Immanuel Wallerstein And The Problem Of The World: System, Scale, Culture,Used

Product DescriptionIn this collection of essays, leading cultural theorists consider the meaning and implications of worldscale humanist scholarship by engaging with Immanuel Wallersteins worldsystems analysis. The renowned sociologist developed his influential critical framework to explain the historical and continuing exploitation of the rest of the world by the West. Worldsystems analysis reflects Wallersteins conviction that understanding global inequality requires thinking on a global scale. Humanists have often criticized his theory as insufficiently attentive to values and objects of knowledge such as culture, agency, difference, subjectivity, and the local. The editors of this collection do not deny the validity of those criticisms; instead, they offer Wallersteins worldsystems analysis as a welldeveloped vision of the world scale for humanists to think with and against. Scholars of comparative literature, gender, geography, history, law, race, and sociology consider what thinking on the world scale might mean for particular disciplinary practices, knowledge formations, and objects of study. Several essays offer broader reflections on what is at stake for the study of culture in decisions to adopt or reject worldscale thinking. In a brief essay, Immanuel Wallerstein situates worldsystems analysis visvis the humanities.Contributors. Gopal Balakrishnan, Tani E. Barlow, Neil Brenner, Richard E. Lee, Franco Moretti, David PalumboLiu, Bruce Robbins, Helen Stacy, Nirvana Tanoukhi, Immanuel Wallerstein, Kren WigenReviewAs the current crisis of financial markets displays both its high level of economic uncertainty and its devastating geopolitical consequenceswith East and West, North and South progressively trading their placesthe prescience of Wallersteins worldsystems analysis appears admirable. But the authors of this book also demonstrate that it potentially affects the basic timespace determinants of every cultural critique. A timely and fruitful contribution.tienne Balibar, author of We, the People of Europe?This is a very compelling collection, one that is sure to be of interest to humanists and social scientists and to the growing number of programs in global studies. It turns to Immanuel Wallersteins largescale vision as a means of countering the historical damage done by largescale capitalism and acquiring a sharper understanding of the notion of system and of the contingencies of culture within it.Franoise Lionnet, coeditor of The Creolization of TheoryOne indication of such promise is the collection Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale,Culture... As the collection stages a conversation between worldsystems and literary and cultural studies, it brings Wallerstein into the optics of the known for colleagues who are neither in sociology nor history departments.Stephen Shapiro, Year's Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryThe collection of essays in this compilation ... should be of interest to scholars both in the humanities and the social sciences, as well as those in the growing number of global studies programs.Okori Uneke, International Social Science Review'The breadth and scope of the volume make it a valuable reference resource for anyone interested in the contribution and implications of worldsystems analysis to the humanities. The cogent analyses provided by the contributors offer a muchneeded indication of the ongoing transformations in the field. At the same time, the thoughtful account of the impact and consequences of Wallersteins approach will benefit students and scholars alikeespecially, those interested in developing a holistic approach for the explanation and understanding of the increasingly complex world system.Emilian Kavalski, ItinerarioAbout the AuthorDavid PalumboLiu is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.Bruce Robbins is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humani