v6n2-martin-Still Partners and Still Dissident After All These Years?

Still Partners and Still Dissident After All These Years? Wallerstein, World Revolutions and the World-Systems PerspectiveWilliam G. Martini. the demise of world-systems analysis?his essay owes its origins to the provocative title of a recent article Tby Immanuel Wallerstein: “The Rise and Future Demise of World-systems Analysis” (1998a). “Demise”? What might this mean? The title evokes, of course, Wallerstein’s pathbreaking 1974 essay that spoke of “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System.” Twenty-fi ve years later, Wallerstein is bold enough to speak of the demise of the perspective, a perspective that now encompasses a global group of schol-ars. For world-systems scholarship has, since 1974, thrived in book series, journals, universities and professional organizations—creating in the pro-cess a world-systems diaspora scattered around the planet. To speak of the future, much less the demise, of world-historical schol-arship thus raises a critical issue for a large group of scholars and programs not just in Binghamton, or even the United States, but around the world. And we do indeed face, as several of our elder scholars have noted, an uncertain future—especially as we seek to secure the conditions to sus-tain the next, third generation of world-systems scholars. It is in relation to this larger group that I pose the question: What were the origins of the William G. MartinFernand Braudel CenterBinghamton UniversityState ...