In this new edition of a classic work - now with a new preface - on the roots of social scientific thinking, Immanuel Wallerstein develops a thorough-going critique of the legacy of nineteenth-century social science for social thought in the new millennium. We have to unthink - radically revise and discard - many of the presumptions that still remain the foundation of dominant perspectives today. Once considered liberating, these notions are now barriers to a clear understanding of our social world. They include, for example, ideas built into the concept of development. In place of such a...

In The Uncertainties of Knowledge, Immanuel Wallerstein extends his work over the last decade of elucidating the crisis of knowledge in current intellectual thought. Arguing that the current disciplinary divisions of academia - divisions produced by a previous crisis of knowledge - has left us trapped in a paradigm that assumes knowledge is a certainty that can help us explain the social world, Wallerstein offers us a new way of imagining the social sciences, one which allows for uncertainties and for methods of studying our world and its historical place.

In The Uncertainties of Knowledge, Immanuel Wallerstein extends his work over the last decade of elucidating the crisis of knowledge in current intellectual thought. Arguing that the current disciplinary divisions of academia - divisions produced by a previous crisis of knowledge - has left us trapped in a paradigm that assumes knowledge is a certainty that can help us explain the social world, Wallerstein offers us a new way of imagining the social sciences, one which allows for uncertainties and for methods of studying our world and its historical place.

Immanuel Wallerstein draws on a lifetime of study of long-term historical change to shed light in his newest book on the consequences of the recent, significant turn in U.S. foreign and economic policies. Alternatives shows how the U.S. has been in decline since the 1970s and how these longer trends dovetail with current Bush administration policies, which he describes as an attempt to reverse the decline in ways that are disastrous to the future of the country and the world. The book's middle section is a log of insightful commentaries written between 2001 and 2004 detailing how the Bush...

Immanuel Wallerstein draws on a lifetime of study of long-term historical change to shed light in his newest book on the consequences of the recent, significant turn in U.S. foreign and economic policies. Alternatives shows how the U.S. has been in decline since the 1970s and how these longer trends dovetail with current Bush administration policies, which he describes as an attempt to reverse the decline in ways that are disastrous to the future of the country and the world. The book's middle section is a log of insightful commentaries written between 2001 and 2004 detailing how the Bush...

This book tells the story of how the very idea of two cultures-the so-called divorce between science and the humanities-was a creation of the modern world-system. The contributors, working from a common research framework, trace the divorce of "facts" and "values" as part of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This led to a polarization between universalist "science" and the particularist "humanities" and finally to the creation of the social sciences as an uneasy intermediary in this epistemological debate. The book addresses the contemporary attempts to overcome the division...

Everyone agrees the world is changing in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War and with a supposedly new globalization. But are these the essential changes? In order to see where the world is headed in the next quarter-century, it is crucial to analyse correctly where it has been since 1945. It is the contention of this book that the post-1945 world already saw its major moment of change in the years 1967-73, a moment in which there was a conjuncture of three major turning-points, each leading to a downturn. These comprise, in the short-term, the end of the world economic expansion in the...

Preeminent theoreticians of the world economy set out their understanding of the long-term dynamics of global capitalism.

Making Waves unearths the successive, worldwide waves of revolts, rebellions, and revolutions that have shaken and remade the world from the eighteenth century to the present. It challenges us to rethink not only our limited conceptions of social movements but the very character and possibilities of social movements. The authors show how successive outbursts of global social protest have undermined world capitalist orders and, through both their successes and their failures, provided the basis for long periods of stable capitalist rule across all the zones of the world-economy. The surprises...

Since they were heralded as a key weapon in the fight against climate change, agrofuels have been criticised heavily for doing more harm than good due to deforestation and stealing agricultural land essential to farmers in the developing world. This book asks whether there is any place for agrofuels in a low-carbon future.
Francois Houtart argues that the green potential of agrofuels has been wasted by businesses that put profits above environmental protection. This has led to the absurd situation where an energy source that should be sustainable actually increases human and ecological...