Immanuel Wallerstein (b. 1930) is certainly among the most influential social theorists of his generation despite his explicit denials of the possibility of general theory in social science. Wallerstein's conceptual approach to world history, what he has called the “world-systems perspective,” has had a wide and deep impact in both the social sciences and the humanities wherever scholars and organic intellectuals have tried to penetrate what Giovanni Arrighi has called “the fog of globalization.” He is the cofounder, with Terence Hopkins, of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University and is now a senior research scholar at Yale. Wallerstein is past president of the International Sociological Association and has published more than 30 books and over 200 articles and book chapters.

With Samir Amin, Andre Gunder ...