World Systems Theory
Unlike former sociological theories, which presented general models of social change with particular focus at the societal level, world-systems theory explores the role and relationships between societies (and the subsequent changes produced by them). A theory primarily developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and his colleagues in response to the many new activities in the capitalist world-economy during the mid 1970s, world-systems theory derives its self from two key intellectual sources, the neo-Marxist literature on development and the French Annales School.
In Wallerstein’s 1987 publication, “World-System Analysis,” he proclaims that world-systems theory is “a protest against the way in which social scientific inquiry is structured for all of us at its inception in the middle of the nineteenth century.” He goes on to criticize the prevailing conception of Dependency Theory, and argues that the world is much too complicated to be classified as a bimodal system, a system with only cores and peripheries. It is in this light that one of the main tenets of world-systems theory appeared, the belief in the semi-periphery, which created a tri-modal system consisting of the core, semi-periphery, and periphery.
Methodology As a social science discipline, world-systems theory rejects the artificial disciplinary school boundaries, arguing instead, for example, that the schools of political science, anthropology, and sociology are one in the same. Progress of nations is established as having both the possibilities of upward or downward mobility, instead of the formerly perceived unidirectional development plans noticed in other theories such as Functionalism. World-systems theory also rejects the notion of the bimodal system, instead developing a new form of tri-modal development containing a core, semi-periphery, and periphery. In addition, world-systems theorists argue that the current state of capitalism promotes exploitation through the use of broadening and deepening, resulting in a case of underdevelopment in the periphery. Its implication suggests establishing a truly democratic world, in which all oppressed peoples should be united, and that the present system of development is unsustainable with the inevitability of collapse due at some point in the future.