Immanuel Wallerstein
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (/ˈwɔːlərstiːn/;[2] September 28, 1930 – August 31, 2019) was an American sociologist and economic historian. He is perhaps best known for his development in sociology of world-systems approach.[3] He was a Senior Research Scholar at Yale University from 2000 until his death in 2019, and published bimonthly syndicated commentaries through Agence Global on world affairs from October 1998 to July 2019.[4][5]
Immanuel Wallerstein
September 28, 1930
August 31, 2019 (aged 88)
Beatrice Friedman
Katharine Wallerstein, Robert Morgenstern, Susan Morgenstern
Columbia University (BA: 1951, MA: 1954, PhD: 1959)
The Emergence of Two West African Nations: Ghana and the Ivory Coast[1] (1959)
He was the 13th president of International Sociological Association (1994–1998).[6]
Personal life and education[edit]
His parents, Sara Günsberg (born in 1895) and Menachem Lazar Wallerstein (born in 1890), were Polish Jews from Galicia who moved to Berlin, because of World War I, where they married in 1919. Two years later, Sara gave birth to their first son, Solomon. In 1923, the Wallerstein family emigrated to New York, where Immanuel was born.[7] On the "list of alien passengers for the United States" at the time of his family's emigration, the nationality of his mother and brother was described as Polish.[7]
Having grown up in a politically conscious family, Wallerstein first became interested in world affairs as a teenager.[8] He received all three of his degrees from Columbia University: a BA in 1951, an MA in 1954, and a PhD in 1959, where he completed his dissertation under the supervision of Hans L. Zetterberg and Robert Staughton Lynd.[1] However, throughout his life, Wallerstein also studied at other universities around the world, including Oxford University from 1955 to 1956,[9] Université libre de Bruxelles, Universite Paris 7 Denis Diderot, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
From 1951 to 1953 Wallerstein served in the U.S. Army.[8] After his discharge, he wrote a master's thesis on McCarthyism as a phenomenon of American political culture. The widely cited work, as Wallerstein himself later stated, "confirmed my sense that I should consider myself, in the language of the 1950s, a 'political sociologist'".[8]
Wallerstein married Beatrice Friedman in 1964, and had a daughter, Katharine Wallerstein, two years later. He was stepfather to Beatrice's two children from a previous marriage, Susan Morgenstern and Robert Morgenstern.[10] He and Beatrice had five grandchildren.
Academic career[edit]
During his time at Columbia University he was a supporter of students who were active during Columbia University protests of 1968 opposing the university's involvement in the Vietnam War.[11]
Originally, Wallerstein's principal sub-area of study was not American affairs, but the politics of the non-European world, specifically India and Africa.[8] For two decades Wallerstein researched Africa, publishing numerous books and articles,[8] and in 1973 he became president of the African Studies Association.[12]
Professional career[edit]
Wallerstein's academic career began at Columbia University where he instructor and then associate professor of sociology from 1958 to 1971.[9] From there he moved to McGill University, in Montreal where he taught from 1971 to 1976. His reputation preceded him became distinguished professor of sociology at SUNY Binghamton University from 1976 to 1999.[13]
In 1976 Wallerstein was offered the unique opportunity to pursue a new avenue of research, and so became head of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilization at Binghamton University in New York,[14] whose mission was "to engage in the analysis of large-scale social change over long periods of historical time".[15] The Center opened with the publishing support of a new journal, Review,[9] (of which Wallerstein was the founding editor), and would go on to produce a body of work that "went a long way toward invigorating sociology and its sister disciplines, especially history and political-economy".[9] Wallerstein served as a distinguished professor of sociology at SUNY-Binghamton until his retirement in 1999.[12]
During his career Wallerstein held visiting-professor posts in Hong Kong, British Columbia, and Amsterdam, among numerous others.[16] He was awarded multiple honorary titles, intermittently served as Directeur d'études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and served as president of the International Sociological Association between 1994 and 1998.[17] At this time he also held a titled professorship at New York University and lectured at Columbia University. Similarly, during the 1990s he chaired the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, whose object was to indicate a direction for social scientific inquiry for the next 50 years.[18]
Between 2000 and his death in 2019, Wallerstein worked as a senior research scholar at Yale University.[19] He was also a member of the Advisory Editors Council of the Social Evolution & History journal. In 2003, he received the "Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award" from the American Sociological Association,[12] and in 2004 the International N. D. Kondratieff Foundation and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RAEN) awarded him the Gold Kondratieff Medal.[20] Wallerstein died on August 31, 2019, from an infection, at the age of 88.[21]
During his time as a lecturer some of the students in attendance recalled him as "a calm, reserved, elegant man".[22] When taking criticism for his thesis, he would usually be calm and collected. As well as hinting at the fact that he was almost disappointed for the people or audience for not fully comprehending what he wished to establish.[23]
Terms and definitions[edit]
Capitalist world-system[edit]
Wallerstein's definition follows dependency theory, which intended to combine the developments of the different societies since the 16th century in different regions into one collective development. The main characteristic of his definition is the development of a global division of labour, including the existence of independent political units (in this case, states) at the same time. There is no political center, compared to global empires like the Roman Empire; instead, the capitalist world-system is identified by the global market economy. It is divided into core, semi-periphery, and periphery regions, and is ruled by the capitalist mode of production.
Core/periphery[edit]
Defines the difference between developed and developing countries, characterized e.g. by power or wealth. The core refers to developed countries, the periphery to the dependent developing countries. The main reason for the position of the developed countries is economic power. Wallerstein "used the term core to suggest a multicentric region containing a group of states rather than the term center, which implies a hierarchy with a single peak."[33]
Semi-periphery[edit]
Defines states that are located between core and periphery, and who benefit from the periphery through unequal exchange relations. At the same time, the core benefits from the semi-periphery through unequal exchange relations.
Kondratiev waves[edit]
A Kondratiev wave is defined as a cyclical tendency in the world's economy. It is also known as a supercycle. Wallerstein argues that global wars are tied to Kondratiev waves. According to him, global conflicts occur as the summer phase of a wave begins, which is when production of goods and services around the world are on an upswing.[35]
