http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwwsa-r&.htm
"The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis"
by Immanuel Wallerstein ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
© Immanuel Wallerstein 1997.
(Paper delivered at 91st Annual Meeting of the American Sociological
Association, New York, Aug. 16, 1996)
World-systems analysis as an explicit perspective within social science
dates from the 1970's, although of course it reflects a point of view
that has a long history and builds on much earlier work. It never put
itself forward as a branch of sociology or of social science. It did not
think of itself as the "sociology of the world," side by side with urban
sociology or the sociology of small groups or political sociology.
Rather it presented itself as a critique of many of the premises of
existing social science, as a mode of what I have called "unthinking
social science."
It is for this reason that I, for one, have always resisted using the
term "world-systems theory," frequently used to describe what is being
argued, especially by non-practitioners, and have insisted on calling
our work "world-systems analysis." It is much too early to theorize in
any serious way, and when we get to that point it is social science and
not world-systems that we should be theorizing. I regard the work of the
past 20 years and of some years to come as the work of clearing the
underbrush, so that we may build a more useful framework for social
science.
If world-systems analysis took shape in the 1970's, it was because
conditions for its emergence were ripe within the world-system. Let us
review what they were. The prime factor can be summarized as the world
revolution of 1968 both the events themselves and the underlying
conditions that gave rise to the events.
Let us remember the shape of U.S. and world social science of the 1950's
and 1960's. The biggest change in world social science in the 25 years
after 1945 had been the discovery of the contemporary reality of the
Third World. This geopolitical discovery had the effect of undermining
the nineteenth-century construction of social science which had created
separate theories and disciplines for the study of Europe/North America
on the one hand and for that of the rest of the world on the other hand.
After 1945, social science became, was forced to become, geographically
integrated, so to speak. Thus it became legitimate, but only then, for
persons called sociologists or historians or political scientists to do
research on and in Africa or Asia or Latin America.[1]
[1] See the discussion in I. Wallerstein et al., Open the Social
Sciences (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996).
This was the era of area studies, and area studies changed the social
organization of social science, first in the United States and then in
most other parts of the world.[2] In seeking to justify itself
intellectually, area studies' advocates faced a fundamental
epistemological dilemma. They wished to argue that the theories of
social science applied to all areas of the world, and not merely to
Europe/North America. Previously the theories of the nomothetic social
sciences had been applied de facto only to what was thought of as the
modern "civilized" world, and only Europe/North America was considered
as belonging to such a world. In this sense, area studies proposed
"universalizing universalism." At the same time, however, proponents of
area studies wished to argue that this could not be done simply by
applying the generalizations previously developed in Europe/North
America to the Third World. Conditions in the Third World, said the area
studies people, were quite different. After all, if they had not been
different, why would we have needed area studies?
[2] See my "The Unintended Consequences of Cold War Area Studies," in
The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the
Postwar Years (New York: New Press, forthcoming 1997).
Arguing that conditions are the same and arguing simultaneously that
they are different is not the easiest thing to do. However, area studies
people came up with a clever, and plausible, solution to the apparent
dilemma. They based their work on a view that had already been
widespread in the social sciences, to wit, that there exist stages
through which society goes (and therefore societies go), and that these
stages represent evolutionary progress. Applied to the Third World, this
theory was baptized "modernization theory," or developmentalism.
Modernization theory argued quite simply the following: All societies go
through a defined set of stages in a process ending in modernity. The
operational definition of a society was a state, presently in existence
as either a sovereign member of the interstate system or a colony
destined one day to become a sovereign member. The names of these stages
varied among the theorists, but the general idea remained the same. The
point of the theorizing was to figure out how states moved from stage to
stage, to enable us to indicate at what stage given states presently
were, and to help all states arrive at modernity.
The epistemological advantages of the theory were great. All states were
the same, insofar as they went through identical stages for identical
reasons. But all states were also different, in that they presently were
at different stages, and the timing of the movements of each from stage
to stage was particular. The political advantages of the theory were
great as well. The theory enabled all and sundry to engage in applying
the theory to the practical situation by advising governments how best
to act to speed up the process of moving upward along the stages. The
theory also justified a considerably increased allocation of
governmental funds (more or less everywhere) to social scientists,
especially to those who claimed to be working on "development."
The limitations of the theory were easy to discern as well.
Modernization theory purported to be based on the systematic comparison
of independent cases, and this presumed a dubious and totally unproven
premise, that each state operated autonomously and was substantially
unaffected by factors external to its borders. The theory further
presumed a general law of social development (the so-called stages), a
process furthermore that was presumed to be progressive, both of which
arguments were also undemonstrated. And the theory therefore predicted
that those states currently at earlier stages of development could,
would, and should arrive at an endpoint in which they were essentially
clones of whatever was considered by the theorist the model of the most
"advanced" state or states.
Politically, the implications were clear. If a state at a so-called
lower stage wanted to resemble a state at a so-called advanced stage in
terms of prosperity and internal political profile, it had best copy the
pattern of the advanced state, and implicitly therefore had best follow
the advice of that state. In a world defined by the rhetoric of the cold
war, this meant that states were adjured by some to follow the model of
the U.S. and by others to follow the model of the U.S.S.R. Non-alignment
was disqualified by objective scientific analysis.
Of course, these political implications were the object of ferocious
refusal by the revolutionaries of 1968. It was an easy jump for them
(and others) to deny the epistemological premises. This created the
atmosphere in which there was receptivity for the kind of protest that
world-systems analysis represented. It is important to remember this
original intention of world-systems analysis, the protest against
modernization theory, if we are to understand the directions in which it
has moved since. I see four major thrusts to the work we have done
collectively. None of these thrusts has been exclusively the work of
persons involved in world-systems analysis per se. But in each case,
those involved in world-systems analysis have played an important role
in pursuing and defining the thrust.
1) The first thrust was globality. It followed from the famous concern
with the unit of analysis, said to be a world- system rather than a
society/state. To be sure, modernization theory had been international,
in that it insisted on comparing systematically all states. But it had
never been global, since it posited no emergent characteristics of a
world-system, indeed never spoke of a world-system at all. World-systems
analysis insisted on seeing all parts of the world-system as parts of a
"world," the parts being impossible to understand or analyze separately.
The characteristics of any given state at T(2) were said to be not the
result of some "primordial" characteristic at T(1), but rather the
outcome of processes of the system, the world-system. This is the
meaning of Gunder Frank's famous formula, the "development of
underdevelopment."
(2) The second thrust was historicity, and it followed from the first.
If the processes were systemic, then the history the entire history of
the system (as opposed to the history of subunits, taken separately and
comparatively) was the crucial element in understanding the present
state of the system. To be sure, for this purpose one had to make a
decision on the temporal boundaries of the systemic processes, and in
practice this has been the subject of contentious debate. Nonetheless,
the overall thrust was to push analysis away from exclusively
contemporary data, or even from data covering only the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, in the direction of Braudel's longue dur‚e. (3) The
third thrust was "unidisciplinarity," and it followed from the second.
If there were historically-emergent and historically-evolving processes
in the world-system, what would lead us to assume that these processes
could be separated into distinguishable and segregated streams with
particular (even opposed) logics? The burden of proof was surely on
those who argued the distinctiveness of the economic, political, and
sociocultural arenas. World-systems analysis preferred to insist on
seeing "totalities."
(4) The fourth thrust was therefore "holism." This thrust was
historico-epistemological, and it followed from all the previous
ones. The arguments of world-systems analysis led its advocates to be
dubious of, even opposed to, the boundary lines within the social
sciences, as they had been historically constructed in the period
1850-1945. These boundaries did not seem to hold water, and thus there
was talk of restructuring knowledge. Indeed, holism leads to rethinking
as well the historically-constructed and now consecrated great divide
between the sciences and the humanities, and perhaps unthinking it as
well.
It is important to distinguish these four thrusts from currents that
used seemingly similar terminology but were in no sense intended as
protests against the dominant modes of social science.
Globalism was not "globalization." As used by most persons in the last
ten years, "globalization" refers to some assertedly new,
chronologically recent, process in which states are said to be no longer
primary units of decision-making, but are now, only now, finding
themselves located in a structure in which something called the "world
market," a somewhat mystical and surely reified entity, dictates the
rules.
Historicity was not "social science history." As used by most persons in
the last 25 years, "social science history" refers to the need for
persons dealing with past data (so-called historians) to use that data
to test social science generalizations derived from the analysis of
contemporary data. Social science history is in many ways
anti-historical process, and relegates empirical work (especially about
the past) to the position of hierarchical subordination to so-called
theoretical work. Social science history is compatible with
globalization but not with globality.
Unidisciplinarity was not "multidisciplinarity." Multidisciplinarity
accepted the legitimacy of the boundaries of the social sciences, but
asked the various practitioners to read and use each other's findings,
in an additive fashion. It was the belief that more cooks often improve
the broth. It resisted the study of totalities on the grounds that it is
hard to specify the data in ways amenable to testable propositions, and
therefore encouraged vague and non-diprovable argumentation.
And finally, holism was not a rehash of "general education." General
education had accepted the basic premises of the modern divisioning of
knowledge into three superdomains: the natural sciences, the humanities,
and (in-between the so-called "two cultures") the social sciences.
General education was the case for making all scholars (and indeed all
educated persons) sensitive to the premises underlying each of the
separate domains. Holism asks whether the superdomains are in fact
different kinds of knowledge, or ought to be thought of in this way.
This debate is directly relevant to the crucial question of the relation
of the quest for the true and the quest for the good.
If I have emphasized not only what the thrusts of world- systems
analysis have been but also what they have not been, it is because we
are running the danger of success. It is because of the strength, and
not the weakness, of our efforts that our terminology is in the process
of being appropriated for other, indeed opposite, purposes. This can
cause serious confusion in the general scholarly public, and even worse,
may lead to confusion on our own part, thus undermining our ability to
pursue the tasks we have set ourselves.
I have in my title used the phrase, "rise and future demise of
world-systems analysis." So far, I have talked only about the rise.
Wherein do I see a demise? The demise of a movement, and world-systems
analysis has been essentially a movement within
contemporary social science, derives from its contradictions and from
the eventual exhaustion of its utility. We are not there yet, but we are
clearly moving in the direction of such a demise, or if you will permit
my prejudices, a bifurcation. What are the contradictions of
world-systems analysis?
1) The first is that world-systems analysis is precisely not a theory or
a mode of theorizing, but a perspective and a critique of other
perspectives. It is a very powerful critique, and I personally believe
the critique is devastating for a large number of the premises on which
much of social science presently operates. Critiques are destructive;
they intend to be. They tear down, but they do not by themselves build
up. I called this earlier the process of clearing the underbrush. Once
one has cleared the underbrush, however, one only has a clearing; not a
new construction but only the possibility of building one.
Old theories never die, but they usually don't just fade away either.
They first hide, then mutate. Thus, the work of critique of the old
theories may seem never-ending. The risk is that we shall become so
enamored of this task that we may lose ourselves in it and refuse the
necessary risk of moving on ourselves. To the extent that we shall fail
to do this, we shall become redundant and irrelevant. At which point the
mutants come back, stronger than ever. The attempt in the 1990's to
relegitimize modernization theory is an instance of this, albeit thus
far one that has been rather weak. If I might continue the medical
metaphor, the problem today of world-systems analysis is analogous to
the problem of overused antibiotics. The solution is to move forward
from medical therapy to preventive medicine.
2) There is a second problem with critiques, especially critiques that
are past the moment of initial shock and vigor. Critiques are not that
difficult to pseudo-coopt. I have tried already to indicate the ways in
which our terminology, or something close to it, is being used for
purposes other than we had in mind, which then can have the effect of
corrupting what we ourselves do. So then this becomes a question of
"physician, heal thyself." But I am making more than a general
admonition always to be self-critical. I am suggesting that there is a
tendency to forget our own original critical stance, as we hail those
who seem to be emulating us, and that this tendency poses considerable
risks both to the critical task and to the putative task of
reconstruction.[3] At the end of the road, we risk finding ourselves in
the situation of so many intellectual movements, a name that has become
a shell.
[3] I have argued the nature of such risks in my article "Hold the
Tiller Firm: On Method and the Unit of Analysis," in S.K. Sanderson,
ed., Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Historical Change
(Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 1995), 239-247.
(3) We have shifted over the years from criticizing the ways in which we
analyze the contemporary situation in peripheral zones of the
world-economy to criticizing the ways in which the history of the modern
world has been written, to criticizing the theories that are supposed to
explain the modern world-system, to criticizing the methodologies used
in the historical social sciences, to criticizing the ways in which
knowledge institutions have been constructed. We have been following the
paths of our critiques and of answering those who have in turn been
critical of our work. It is as though we have been going through doors
to find other doors behind them, in a constant regress. Perhaps the
problem is deeper than we have imagined.
Perhaps the problem is the entire thought-system of the capitalist
world-economy. This has been suggested, to be sure, by the so-called
post-modernists. I am sympathetic to many of their critiques (most of
which, however, we have been saying more clearly, and indeed earlier).
However, I find them on the whole neither sufficiently "post"-modern nor
sufficiently reconstructive. They will certainly not do our job for us.
To be a movement within social science had, and has, certain distinct
advantages. It enables us to group forces, to clarify our critiques, and
to sustain each other in a sometimes hostile environment. On the whole,
I give us good marks for how we have conducted ourselves. On the one
hand, we have allowed multiple views to co-exist, and thus avoided
becoming a sect. On the other hand, we have not defined our program so
loosely that it has lacked critical teeth, which is what would have
happened if we had followed the recurrent suggestions that we rename
ourselves (and therefore blend into) "the sociology of development," or
"political economy," or "global sociology."
Nonetheless, being a movement has certain distinct disadvantages. I am
often appalled by the two-line summaries of our perspective one can find
in the books of others who have manifestly read virtually nothing of
what we have written. I am equally appalled by the suavity with which
our research findings are appropriated (and misappropriated) not only
without credit but even more important without any integration of the
underlying approach that gave rise to the research findings. This is in
part inevitable, since movements tend to talk to themselves, and after a
while this constrains radically their impact.
There is of course an alternative road we might follow that might
overcome the limitations of being an intellectual movement. That road is
that of moving into the very center of social science, not as a movement
but as consensual premise. How might we do that?
The facetious answer would be that we should be writing, or some of us
should be writing, general textbooks for first-year
students of social science. The real answer is that persons involved in
world-systems analysis should be addressing, and
addressing urgently, some very fundamental questions, questions that in
my view can only be satisfactorily addressed if one has
unthought nineteenth-century social science and structures of knowledge
and thoroughly absorbed the lessons of
world-systems analysis.
Allow me to list some of these fundamental questions:
1) What is the nature of the distinctive arena of knowledge we may call
social science, if there is one? How do we define its parameters and
social role? In particular, in what ways, if any, is such a field to be
distinguished from the humanities on the one side and the natural
sciences on the other?
2) What is the relation, theoretically, between social science and
social movements? between social science and power structures?
3) Are there multiple kinds of social systems (I would prefer the
concept, historical systems), and, if so, what are the defining features
that distinguish them?
4) Do such historical systems have a natural history or not? If so, can
this history be called an evolutionary history?
5) How is TimeSpace socially constructed, and what differences does this
make for the conceptualizations underlying social science activity?
6) What are the processes of transition from one historical system to
another? What kinds of metaphors are plausible: self- organization,
creativity, order out of chaos?
7) What is the theoretical relation between the quest for truth and the
quest for a just society?
8) How can we conceive our existing historical system (world-system)?
And what can we say about its rise, its structure, and its future
demise, in the light of our answers to the other questions?
As you can see, the last is the question with which we started. A number
of the other questions have been worrying various persons who consider
themselves part of the network of scholars involved in world-systems
analysis. Furthermore, of course, many other scholars, present and past,
have worried about these questions, or at least some of them. The point
however is to see that these questions are interrelated, and can really
only be answered in relation to each other, that is, from a world-
systems perspective.
The other point is that world-systems analysts are, on the whole, better
trained than most social scientists today to address these questions as
an interrelated set. When we do begin to address them in this way, we
shall no longer be acting primarily as a movement within social science,
but we shall be laying claim to formulating the central questions of the
enterprise. Is this hybris? Not really. As world-systems analysts, we
know that intellectual activities are not simply a matter of
intelligence or will but of social timing, in terms of the world-system.
It is because the historical system in which we live is in terminal
crisis that there exists the chance of addressing these questions in
ways that can make possible substantively rational social constructions.
This was not a possibility available to nineteenth-century scholars,
however insightful or masterly they were. It is because the legitimacy
of the hierarchies that are fundamental to the capitalist world- economy
hierarchies of class, of race, of gender are being fundamentally
challenged, both politically and intellectually that it may be possible
to construct, for the first time, a more inclusive and relatively more
objective social science.
It is the times that make it possible, again for the first time, to
stand on the shoulders of those nineteenth-century giants and see
something beyond, provided we have the energy and the will. It is the
times that permit us, without disgracing ourselves, to follow Danton's
exhortation: "De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace."
These are our times, and it is the moment when social scientists will
demonstrate whether or not they will be capable of constructing a social
science that will speak to the worldwide social transformation through
which we shall be living.
--
Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222
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