Immanuel Wallerstein

Wallerstein first became interested in world affairs as a teenager in New York City, and was particularly interested in the anti-colonial movement in India at the time. He attended Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in 1951, an M.A. in 1954 and a Ph.D. degree in 1959, and subsequently taught until 1971, when he became professor of sociology at McGill University. As of 1976, he served as distinguished professor of sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY) until his retirement in 1999, and as head of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations until 2005. Wallerstein held several positions as visiting professor at universities worldwide, was awarded multiple honorary degrees, intermittently served as Directeur d’études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and was president of the International Sociological Association between 1994 and 1998. During the 1990s, he chaired the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences.

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Articles

The Geopolitics of Arab Turmoil

September 27th, 2012

In 1822, the Foreign Minister of Great Britain, George Canning, sent a memo to his Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, in which he laid out what he considered, should be the basic principle of Great Britain’s foreign policy:
“[We should not consider] the wishes of any other government, or the interests of any other people, [...]

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Commentaries

Syria: No Win for the West

May 15th, 2013

Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria. I shall call the two positions those of the interveners and those of the prudent. Each accuses the other, and with some vehemence, of urging policies that will result in dire negative consequences for U.S. and west European geopolitical power.

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