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When Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) subverted the mid-1970s social science scene with his concept of the 'world-system,' development, the 'master' concept of social theory, suffered a fatal blow. Wallerstein's critique of development emphasized its misapplication as a national strategy in a hierarchical world where only some states can 'succeed.' Wallerstein's path-breaking epistemological challenge to the modernization paradigm reformulated the unit of analysis of development from the nation-state to the 'world-system.' To be sure, the past three decades have seen reformulations, coined to address the failures of the development enterprise: frombasic needs, through participation in the world market, globalization, to local sustainability. But development, the organizing myth of our age, has never recovered.

Liberalism is a system of norms and values elaborated by the European world-economy in the course of its constitutive process. It is a matter of organizational principles determining the acting subject, economic action, the state and, the entire picture of social imaginary, starting from the prescriptive nucleus of 'freedom' rights. The history of liberalism is the story of a methodical structuring of norms and values,which postulates a possessive and acquisitive subject in a system of ceaseless pursuit of endless accumulation. This methodical structuring had already begun in the XIII century with the formation of the Mediterranean world-economy, centered on the free city states of the Ital-ian peninsula.1 Initially, the above elaboration utilized elements of ancient both Graeco-Roman and Judaic-Christian organizational experience, but the identi?cation of a new nucleus adequate to the new system was not realized until the XVII century, with the establishment of Dutch hegemony in the world-system and the emerging English organizational power.

World-systems theory is analyzed in the context of general systems theory, outlining some basic concepts of the latter that are of particular relevance to the former. Particular attention is devoted to the notion of dissipative structures, borrowed from physical chemistry, which extended Newtonian mechanics to the study of open systems, ie, those that exchanged matter & energy with their environments. The characteristics of the world system as a dissipative structure are discussed, & contributions of the theory of dissipative structures to world-systems analysis are identified. 54 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

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In their reliance on the concept of a single, worldwide DofL, the world systems analysts overlook the emergence & growing significance of a second world system of Soviet-type (or socialist) states. The Soviet-type world system emerged with Soviet attempts to secure control over Eastern Europe due to a sequence of interrelated & mutually contingent processes: Soviet victory in WWII, development of a Soviet zone of influence, Sovietization of this zone, & a Soviet transnational camp. Then a new superstate structure -- the Soviet-type world system -- appeared with its own DofL & largely internal developmental dynamics. A new form of world systems analysis, one that acknowledges the existence of both a Western & a Soviet-type world system & addresses their incompatibility, competition, & yet their dialectical interdependence, is becoming indispensable. AA

This work explores essential debates on globalization and world-systems analysis. It begins with a review of theoretical insights from world-systems analysis and explains the evolution of its terminology. The book subsequently seeks to answer several important questions: When did globalization begin and what insights into contemporary globalization may be gained from older forms? How does globalization differ in different places, and how can different instances of globalization be compared? Who is affected by globalization, how are they affected, and how do these effects vary, if at all, over time and space? As world-systems analysis and studies of globalization require interdisciplinary expertise, the contributing authors draw on many fields, including anthropology, economics, geography, philosophy, political science, sociology, and world history. The book's overall goal is to facilitate the dialogue between approaches that, at times, seem to "talk at cross-purposes," and to extend an invitation to scholars from many different areas to explore globalization