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Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

1930–2019 United States

Immanuel Wallerstein (September 28, 1930 – August 31, 2019) was an American sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems analyst.

United States
Sociologists

Random Immanuel Wallerstein quote

5 quotes

And in the present we are all irremediably the products of our background, our training, our personality and social role, and the structured pressures within which we operate.

Wallerstein (1974)

The past can be told as it truly is, not was. For recounting the past is a social act of the present done by men of the present and affecting the social system of the present.

Wallerstein (1974)

Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.

The essential feature of a capitalist world-economy... is production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.

Wallerstein (1979)

It is simply not true that capitalism as a historical system has represented progress over the various previous historical systems that it destroyed or transformed. Even as I write this, I feel the tremour that accompanies the sense of blasphemy. I fear the wrath of the gods, for I have been moulded in the same ideological forge as all my compeers and have worshipped at the same shrines.

Wallerstein (1995)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Immanuel Wallerstein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.