RIP Immanuel Wallerstein — “This is the end; this is the beginning” — Oleg Komlik

Wallerstein lived a deep commitment to justice, scholarship and change. He has written dozens of remarkable and award-winning books, hundreds of influential papers, thousands of shrewd commentaries. His superb, eye-opening and insightful World‑Systems Analysis (culminated in four-volume masterpiece: 1974, 1980, 1989 and 2011) has transformed the way we understand history, capitalism, colonialism, social sciences, and the present turbulent times. Wallerstein was one of those rare academics whose research has been essentially revealing and paradigm shifting.

But there was more to it than that:

“World-systems analysis“, he once stated, “is not a theory but a protest against neglected issues and deceptive epistemologies… It is an intellectual task that is and has to be a political task as well, because — I insist –the search for the true and the search for the good is but a single quest. If we are to move forward to a world that is substantively rational, in Max Weber’s usage of this term, we can neglect neither the intellectual nor the political challenges. And neither can we separate these from each other. We can only struggle uneasily with both challenges simultaneously, and push forward as best we can.” (2000: xxii)

Emmanuel Wallerstein was a pioneer and a man before his time. It is becoming more and more obvious that the future lies in world systems theory and world systems analysis, if we hope to make as a species enjoying anything like the present degree of civilization as we face a mass culling owing to challenges emerging from having seized emergent opportunity through technological innovation.

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
RIP Immanuel Wallerstein — “This is the end; this is the beginning”

Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies