Immanuel Wallerstein

Ever since the Enlightenment, Western intervention around the world has been justified by appeals to notions of civilization, development, and progress. The assumption has been that such ideas are universal, encrusted in natural law. But, as Immanuel Wallerstein argues in this short and elegant philippic, these concepts are, in fact, not global. Rather, their genesis is firmly rooted in European thought and their primary function has been to provide justification for powerful states to impose their will against the weak under the smoke screen of what is supposed to be both beneficial to humankind and historically inevitable.

With great acuity Wallerstein draws together discussions of the idea of orientalism, the right to intervene, and the triumph of science over the humanities to explain how strategies designed to promote particular Western interests have acquired an all-inclusive patina.

Wallerstein concludes by advocating a true universalism that will allow critical appraisal of all justifications for intervention by the powerful against the weak. At a time when such intervention—in the name of democracy and human rights—has returned to the center stage of world politics, his treatise is both relevant and compelling.

A prolific, provocative, "big-picture" theorist.

-- Booklist

Wallerstein's ideas are compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought.

-- Fernand Braudel

An impressive and complex study of European society5 stars

Reviewed on 2006-06-08

European Universalism: The Rhetoric Power Of Immanual by Wallerstein (Senior Research Scholar at Yale, Director Emeritus of the Ferdand Braudel Center at Binghamton University, and researcher at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris) is an impressive and complex study of European society, its political and cultural paradigms and western cultural ideals. European Universalism explores the developmental attributes of the United States as an imperial power in juxtaposition to the European philosophical notions of progress and domination. A work of impressive and original scholarship, European Universalism is to be given high praise for its conceptual documentation as a comparative, eurocentric, sociological study of European and American political, cultural, and social values.

A Powerful Work5 stars

Reviewed on 2009-02-06

This book is presented in two parts. The first is an analysis about whether a nation-state has the right to intervene into another nation-state. The discussion that he uses is between two Spanish priests who are discussing whether they could convert the Native Americans that they had conquered.

The second part of this book takes a critical look at theory that has been developed in the "west" and then applied to the world with the believe that it is the one truth. The book although short is extremely advanced and is not a light read. I recommend this book to anyone who do not adhere to the neo-liberal thought, or who want to look at state intervention into areas that are not under the state's power. Wallerstein is not all business I even found my self chuckling in a couple of places as he mocks the more ridiculous theoretical claims. Although difficult it is a highly recommended read.

German 2007,

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