> "The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis"
>
> by Immanuel Wallerstein ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>
> 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."
Which unthinking social science? I dont think W has thought much
about any alternative perspective except early modernization theory
and Marxism.
> 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."
Yea, except that you titled your four volume work "The Modern
World System"
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.
Again, as if nothing else has happened in social science except
modernization and WS!
> If world-systems analysis took shape in the 1970's, it was because
> conditions for its emergence were ripe within the world-system.
If there is a world system, why cant we use the term WS analysis?
> 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.
Yes, of course, 'cause there was no TW before.
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.
Durkheim, Weber, and Marx are still going strong. Neither was
modernization theory undermined. One easily could list 15 or 20
works published in the last two decades.
They wished to argue that the theories of
> social science applied to all areas of the world, and not merely to
> Europe/North America.
So, has W wished to argue that his theory, which he developed in
Western universities, and which he learned from Western sources,
applies to the rest of the world!
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.
Yes, Rostow, Lerner, and Parsons are bad.
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.
Rostow was wrong, ok.
[...Rostow...]
> 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.
" " " " " "
I will continue later; hopefully there be something else besides a
critique of Rostow.
