Critiques and developments in world-systems analysis: an introduction to the special collection[1]

Abstract

From its inception, the world-systems perspective was not onlyenormously influential in long-term, large-scale social research; it also attracted a set of serious critiques. These fell into the general areas of the emergence of the capitalist world-economy; reductionism in the mode of argument; surplus appropriation and accumulation, including the question of class; and the general exclusion of an analysis of any role for “culture.” It is concrete developments in world-systems analysis over the past three decades,although not to the exclusion of explicit responses to critiques, that have gone a long way in addressing these concerns. They fall most notably into the areas of commodity chains, households, world-ecology, and the structures of knowledge.

Keywords

• World-systems analysis
• Critiques of world-systems analysis
• Immanuel Wallerstein
• Commodity chains
• Households
• World-ecology
• Structures of knowledge