A World-System Perspective on the Social Sciences Author(s): Immanuel Wallerstein Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol.

27, No. 3, Special Issue. History and Sociology (Sep., 1976), pp. 343-352 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/589620 . Accessed: 23/11/2013 16:59
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British J}ournal of SociologyVolume 27 Aumber 3 September I976

ImmanuelWallerstein

A world-system perspective on thesocial sciences

It is in the nineteenthcenturyand the earlytwentieththat the organizationalstructures of the sciencesof man which we use today became fixed.In I800 the categories (or 'disciplines') whichtodayarestandard - history, economics,sociology,anthropology, political science-did not for the mostpart existas concepts,and certainly werenot the basis of sharplydifferentiated groupsof teachersand researchers. The somewhat tortuousprocessby which certaincombinations of concernsand concepts took particularforms resulted in major 'methodological' debates,whichwe sometimes still hear aboutunderthe rubric,'philosophy of history'.Amongthe debates,one of the mostinfluentialwas that between so-called nomotheticand idiographicknowledge,betweenthe possibility and impossibility of generalizations abouthuman behaviour,betweenthe universalizers and the particularizers. The universalizers spokeof themselves as 'scientists'. They tendedto arguethathumanbehaviour wasa naturalphenomenon like any other, and could therefore be studiedon the same basisas any other natural phenomenan,using the same rules of logic ('the scientificmethod') and capableeventuallyof yieldingpreciseresultscomparable to those achievedin the naturalsciences.The particularists, in contrast,often termedthemselves 'humanists'. They tendedto arguethat humanlife, beingthinking life,couldnot be viewedin the samewayas othernatural phenomenon, for one of two reasons.Eitherit was because,said some, humanshave soulsand are therefore resistant to arbitrary uniformities, or it was because,said others, the human researcher inevitablydistortedthe human subjectof analysisin the very processof observing him and therefore the generalizations would neverbe valid. Likeall suchgranddebatesthereis just so muchthat can be said on the subject,and it has largelybeen said. This does not mean that the debate is over or forgottenbut simply that the divisionshave been institutionalized and therebycontained.Grosso modo,the universalizers were assignedthe departments of economics,sociology,and political science,and the particularizers the departments of historyand anthropology. Obviously,given the high capriciousness of the organizational dividing lines, there were dissidentsin each 'disciplinary' structure (suchas political'theorists' in politicalscience,and linguists in anthropology). But no matter! Spheresof influencehad been demarcated, and the statusquo enshrined.

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344

lmmanuel Wallerstein

Thiscrudepicturehasto be qualified by takinginto accountregional variation.My description worksbest for the Anglo-American core of the world-system. The Germanschafedat Britishdefinitions of social knowledgeand gave birth to an uncertaincross-breed, Staatswissenschaft;. SomeFrenchchafedat the failureof otherFrenchmen to chafe, whichled to the birthof the Annales school.And the Western European working classes chafedat the systemin general,and nourished outside the academy a critical perspective,Marxism,which challengedthe universality of the 'universals'. Underlyingthe dominantinstitutionalizatiorl of the great methodologicalsplit, universalizer versusparticularizer, there turnedout to be, as there usuallyis, a hidden but very importantconsensus,the conceptof the individual societyas the basicunit of analysis. Everyone seemedto agree that the world was composedof multiple'societies'. They disagreedabout whetherit was the case that all societiespursuedsimilar pathsdownthe roadof history(albeitat differing rates)or that each societywent its own historicway. They disagreed whether societyin questiontookthe formof a 'state'or a 'nation'or a 'people', but in any caseit was somepolitico-cultural unit. The period after World War II saw in this field, as in so many others,the culmination of theseintellectualtendencies in the elaboration of a perspective we may call 'developmentalism', which for most of its devoteeswent hand in hand with 'behaviorism'. This perspective assumedthat all stateswere engagedin 'developing' (whichfor many meant'becoming nations'),that theirprogress alongthispathcouldbe measuredquantitatively and synchronically, and that on the basisof knowledgederived from such measurements, governments could in fact hastenthe process, whichwas a highlycommendable thing to do. Since thesestateswere proceeding down parallelpaths,all stateswere intrinsically capableof achievingthe desiredresults.The only serious intellectual questionwas why manyresisted doingso. Thisviewpoint sweptthe scholarly world not onlyof the hegemonic power,the UnitedStates,and its allies,old Europe,but alsoof its chief antagonist,the U.S.S.R. The theoriesof what governmental actions wouldpromotedevelopment, and what socialforcesimpededit varied widely, but the plausibilityof 'development' as a matrix of analysis reignedsupremeuntil the mid-Ig60s,when it foundered on one economic reality and two politicaldevelopments. The economicrealitywas that, despiteall the theories,and all the presumedeffort (aid, technical assistance,human investment),the so-called'gap' betweenthe 'developed' and the 'developing' courltries was growingbigger,not smaller. The two politicaldevelopments were in fact ultimatelya reflection of this economicreality.One was the emergence of nationalliberation movementsthroughoutthe world which engagedin armed struggle with moreor lesssuccess Vietnam,Algeria,Cuba.Theirstruggle had

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A world-system perspective onthesocial sciences

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a resonancewithin the United States and WesternEurope among students, professors, and the 'Third World within' which in fact shookthe up-to-thenfacile dominanceof the developmentalists in the academy. But thissamepoliticalupheavalaffectedthe Communist countries as well, where a long seriesof interrelated crises the XXth Party Congress of the C.P.S.U., the 'upheavals'in EasternEurope, the split betweenthe Chineseand the Russians, the culturalrevolution, the rise of 'Euro-communism'-similarly has underminedthe internal credibility of the Stalinistversionof developmentalism, the crudesequence throughwhich each state was destinedto 'pass'. When a theoryno longerseemsto servean adequatesocial function, scholars usually begin to question its tntellectual credentials.As 'developmentalism' seemedless and less to explain the social reality throughwhichwe are living,variousauthorscriticizedone or another of its premises, gropingtowardsan alternative framework of explanation, which I shall call a 'world-system perspective'. The key difference betweena developmentalist and a world-system perspective is in the pointof departure, the unit of analysis. A developmentalistperspective assumes that the unit withinwhich social action principallyoccursis a politico-cultural unit- the state, or nation, or people and seeksto explaindifferences betweentheseunits,including why theireconomies are different. A world-system perspective assumes, by contrast,that social action takes place in an entity within which thereis an ongoingdivisionof labour,and seeksto discover empirically whethersuch an entity is or is not unified politicallyor culturally, askingtheoretically what are the consequences of the existenceor nonexistenceof such unity. By throwingoverboard the presupposition that thereis a 'society'we are forced to look at the alternativepossibilitiesof organizingthe materialworld. We in fact rapidlydiscoverthat there are a limited number of possibilities, which we may call varying 'modes of production', meaning by that somethingvery close to what the phrase seemson the surfaceto convey:the way in which decisionsare made aboutdividingup productive tasks,aboutquantities of goodsto be produced and labour-time to be invested,about quantitiesof goodsto be consumed or accumulated, aboutthedistribution of the goodsproduced. One mode, historicallythe earliest, we may call the reciprocallineage mode. It is basedon limitedand elementary specialization of tasksin which the productsare reciprocally exchangedamong producers.In this mode the chief productiveresourceis human labour and therefore the chief guaranteeof sub-group survivalthe controlof reproduction (viathe controlof womenand theiroffspring) . Production over a certainlevel is politicallyunsettlingby enablingyoungerpersons to escapethe controlof elders and therefore inequalities though real are limited.

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346

Immanuel Wallerstein

Empirically, it is the case (and I think it could be established that theoretically it mustbe the case)that suchsystems aresmallin physical scope, and that the economicboundariesare largely identical with political and cultural boundaries.Mini-systems seem a reasonable name. I believeit is the case that such mini-systems are not only small in physicalscope but short-lived historically (meaninga life of say six generations or so). This shortlife can be accounted forin various ways: the dangersfor such a technologically primitivegroup of physical extinction (throughwarfareor natural calamity); the possibilityof conquest; fission ofthe groupasthe resultof slowgrowthin accumulated stock;reorganization of the divisionof labourresultingfromphysical flight and consequent ecologicaladjustment. If thisis an accurate description, the worldhas knowncountless such groupsover historicaltime and has virtuallyno historicalrecordsof how they functioned.Some ethnologists claim to have recordedsuch groups,but forthe mostpartI am scepticalthat the unitsstudiedwere truly autonomous systems, since one of the preconditions of most such studyhas in fact been imperialcontrolof the area studiedby a larger political entitywhichin turnexisted withina farwiderdivision of labour. Our empiricalknowledgeis largely limited to larger dirrisions of labourwhich I shall term world-systems, using the word 'world' to signify larger space and longer time than mini-systems, and operationallyto mean an arena, or divisionof labour,within which more than one 'cultural' groupingexists,but whichmay or may notbe politically unified. There have in fact, up to now, been two basic formsof world-systems.Sincein one formthe prototype is the unifiedpoliticalsystem,we shall call this type the 'world-empire', by contrastwith the othertype which is preciselydefinedby the continuingabsenceof such political unity, the 'world-economy'. The 'world-empire' has many variationsin terms of the political superstructure and the culturalconsequences. A largepart of Weber's Economy andSociety is a morphology of these variations. But the mode of production is commonto these variantforms.It is a mode of productionwhich createsenoughof an agricultural surplus(basedtherefore on a more advanced technology than the reciprocal-lineage mode) sufficientto maintain both the artisanswho produce nonagricultural goodsand, in the widestsense,an 'administrative' stratum. Whereas the agriculturaland artisanal producersin some sense 'exchange'goods, either reciprocally or in local markets,goods are transferred from producers to 'administrators' by a forcedappropriation, 'tribute',which is centralized by someoneor some institutionhow remotethis institutionis from the produceris one of the major variables of the differingforms and thereupon'redistributed' to the 'administrative bureaucracy'. The principaldiffierence in this mode of production from the reci-

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procal-lineage mode was the fact that a classwhich did not produce 'goods'was supported(and indeed supported well). But therewas a majorsimilarity commonto both pre-modern forms.In neithermode of production was maximal productiondesirableor desired. The reasonis clear.Since the channelupwardof the surplusappropriation in the redistributive-tributary formwasthe same'bureaucracy' to whom the top of the structure 'redistributed' this surplus,too large a surplus createda strongtemptation for 'pre-emption' of thissurplus on the way upward.This of courseconstantlyhappened.But it meant that the rulinggroupswerealwayscaughtin the contradiction of wantingmore, but not 'too much'. The consequences were manifold.Technologicaladvancewas not desirable/7erse. It no doubt occurred,but it was probablyless the desireto expandproduction than the need, when it occurred, to stem a decline in real productionthat served as its spur. Secondly, the contradictory needs of the ruling groups (more, but not too much) were communicated to the direct producers in termsof socially-fixed as opposedto socially-open quotasof appropriation. That is not to say that these quotas never changed.They changedconstantly,but discontinuously, andthe mythof the constant ratewasa centralideological motifof the socialstructure. In this mode of production, inequalities were enormous in comparison to the reciprocal-lineage mode,but thereweresomeinbuiltlimits. The rulinggroupsmighthave the powerof life and deathby the sword over the direct producers, but they were normallyconcernedto prevent starvation, sincethe 'fixed'incomeof the rulinggroupswasdependent on a 'fixed'level of appropriation from a 'fixed'estimatedtotal production. Starvation mightoccurdespitethe efforts of the local ruling groupsbut seldomamidsttheir indifference. Empirically it is the case (and again I thinkit could be established that theoretically it mustbe the case) that such systems werelargerin physical size than the reciprocal-lineage forms (and occasionally very large, as for examplethe Roman Empireat its height). Within the economic division of labour, multiple 'cultures' flourishedparallelgroupsof agricultural producers, 'world'-wide tradinggroups, endogamoustrans-local'administrative' groups. But the keynote of thismodeof production wasthe politicalunityof the economy, whether this 'unity' involved extreme administrativedecentralization(the 'feudal'form)or relatively high centralization (an 'empire' proper). Such 'world-empires' have existedever since the NeolithicRevolution, and rightup to veryrecenttimes.The numberwas large,but not 'countless'. The life of suchsystems variedaccording to theirsize, their isolation,their ecologicalbase, and so forth. But the j7attern of such systemswas a cyclical one expansionof size and hence total surplus-appropriation to the point where the bureaucraticcosts of appropriatingthe surplus outweighed the surplus that could, in

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Immanuel Wallerstein

socio-political terms,be eXectively appropriated, at whichpointdecline and retraction set in. The cycle of expansion and contractioninvolved the perpetual incorporation and releasing of 'units'which, when outsidethe 'worldempire', formed reciprocal-lineage mini-systems,but which when incorporated within it, formed merely one more situsout of which tributewas drawn and whose socio-economic autonomywas thereby eliminated.Thus these two modes of productionco-existedon the earthfor thousands of years. 'Civilization' is a term which is often used to mean the patternsof 'high culture'developedby the ruling and 'administrative' stratain such 'world-empires'. And since there was a certain 'revival'of the forms of a particularculture each time a new world-empire was created in the same geographiczone, we can also use the concept 'civilization'to connote those cultural forms that are common to successive world-empires in the samezone. (Chinais the model-case of a long seriesof such successive world-empires.) Since the needsof world-empires were facilitatedby 'rationality' in administration, the development of 'records' was normaland we have considerable 'documentation' fromwhichto reconstruct the workings of such systems,which we may thus 'observe'acrosshistoricaltime (or ratherreconstruct in termsof our contemporary needs). The 'world-economy' is a fundamentally differentkind of social systemfroma 'world-empire' and a fortiori froma mini-system bothin formalstructure and as a modeof production. As a formalstructure, a world-economy is definedas a singledivision of labourwithinwhichare located multiplecultures hence it is a world-system like the worldempire but which has no overarching political structure. Without a politicalstructure to redistribute the appropriated surplus, the surplus can only be redistributed via the 'market', howeverfrequentlystates located within the world-economy intervene to distort the market. Hence the modeof production is capitalist. A capitalist modeis one in whichproduction is for exchange;thatis, it is determined by its profitability on a market,a market in whicheach buyerwishesto buy cheap(andtherefore thatwhichis, in the longrun, mostefficiently produced and marketed) but in whicheachsellerwishes to sell dear (andtherefore is concerned that the efficiencies of othersare not permitted to reduce his sales.) Thus the individual as buyer rewards efficiency and as selleruseshis politicalpowerto thwartit. The basic contradiction that informscapitalismas a social system resultsfromthe simultaneous desirability of freedom for the buyerand its undesirability for the seller-freedomof labour,freedom of the flow of the factors of production, freedom of the market. The combination of freedomand unfreedom that resultsis the definingcharacteristic of a capitalistworld-economy. This ambivalenceabout freedompervades itsEpolitics, its culture,its socialrelations.

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on thesocialsciences perspective A world-system

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Whereasthe quantitiesof productionin a redistributive-tributary is trueof a the opposite modeweremoreor lesssocially'fixed',precisely capitalistmode. Thereis no sociallimit to profit,only the limit of the sellersand inadequatenumbersof buyers.An market:of competitive individualproducerproducesnot a fixed amountbut as much as he can, and anythingthat can aid him to producemore, and more efficiently science and technology is welcome. But once produced,it must be sold, or no profitis realized.And once profitis realized,the be possible. the morefutureprofitwill immediately, lessthatis consumed But as everyoneproceedsthis way the 'anarchyof production'there will soon come a point where additionalproductionoffersnot profitbut loss.Hencethereare cyclesheretoo not the politicalcycles but the economiccyclesof the world-economies. of the world-empires too, and of distribution There are to be sure profoundinequalities (althoughliberal probablygreater inequalitiesthan in world-empires social sciencehas alwaysarguedthe opposite).The reasonhas to do (asa resultof technological wealthto be maldistributed withthe greater is enforced. advance)and the techniqueby which the maldistribution system,the primaryweapon of the powerfulis In a redistributive the sword.Thus death to the politicalresistant,but minimallife for the acquiescentproduceris the basic law of political life. But in a capitalistmode, with economic cycles, the life of the producercan be as producer of surplusthan profitable as consumer more unprofitable machinerycan frequentlybest of surplus.Thus the politico-military serve to maximizeprofitby permittingstarvation,both literallyand figuratively. were very fragile institutionswhose Historically,world-economies life-spanswere probably less than a century and hence had little system.They opportunityto become an ongoing, capital-expanding to preventwithdrawalof regionsfrom lackedthe politicalstructures that emergedfromtime to the systemand hence the world-economies Or, if they did not, it was becausea member time oftendisintegrated. of labour,the worldof the division to fill the boundaries stateexpanded and the begininto a world-empire, economythus being transformed nings of a capitalistmode rapidlyrevertingto a redistributive-tributary mode of production. then aboutthe modernworldis the emergence What is remarkable Indeed it did more than thatsurvived. of a capitalistworld-economy survive:it has flourished,expandedto cover the entire earth (and and world-empires), thereby eliminatedall remainingmini-systems in the use and ecological'explosion' and broughtabouta technological of naturalresources. There are three separateintellectualquestionsthat may be asked The first is the explanationof its about this modernworld-system. Europeanworld-economy genesis:how is it that the sixteenth-century is howsuch The secondquestion suchsystems. unlikeprevious survived,

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Immanuel Wallerstein
35o a system,once consolidated, operates.The thirdis what are the basic seculartrendsof a capitalist system,and therefore whatwill accountfor its eventualdeclineas a socialsystem. Each of thesethreequestions is a long and complexone and cannot be answeredbrieflywith any degreeof satisfaction. Since, however,I have attemptedlonger answersto these questionselsewhere,I will merelyoutlinemy positionof thesethreeissueshere in the mostsummaryof fashions. The genesisis to be locatedin the process of 'decline'of a particular redistributive world-system, thatof feudalEurope,whichseemsto have 'exhausted its potential' in its greatsocio-economic spurtof I I00-I250. In the 'crisis'of contractionof the followingtwo centuries,the real incomeof the rulingstrataseemedto take a real fall. One reasonwas the rising real wages of the producers,the result of demographic disasters. A secondwas the destruction that occurredbecauseof widespreadpeasantrevolts(consequence of the previousexaggerated level of exploitation) and the internecine warfareof the rulingstrata (consequence of their long-term proportionalexpansion, reaching the conjuncture of economicdecline).The prospectwas collapse. Had therebeen a world-empire on the edgescapableof conquering the core of the system(the old 'dorsalspine'of Europe),or had feudal Europeitself been more centralized,there might have been a more traditional political reorganizationof 'empire'. But there wasn't. Insteadtherewas a sort of creativeleap of imagination on the part of the ruling strata. It involved trying an alternativemode of surplusappropriation, that of the market,to see whetherit might serve to restorethe decliningreal income of the rulinggroups.This involved geographical expansion, spatial economic specialization,the rise of the 'absolutist' state in short, the creationof a capitalistworldeconomy. The genesisof capitalism was not in the triumph of a new group,the urban burghers, over the landedfeudalnobility.Ratherit shouldbe seen as the reconversion of seigniorinto capitalistproducer, an essential continuity of the ruling families.Furthermore, it workedmagnificently, as any look backward from say I800 at I450 can show. The 'crisisof seigniorial revenues' was no more.The crisiswas now located in the revenuesof the producers. The 'poor' had been createdas a majorsocialcategory. The operationof the system,once established, revolvedaroundtwo basic dichotomies. One was the dichotomyof class, bourgeois versus proletarian, in which controlby rulinggroupsoperatedprimarily not through lineagerights(asin the mini-systems) nor throughweaponsof force(as in the world-empires), but throughaccessto decisionsabout the nature and quantity of the productionof goods (via property rights,accumulated capital,controlover technology,etc.) The other basic dichotomywas the spatial hierarchyof economic

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on thesocialsciences A world-system perspective

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in which therewas an appropriaspecialization, coreversusperiphery, of low-wage(but high supervision), tion of surplusfromthe producers of high-wage low-profit, low-capitalintensivegoods by the producers (but low supervision),high-profit,high-capitalintensive, so-called 'unequalexchange'. The genius,if you will, of the capitalistsystem,is the interweaving whichoverlapbut are not identiof thesetwo channelsof exploitation (and obscurities) cal and createthe culturaland politicalcomplexities of the system.Amongother things,it has madeit possibleto respond pressures of cyclical economiccrises by reto the politico-economic arrangingspatial hierarchieswithout significantlyimpairing class hierarchies. The mechanismby which the capitalistsystemultimatelyresolves is expansion:outwardspatially,and its recurrent cyclicaldown-turns the basic of the market remember internallyin termsof the 'freeing' good forthe buyerand bad for the ambivalence aboutthe freemarket, labour of semi-proletarian seller via the steady proletarianization land. of semi-market-oriented and the steadycommercialization havelogicallimits.In the caseof geographical Bothof theseprocesses expansion,these limits were largelyreachedby the beginningof the thereis still much twentiethcentury.In the caseof internalexpansion, room. The worldis probablyhalfway,more or less, in the processof freeingthe factorsof production.But here too the world eventually approaches an asymptote,at which point the possibilityof resolving and therebywe will enterinto a economiccriseswill largelydisappear, true crisisof the systemas such. limitsare the curvesof politicalrepression. Linkedto thesestructural (all knownsystemshitherto)is only A systemof unequaldistribution whichis a functionof the relationof two curves, possibleby repression, of the upper strata to repress,the ability the ability and willingness of the lowerstratato rebel. and willingness the But over historicaltime, within the capitalistworld-economy, going downin strengthand the secondcurve firstcurveis continually is the is continually rising.The reasonis simple.The 'cost'of repression who are in fact of the surplusto the repressors, partial redistribution But each strata.The processis called 'co-optation'. the intermediate one, sinceit involves than the previous co-optation is less 'worthwhile' of the surpluscontrolled percentage furtherdeductionsfrom a declining by the top strata, in order to buy off once again the intermediate strata. (One does not 'buy off' lower strata. The whole point is to exploit them, whence comes the money with which one 'buys off' others,that is, sharesthe spoils.) approLet us be clear what we are saying. Even if the world-wide aboutas high in recentdecades has remained priationof the producers of world-economy, the distribution as in earlierperiodsof the capitalist strata. this surplushas begunto shiftfromthe top to the intermediate

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Immanuel Wallerstein

This is politicallycrucial.The so-called'riseof the middle classes'is oftenseenas politically stabilizing, because it is allegedthisis depriving the lower strata of their leadership.I see it quite diffierently. It is politicallydestabilizing becauseit is deprivingthe top strataof a prize high enoughto be worthstrugglingfor. This is the 'failureof nerve' that is settingin. Conversely, the lowerstrataare in fact becomingever betterorganized, not despite but because of the 'riseof the middleclasses'. This rise has in fact made it ever clearerthat the interests of the producers are nottied to the needs and demandsof the intermediate strata (as expressed historically in reformmovements and ethno-national demands for spatial reorganization of the distribution of profits). However the continuingtechnologicaladvancesof the capitalist economy are creating possibilities of toliticalorganizationof direct producers unknownin previouseras. Furthermore, in rebellion,successleadsto success in the senseof revealingits potentials. To resumethis simpleand simplified picture,the transition froma capitalistworld-economy to a socialistworld-government in whichwe are living and whichwill take a long time to complete,is theoretically the consequence of two seculartrends:the potentialexhaustion of the limits of structural expansionwhich is requiredto maintainthe economicviabilityof the capitalistsystem;the closingof the gap between the two politicalcurvesof the will to fightof the rulinggroupsand the directproducers ona world level. < What is cripplingabout a developmentalist perspective is the fact that theselarge-scale historical processes arenot evendiscussable, if one usesthe politico-cultural entity (the 'state')as the unit of analysis. It is only by recognizing that it is world-systems we muststudythat we can begin to locate the data of modernhistory,both those that are 'universal'and thosethat are 'particular', within the processof the social structures the worldhas seen over historical time. It is only then,too, thatwe can beginto be 'scientific' abouta central naturalphenomenon, the humangroup, and 'humane'in opting for the possiblechoicesthat will in fact enableus, all of us, to reachour potentialsand createour worldswithinour limits. Immanuel Wallerstein StateUniversity of Jew Bork at Binghampton

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