Overview

The internationally renowned theorist contends that the sun is setting on the American empire in this ""lucid, informed, and insightful"" account (The New York Times). The United States currently finds itself [a] superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control. The United States in decline? Its admirers and detractors alike claim the opposite: America is now in a position of unprecedented global supremacy. But in fact, Immanuel Wallerstein argues, a more nuanced evaluation of recent history reveals that America has been fading as a global power since the end of the Vietnam War, and its response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 looks certain to hasten that decline. In this provocative collection, the visionary originator of world-systems analysis and the most innovative social scientist of his generation turns a practiced analytical eye to the turbulent beginnings of the twenty-first century. Touching on globalization, Islam, racism, democracy, intellectuals, and the state of the left wing, Wallerstein upends conventional wisdom to produce a clear-eyed-and troubling-assessment of the crumbling international order. ""[Wallerstein's thought] provides a new framework for the subject of European history... it is compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought."" -Fernand Braudel

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9781565848313

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Reviews

"""[Wallerstein's thought] provides a new framework for the subject of European history...it is compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought."" - Fernand Braudel; ""Lucid, informed, and insightful."" - New York Times; ""Provocative... likely to appeal to adventurous readers who like to challlenge conventional wisdom."" - Booklist"

""[Wallerstein's thought] provides a new framework for the subject of European history...it is compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought."" - Fernand Braudel; ""Lucid, informed, and insightful."" - New York Times; ""Provocative... likely to appeal to adventurous readers who like to challlenge conventional wisdom."" - Booklist

Some folks worry that America is embarking on a new course of world domination. Noted social scientist Wallerstein argues that our day in the imperial sun is already over. It seems counterintuitive to suggest, as the ashes of Baghdad cool, that US military power is waning, its political and economic might fizzling. But Wallerstein (Ecole des Hautes Etudes/Binghamton Univ.), known among academics for his world-system approach to history, maintains that the events of September 11, 2001, hold a fivefold lesson for America: its military power has severe limitations (else the terrorists would not have been able to launch such a devastating attack on the homeland); anti-American feeling is on the rise throughout the world; the economic binge of the 1990s was an aberration in a larger cycle of global impoverishment; civil liberties are ever fragile and steadily being whittled away; and American nationalism, with its twin strains of isolationism and macho militarism, is responsible for more than a few of the world's troubles. These essays, many drawn from journal articles, advance these arguments capably, though some of Wallerstein's lines of thought turn on assumptions that not all readers will share-among them the Marxian notion that capitalism necessarily sows the seeds of its own demise, and Wallerstein's apparently self-evident premise that state structures are declining across the planet, which will ipso facto increase the level of quotidian violence and global instability. To these assumptions Wallerstein adds the cheerful prediction that capitalism as we now know it will disappear in the coming century, once the world left stops affording it survival on the basis of the nonfulfillment of liberal rhetoric. What might replace it, of course, is anyone's guess, though Wallerstein holds out much hope for a relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian world. Provocative, if wholly arguable, and likely to enjoy wide circulation among the antiglobalism contingent. (Kirkus Reviews)

[Wallerstein's thought] provides a new framework for the subject of European history...it is compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought. - Fernand Braudel; Lucid, informed, and insightful. - New York Times; Provocative... likely to appeal to adventurous readers who like to challlenge conventional wisdom. - Booklist

Author Information

Immanuel Wallerstein is a senior research scholar in the department of sociology at Yale University and director emeritus of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University. He is also a resident researcher at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. His many books include The Modern World-System and Historical Capitalism. The New Press has published After Liberalism, The Decline of American Power, and a collection of his works, The Essential Wallerstein. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and Paris, France.

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