Global inequalities avant la lettre

Immanuel Wallerstein’s contribution

Bibliographic Data

ID6169150
AuthorsManuela Boatcă (0000-0003-1255-9955, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume15
Issue15
Pages71-91
Publication date2021-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocio (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2266-3134 • E-ISSN: 2425-2158
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/socio.10999
OpenAlexW3151273142
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited24

This article argues that Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system approach was instrumental in revealing sociology’s theoretical and methodological blind spots and in formulating a comprehensive framework for the study of global inequalities. In doing so, it anticipated both the critique of Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism put forth by transnational and postcolonial approaches as well as the debates over the rise in global inequalities by several decades. I trace this analytical primacy to several factors: first, to world-systems analysis’ methodological shift from the nation-state to the entire capitalist world-economy as an early global sociology; second, to the relation between the methodological shift to the epistemological critique and their role in Wallerstein’s early approach to global inequalities. Finally, I address the relationship between the self-definition of world-systems analysis as a form of protest against mainstream social science (rather than as a theory) and the theoretical and political filiations with postcolonial and decolonial approaches in order to show how they contributed together to the prominence of global inequalities as a topic

Inequality · Mathematical analysis · Sociology · Economic and Social Issues · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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