from the UK to Australia and New Zealand, and then to the Asia-Pacific region. The analytical framework employed is the world systems model developed by Immanuel Wallerstein. The primary focus of attention is the spread of public-private partnerships (PPPs) modelled on the UK Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Despite the demise of the PFI in its country of origin, and repeated failures in Australia and New Zealand, there is still considerable enthusiasm for the model in Australasia reflected in eagerness to export national expertise through aid and financial links.

Indicações geográficas como estratégia de desenvolvimento territorial: uma análise entre Brasil e Europa

O presente trabalho visa analisar as Indicações Geográficas enquanto política de desenvolvimento territorial no contexto brasileiro e europeu com base no conceito de economia mundo capitalista, a fim de discutir o surgimento de uma forma sofisticada de manutenção da hierarquia mundial de divisão racial do trabalho. Consideramos, para tanto, que as indicações geográficas representam uma nova forma de manutenção do capital; isso porque, mesmo provocando dinamização e aumento da renda em alguns territórios rurais da semiperiferia que anteriormente eram desfavorecidos pela ótica produtivista agrícola, estes ganhos serão, a priori, inferiores aos ganhos dos territórios de países do núcleo central (Europa) devido à dominação cultural atrelada às suas identidades étnico-raciais.

Iberia On Edge

Iberia On Edge Michelle M. Hamilton In 2009, Michelle Warren, in an analysis of medieval and epic nationalisms, pointed out that “any ‘national’ history is always enmeshed in global networks (real and imagined, economic and fantastical, political and trivial, etc.) that extend recursively into the past” (“Medievalism” 288). In Edging Toward Iberia, Jean Dangler begins to explore some of Iberia’s real and imagined networks, including the non-modern economic and travel networks connecting Iberia, Africa and the Middle East to Asia and India, as well as the family and tribal networks uniting groups within the peninsula. The network and world/s explored and imagined by Andalusi, Saharan, Maghrebi and Genoese merchants (chp. 3), Muslim and Christian pilgrims (chp. 4), as well as Slavic-Frankish and African slaves (chp. 5), offer examples of people who moved along the networks connecting Iberia to the Mediterranean and the Arab East, and who considered themselves members in social networks such as the clan, the family and tribe. In order to analyze these networks, Dangler adopts the use of World-System Analysis (WSA) and network theory as elaborated by Immanuel Wallerstein and Manuel Castells. Despite the latter’s focus on predominantly modern European, national and other boundaries/limits, these analytical approaches can help scholars imagine new ways of circumventing the religious, linguistic, social, and identitarian categories that continue to limit our studies and models for thinking about medieval Iberia and premodern peoples such as mozárabes, mudéjares, conversos and Moriscos. The use of WSA and network theory allows for a productive reevaluation of accepted narratives of Spanish history, such as the so-called Christian Reconquest or the multi-faith utopia that critics have come to associate with convivencia. [End Page 493] Dangler’s study looks at how network theory provides a structure more responsive to and reflective of Iberians and Iberian cultural production, which have not easily fit into the binaries (Christian/”Saracen,” black/white, civilized/barbarian, etc.) used to analyze other medieval European traditions. Instead of focusing on Spanish exceptionalism, Dangler shows how WSA and network theory allow us to focus on Iberia and Iberians as part of large, flexible routes and networks of connections (that include interactions and associations of various types such as trade, travel and diplomacy) that transcend national, geographic and temporal borders. Dangler grounds her work in that of other scholars, such as S. D. Goitein, Thomas Glick, Ray Kea, Janet Abu Lughod, and Olivia Remie Constable, who have examined aspects of the historical, social and economic realities of premodern Iberia/Al-Andalus as part of the larger Islamicate and Mediterranean worlds. Sara Pearce, in her response to Dangler’s work, notes some unease with terminology such as “Islamicate” and “Iberian.” In Edging toward Iberia (and in her response to Pearce), Dangler notes that these terms, like all terms and taxonomies to which they point, will never fully represent the lived realities or imaginaries of past or present subjects. However imperfect the vocabulary we have, Dangler’s study points to new realms of investigation in which scholars can continue to develop more apt terminology, and with it epistemologies. Thus, Dangler begins Edging Toward Iberia by addressing those critical biases that continue to haunt the field, including the ideas of national borders, identities and concerns that led to the creation of the field of Medieval Studies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In subsequent chapters she offers case studies (such as individuals like Ibn Jubayr, Bama and Abraham Ben Yiju or groups such as the ṣaqāliba, or slaves) that can be mapped onto networks of trade and flows of knowledge, and which show the limitations of former models such as those of Ámerico Castro or Claudio Sánchez Albornoz that were circumscribed by nationalist concerns. These two twentieth-century Spanish scholars, like the dean of Spanish medieval studies, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, dedicated their scholarship in part to showing that Spain was different from the rest of Europe.1 They ground their studies of medieval Spain in the discourse of nationalism that defines their generation/s of European medievalists, and to which several scholars, including Dangler, have [End Page 494] called our attention.2 The approach of...

Center and Periphery of the International System: Types of Interaction

The article deals with the core-periphery model in the international relations theory and the types of core-periphery interaction within the international system. The article is based on the general philosophical core-peripheral approach with core-peripheral structure of the international system being its part. Various existing theories dealing with this model are analyzed, from general sociological approach (Edward Shils) to specific studies in international relations, such as dependency theory (Raul Prebisch, John Friedmann, Immanuel Wallerstein) and struc-tural theory of imperialism (Johan Galtung). Special attention is paid to the regional subsystems concept represented by U.S. (William Thompson, Jorge I. Dominguez, Louis Cantori, Steven Spiegel, J. David Singer, Melvin Small), Latin American (Carlos Teixeira) as well as Russian (Pavel Tsygankov, Andrei Voskresensky, Alexei Bogaturov) scholars. A complex model of the international system is offered based on hierarchical approach which differentiates between core and center (which partially overlap, and partially complement each other) of the international system and distinguishes different types of periphery (internal and external, general, inner and upper, higher, colonial and contact). Regional subsystems are part of this model – one (central) subsystem forms the center of the international system while others are located in the periphery. The core is formed by the world’s leading powers of which one (rarely more than one) can become a hegemon. Periphery is more dynamic compared to the core, which generally tends to be more stable. The international system is not static, it grows by expanding into new territories, by elaborating its structure (with new subsystems being created), and by building stronger connections between its parts.

Naučno i političko zaveštanje Imanuela Volerstina (1930-2019)

Naučno i političko zaveštanje Imanuela Volerstina (1930-2019)