World-Systems Theory

One of the major models of how the global system of states and markets operates, world–systems theory, introduced by the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1970s, is an enormously influential perspective on the changing structure and dynamics of the world economy. In many respects, it retains a fundamentally Marxist version of the world, one that puts production, class, uneven development, and historical context at the center.

The focus of world-systems theory is on the entire world rather than on individual nation-states. This view maintains that one cannot study the internal dynamics of countries without also examining their external ones; thus, the boundary between foreign and domestic effectively disappears. This stance notes that all regions are interconnected; that is, they never exist in isolation. Moreover, this focus notes that the growth of the West occurred in interaction with other parts of the world, not through its inherent internal dynamism, thus serving to oppose the widespread Eurocentrism of much of social science.

World-systems theory distinguishes between large-scale, precapitalist world empires, such as the Romans, Mongols, or Ottomans, all centralized political systems that appropriated the social surplus from their peripheries through the state, and the capitalist world system, in which there is no single political entity to rule the world but a multiplicity of entities of varying sizes and degrees of sovereignty; that is, there is a single market but multiple political centers, meaning that there is no effective control over the market. With the rise of capitalism, the primary political units shifted from empires and city-states to nation-states. The political geography of capitalism is thus not the nation-state but the interstate system. Occasional attempts to reassert a world empire included the Haps–burgs, Napoleon, and Germany in World Wars I and II, each of which represented a temporary contraction in the world system but a permanent reconfiguration in its hierarchy of states.

Wallerstein held that the world system arose in the “long 16th century” (1450–1650) and gradually enveloped all other parts of the globe. Until the 19th century, various parts of the world affected one another; as they become locked into a single, worldwide division of labor, however, they became increasingly reliant on each other. However, recent variations of world-systems theory have extended the concept “backward” in time to include increasingly earlier social formations. For example, Andre Gunder Frank held that even Neolithic mini systems constituted a world system of sorts. Janet Abu-Lughod offered a celebrated concept of a late-13th- and early-14th-century system, which connected China, India, the Arab world, and medieval Europe via the Silk Road routes and maritime trade across the Indian Ocean but was ended by the bubonic plague. Indeed, many world-systems theorists argue that prior to the 19th century, the world economy was primarily Asian in nature.

World-systems theorists maintain that capitalism takes many forms and uses labor in different ways in different regions. In the global core, labor is predominantly waged (i.e., organized through labor markets), while in developing countries there is considerable use of nonfree labor, ranging from slavery to indentured workers to landless peasants working on plantations. Some critics of Wallerstein, particularly Robert Brenner, argue that his view prioritizes trade over the commodification of labor, leading to allegations that he is “neo-Smithian” in his worldview. World-systems theorists counter that the world economy structures places in such a way that high-valued goods are produced in the core and low-valued ones in the periphery. The search for profits through low-cost labor drives the world system forward to expand into uncharted territories.

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