Wallersteins World System Theory
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World-System Theory
World system theory is a macro-sociological approach to issues of global stratification and global change. It seeks to explain the dynamics of the modern world system as a complete system. World system theory was created by Immanuel Wallerstein as a reaction against theories of modernization, as well as a response to the criticisms of the dependency school of thought. The perspective is a combination of Braudel and the Annales School, the Marxist perspective, and dependency theory or a neo-Marxist approach to global inequalities (So, 1990).
Wallerstein's (1974) conception requires an alternate view of social science research and a movement away from the divisiveness of the social science disciplines. As a result, although having originated in the social sciences, the world system perspective has extended itself through a multitude of disciplines. World system theory dictates a complete historical analysis of the processes of the world economy in order to understand changes in global dynamics.
A world-system is a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to remould it to its advantage. It has characteristics of an organism, in that it has a life-span over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others Life within it is largely self-contained, and the dynamics of its development are largely internal (Wallerstein, 1974: 347)...