Immanuel Wallerstein

Bio

1. Via Geert Callens:

"Wallerstein first became interested in world affairs as a teenager in New York City, and was particularly interested in the anti-colonial movement in India at the time. He attended Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in 1951, an M.A. in 1954 and a Ph.D. degree in 1959, and subsequently taught until 1971, when he became professor of sociology at McGill University. As of 1976, he served as distinguished professor of sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY) until his retirement in 1999, and as head of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations until 2005. Wallerstein held several positions as visiting professor at universities worldwide, was awarded multiple honorary degrees, intermittently served as Directeur d’études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and was president of the International Sociological Association between 1994 and 1998. During the 1990s, he chaired the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences."

2. Encyclopedia.com:

"Born in 1930, American sociologist Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein is best known for the development of world-systems theory—a comprehensive theoretical framework and methodology for the study of social change in the context of the global system of nations. World-systems theory has reshaped the sociology of development and has made Wallerstein one of the discipline's single most influential scholars.

Wallerstein's career began at Columbia University, where he served as an instructor (1958–1959), assistant professor (1959–1963), and associate professor of sociology (1963–1971). He then moved to Mcgill University in Montreal, serving as professor of sociology from 1971 to 1976. Wallerstein joined the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1976, where he was a distinguished professor of sociology until 1999, at which time he was named professor emeritus. In 2000 Yale University appointed Wallerstein as a senior research scholar. In addition, he has served as director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations since 1976, and has written and edited many books.

Wallerstein maintains that a new form of Western colonialism, neocolonialism, pursued mostly by the United States and various multinational corporations, has replaced old forms of colonial domination with indirect domination achieved through economic and political means. Examples of methods used to obtain indirect domination include the provision of economic aid, as well as monetary and trade policies.

In a slightly adapted version of the introductory essay to The Essential Wallerstein (New Press, 2000), posted on Yale University's Web site in 2006, Wallerstein explains: "World-systems analysis allowed me to range widely in terms of concrete issues, but always in such a way that the pieces might be fit together at the end of the exercise. It is not that world-systems analysis enabled me to 'discover the truth.' It is rather that it enabled me to make what I considered to be plausible interpretations of social reality in ways that I believe are more useful for all of us in making political and moral decisions. It is also that it enabled me to distinguish between what are long-lasting structures and those momentary expressions of reality that we so regularly reify into fashionable theories about what is novel, as for example, the enormous recent production concerning so-called 'globalization.'"

(https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/modern-world-system-analysis)