Global Learning
  • Home
  • Defenders of Cuban Socialism
    • UN Charter
    • Declaration of Human Rights
    • Bandung
    • New International Economic Order
    • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Substack editorial column
  • New Cold War articles
  • Friends of Socialist China articles
  • Global Research articles
  • Counterpunch articles
  • Cuba and the world-system
    • Table of Contents and chapter summaries
    • About the author
    • Endorsements
    • Obtaining your copy
  • Blog ¨The View from the South¨
    • Blog Index
    • Posts in reverse chronological order
  • The Voice of Third World Leaders
    • Asia >
      • Ho Chi Minh
      • Xi Jinping, President of China
    • Africa >
      • Kwame Nkrumah
      • Julius Nyerere
    • Latin America >
      • Fidel Castro
      • Hugo Chávez
      • Raúl Castro >
        • 55th anniversary speech, January 1, 1914
        • Opening Speech, CELAC
        • Address at G-77, June 15, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, July 5, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, December 20, 2014
        • Speech on Venezuela at ALBA, 3-17-2015
        • Declaration of December 18, 2015 on USA-Cuba relations
        • Speech at ALBA, March 5, 2018
      • Miguel Díaz-Canel >
        • UN address, September 26, 2018
        • 100th annivesary, CP of China
      • Evo Morales >
        • About Evo Morales
        • Address to G-77 plus China, January 8, 2014
        • Address to UN General Assembly, September 24, 2014
      • Rafael Correa >
        • About Rafael Correa
        • Speech at CELAC 1/29/2015
        • Speech at Summit of the Americas 2015
      • Nicolás Maduro
      • Cristina Fernández
      • Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations >
        • Statement at re-opening of Cuban Embassy in USA, June 20, 2015
        • The visit of Barack Obama to Cuba
        • Declaration on parliamentary coup in Brazil, August 31, 2016
        • Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba on Venezuela, April 13, 2019
      • ALBA >
        • Declaration of ALBA Political Council, May 21, 2019
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 17, 2015
        • Declaration on Venezuela, April 10, 2017
      • Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) >
        • Havana Declaration 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 26
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • International >
      • Peoples’ Summit 2015
      • The Group of 77 >
        • Declaration on a New World Order 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela 3/26/2015
      • BRICS
      • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Readings
    • Charles McKelvey, Cuba in Global Context
    • Piero Gleijeses, Cuba and Africa
    • Charles McKelvey, Chávez and the Revolution in Venezuela
    • Charles McKelvey, The unfinished agenda of race in USA
    • Charles McKelvey, Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist Revolutionary
  • Recommended Books
  • Contact

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Recommended books on Amazon.com; click on image of book to connect

Immanuel Wallerstein

4/17/2014

0 Comments

 
Posted July 30, 2013
     
     In the Introduction to Volume One of The Modern World-System, Immanuel Wallerstein writes that his experiences in colonial Africa during the time of the African anti-colonial movements enabled him to see that European and African Nationalist conceptions are fundamentally different.  

“I went to Africa first during the colonial era,” he writes, “and I witnessed the process of ‘decolonization,’ and then of the independence of a cascade of sovereign states.  White man that I was, I was bombarded by the onslaught of the colonial mentality of Europeans long resident in Africa. And sympathizer of nationalist movements that I was, I was privy to the angry analyses and optimist passions of young militants of the African movements.  It did not take long to realize that not only were these two groups at odds on political issues, but that they approached the situation with entirely different sets of conceptual frameworks”  (1974:4; italics added).
 
African nationalists, Wallerstein noted, “saw the reality in which they lived as a ‘colonial situation,’” fundamentally different from and opposed to the “colonial mentality” of the Europeans (1974:4).

     Wallerstein saw in Africa what Bernard Lonergan describes as the formulation of opposed understandings in the context of different culturally-based horizons (see “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/13).  Moreover, Wallerstein’s scholarship shows that cross-horizon encounter is the key to social scientific understanding, for Wallerstein’s encounter with the African nationalist movement stimulated a process of reflection that enabled him to understand that the use of “society”as the unit of analysis, common in the Western social science of that time, established false assumptions for understanding the “colonial situation.” This understanding led Wallerstein to the conclusion that “the correct unit of analysis is the world-system” (Wallerstein 1974:7).  Driven by what Lonergan calls the “pure desire to know,” Wallerstein committed himself to the task of describing the historical development of the modern world-system (Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1982, 1989, 2000, 2011 and Hopkins and Wallerstein 1996). His important and groundbreaking work ignores the disciplinary boundaries among history, economics, sociology, and political science in order to formulate the world-systems perspective, an alternative to the dominant Western social scientific paradigm and an alternative that takes into account the insights of the twentieth century Third World national liberation movements. 
 
      Wallerstein has identified four stages in the development of the modern world-system:  (1) the origin of the system on the foundation of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of vast regions of the American continents, establishing a world-economy, with Western Europe as its core and Latin America and Eastern Europe as its periphery (1492-1640); (2) a stage of stagnation, characterized by competition among core powers, during which the basic structures of the system were preserved and reinforced (1640-1815); (3) the expansion of the system from 1815-1917, made possible by the conquest of vast regions of Africa and Asia by European powers; and (4) 1917 to the present, characterized by the development of imperialism and neocolonialism as new forms of core domination and by the emergence of anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World.  

     In future posts, we will draw upon the insights of Third World intellectuals and leaders, and we also will often find Wallerstein’s formulations to be helpful as we seek to understand.

     Scroll down to find posts that critically analyze the work of Immanuel Wallerstein:
“Wallerstein: A Critique” 7/31/0213
“Wallerstein and world-systems analysis” 3/25/2014
“Wallerstein and Africa” 3/26/2014
“Wallerstein: Europe-centered or universal?” 3/27/2014
“The terminal crisis of the world-system” 3/28/2014
“Domination and ideology” 3/31/2014
“Reunified historical social science” 4/1/2014
“Universal philosophical historical social science” 4/2/2014
“We can know the true and the good” 4/3/2104
“How can knowledge be reorganized?” 4/4/2014
“Wallerstein on liberalism” 4/6/2014
“Liberals or revolutionaries?” 4/7/2014
“Wallerstein on Leninism” 4/8/2014
“Wallerstein on revolution” 4/9/2014
“Wallerstein, Marx, and knowledge” 4/14/2014
“The alternative world-system from below” 4/15/2014
“Universal human values” 4/16/2014
“An alternative epistemology” 4/17/2014.


 Bibliography
 
Hopkins, Terence K., and Immanuel Wallerstein.  1996.  The Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World System, 1945-2025.  New Jersey: Zed Books.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I. New
York:  Academic Press.  
 
__________. 1979.  The Capitalist World Economy. New York:  Cambridge University Press.  

  __________. 1980.  The Modern World System, Vol. II.  New York: 
Academic Press.

__________. 1982.  “Crisis as Transition” in Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, Dynamics of Global Crisis.  New  York: Monthly Review Press.

__________. 1989.  The Modern World System, Vol. III. New York: Academic Press.

__________. 1990.  "Antisystemic  Movements:  History and Dilemmas" in Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, Transforming the Revolution:  Social Movements and the World-System.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________. 1995. After Liberalism. New York: The New Press.

 __________.  2000. “Long Waves as Capitalist Process” in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein (New York: The New Press), Pp. 207-19. [Originally published in Review VII:4 (Spring 1984), Pp. 559-75.]

__________. 2000.  “The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of the Capitalist World-Economy” in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein (New York: The New Press), Pp. 253-63.  [Originally published in International Journal of Comparative Sociology XXIV:1-2 (January-April 1983), Pp. 100-8).

__________.  2003.  The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World.  New York: The New Press.

__________. 2011.  The Modern World System IV: Centralist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

 
Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Lonergan, cognitional theory, epistemology, philosophy, Wallerstein, world-system

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Blog Index
    Bolivia
    Charismatic Leaders
    China
    Critique Of The Left
    Cuban History
    Cuba Today
    Ecuador
    Environment
    French Revolution
    Gay Rights
    Haitian Revolution
    Knowledge
    Latin American History
    Latin American Right
    Latin American Unity
    Marx
    Marxism-Leninism
    Mexican Revolution
    Miscellaneous
    Neocolonialism
    Neoliberalism
    Nicaragua
    North-South Cooperation
    Presidential Elections 2016
    Press
    Public Debate In USA
    Race
    Religion And Revolution
    Revolution
    Russian Revolution
    South-South Cooperation
    Third World
    Trump
    US Ascent
    US Imperialism
    Vanguard
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Wallerstein
    Women And Revolution
    World History
    World-System
    World-System Crisis

    Archives

    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

More Ads


website by Sierra Creation