Interestingly, both Marxists and humanists reject world-systems theory on the grounds that it ignores people’s capacity to overcome these forces and act out of their own free will.
Overall, opponents of world-system theory take issue with the blurring of political, economic, socio-cultural forces into one “world-system” which doesn’t take into account the real complexity and agency of all the disparate firms and actors that shape the world we live in. Rather, it provides just one lens through which we can understand certain dimensions of continuity in modern economic and geopolitical history and contemporary society.
Summary and closing thoughts
World-systems theory is an analytical framework for understanding global history and social change, derived by Immanuel Wallerstein from aspects of Marxism, dependency theory, and The Annales School. World-systems theory suggests that there are historical continuities between colonial dynamics of power and contemporary, global capitalism. Such is evident between the relative poverty, inequality, and instability exhibited in the global South as compared to the global North.
World-systems theory operates under the assertion that underdeveloped regions are so precisely because other regions have developed at their expense. According to world-systems analysis, much of “international development” deserves a closer look in terms of the ways in which aid and foreign investment come with an ulterior motive of maintaining global hegemony. It argues that these provisions keep so-called developing countries indebted to the global North and open for resource extraction. World-systems theory also contends that trajectories of development with the industrialized West as its lodestar are both mythical and problematic. Wallerstein argues that the world’s resources could not sustain full global development at the current Western standard and an approach that sees every country on the same fixed trajectory of development actually helps make underlying processes of globalized capital accumulation more palatable in the name of “progress.”
While world-systems theory offers a useful framework for understanding processes and continuities in history and society from an economic lens, its critics argue that it has its limitations: it can overlook factors like ethnicity and religion, reify the hegemonic role of the global North, and adopt too broad a scope.
Still, world-systems theory remains a salient, multidisciplinary framework for analyzing global supply chains, international development, political economy, postcolonial studies, and more. Theorists have taken up some of its criticisms and have worked to more closely integrate analyses of race, gender, and culture into world-systems theory. Today, it is especially prevalent in making sense of the uneven impacts of climate change around the globe. Thus, it continues to be a dynamic and useful tool for unearthing connections and continuities in an increasingly complex international landscape.
Further reading on Perlego
Andre Gunder Frank and Global Development: Visions, Remembrances, and Explorations, edited by Patrick Manning and Barry K. Gills
Historical Capitalism by Immanuel Wallerstein
Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the Limits to China's Economic Growth by Minqi Lee
World Development And Economic Systems: Theory And Applications by S. I. Cohen
The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, edited by Immanuel Wallerstein
The Global Political Economy of Raúl Prebisch, edited by Matias E. Margulis