Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein's World-System Theory
Introduction American born sociologist, historical social scientists and world-systems analyst, Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, is a leading theorist in global capitalist economy, most well-known for his development of the World-System Theory. Wallerstein’s World-System Theory encapsulates an extensive field of world history and social change, yet despite this multi-disciplinary macro-scale approach, the basis of his theory, it could be argued, is an economical one. This essay will attempt to discuss and analyze Wallerstein’s World-System Theory in terms of class relation and patterns of exploitation in International Political Economy. The
Wallerstein draws on several intellectual influences including Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Fernand Braudel, Karl Polanyi and Dependency Theory. The anti-Globalization movement views Wallerstein as their éminencegrise and like Marx, Wallerstein has been immensely critical of the future of Capitalism. Wallerstein is currently a Senior Research Scholar at Yale University and a regular contributor Le Monde Diplomatique and other publications.
The Modern World-System
In his book, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, first published in 1974,
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These categories describe each regions position in the world economy (Wallerstein 1974, 349). Wallerstein speaks of regions, and not of countries when dividing them into positions, as he believes that within a nation state, all three main categories can also be found. “The force of bourgeois interest actually exists, in varying degrees, in every country (Balaam &Dillman, 2011, p.96). Wallerstein uses the following characteristics to justify a regions position in said category (Wallerstein 1974,
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