Unthinking Social Science

Unthinking Social Science: Limits of
Nineteenth-Century Paradigms (Second

Edition)
Immanuel Wallerstein
In this work on the roots of social scientific

thinking, Immanuel Wallerstein develops a
thorough-going critique of the legacy of
nineteenth-century social science for social
thought in the new millennium. We have to
unthink - radically revise and discard - many of the
presumptions that still remain the foundation of
dominant perspectives today. Once considered
liberating, these notions are now barriers to a clear
understanding of our social world. ...
... They include, for example, ideas built into the concept of development. In
place of such a notion, Wallerstein stresses transformations in time and space.
Geography and chronology should not be regarded as external influences upon
social transformations but crucial to what such transformation actually is.
Unthinking Social Science applles the ideas thus elaborated to a variety of
theoretical areas and historical problems. Wallerstein also offers a critical
discussion of the key figures whose ideas have influenced the position he
formulates - including Karl Marx and Fernand Braudel, among others. In the
concluding sections of the book, Wallerstein demonstrates how these new
insights.
"The important subject (of this book) is the nature of the knowledge we
generate...Wallerstein argues that the paradigms we work through with their
associated agendas, frameworks, and debates have become fundamental
restraints on understanding our social world. They are a legacy of the nineteenth
century, and it is time for them to be replaced. Hence, Wallerstein is not a
revisionist; rather than 'rethink,' he believes we must 'unthink' the paradigms
that fetter both our thought and practice. That is what Wallerstein's world-
systems analysis is all about—it is not a theory about the social world, but a
'protest' against how social scientific inquiry is structured...Wallerstein relocates
epistemology at the center of our critical concerns for society." — Annals of the
Association of American Geographers
Reviewed by Peter J. Taylor
Anybody browsing through this book will find difficulty in resisting deeper
engagement. With chapter titles such as 'Does India Exist?" and 'Capitalism:
The Enemy of the Market," a reader would have to be brain-dead not to be
intrigued by what is on offer here. The offering is in fact a collection of
Immanuel Wallerstein's essays originally published between 1982-91 in a wide
range of quite disparate outlets. The book passes the first test of such volumes;
the essays do constitute a coherent body of ideas on an important subject and
hence warrant being brought together under one cover.
The important subject is the nature of the knowledge we generate as social

science. Wallerstein argues that the paradigms we work through with their
associated agendas, frameworks, and debates have become fundamental
constraints on understanding our social world. They are a legacy of the
nineteenth century, and it is time for them to be replaced. Hence Wallerstein is
not a revisionist; rather than "rethink," he believes we must "unthink" the
paradigms that fetter both our thought and practice. That is what Wallerstein's
world-systems analysis is about-it is not a theory about the social world, but a
"protest" against how social scientific inquiry is structured (p. 237). There is no
"replacement paradigm" here, merely the encouragement to search for its like.
Put another way, Wallerstein relocates epistemology at the center of our critical
concerns for society.
There are twenty essays divided into six parts. In part one, it is shown that the
ways we think about our social world is part of the fall- out of that great "world-
historical event," the French Revolution, honed through the nineteenth century
to be bequeathed to us as an unproblematic world view. Two key elements of
this paradigm then become the subject-matter of parts two and three. The idea
of development, our celebration of the progress myth, is at the very heart of
contemporary social thinking-there is no government anywhere in the world
whose policy is not to enhance the "development" of its country. "Catching up"
is the great illusion of our time. In contrast the "great omission" of our time is
the idea of time and space as being constitutive of social processes. Instead, the
common sense and social science view of them as the container of social events
has been accepted unproblematically, which Wallerstein attempts to rectify in
part three with his notion of TimeSpace. His epistemology is not about
countries marching through time to the promised land. Parts four and five then
deal with how Wallerstein relates his ideas to Marx and Braudel respectively.
Clearly he borrows many ideas from each but his project aspires to go beyond
both. In the final part, world-systems analysis is presented as one "unthinking"
of social science.
All of this material is relevant to geographers in many ways. Our discipline is

part of the nineteenth-century legacy that is to be unthought, although
Wallerstein recognizes geography as always marginal to the orthodox social
science project. Hence he is able to assert that "Maps are a neglected tool of the
historical social sciences" (p. 61) and locates geographical research tasks at the
center of future scientific endeavors. In addition, the neglect of theorizing space
is at the heart of Wallerstein's epistemological concerns, and so he qualifies as
the latest of a whole cohort of social scientists who are "bringing
space/geography back in." Since geographers are probably most familiar with
Wallerstein's ideas on development and his world-systems analysis, here I will
concentrate upon his interpretations of Marx, Braudel and TimeSpace.
Chapter 11, on "Marx and Underdevelopment," is Wallerstein's clearest

statement on his relations with Marxism. He identifies the three "primary
messages" drawn from Marx's work by his orthodox followers as giving priority
to the proletariat, the "advanced" countries and industrial capital in the
economic and political processes of our social world. Taking each in turn,
Wallerstein quotes Marx at length to show that he provided "significant
cautions" (p. 153) concerning such interpretations of his work. The purpose of
this exercise is not to find the "correct Marx"-no such entity exists- but to begin
to understand the contradictions and ambiguities in Marx in order to make sense
of the cul de sac that is orthodox Marxism. In this argument, Wallerstein goes
beyond previous "discoveries" of a "Third-Worldist Marx" by enumerating six
major theses (pp. 160-61) from Marx that are still relevant today, but only if
interpreted at the level of the world-economy and not separate states.
In chapter 13, Braudel is treated very differently. His Annales school of history
is seen as one of three resistances to the "Anglo-Saxon" (first Britain, then the
U.S.) intellectual hegemony of "universalizing-sectorializing thought" (p. 195).
Along with German Staatswissen-schaften and Marxist theory, the Annales
historians rejected both the search for universal laws (= projecting "Anglo-
Saxon" preferences) and the division of social knowledge into specialized
disciplines. Hence at the time when geographers were engaged in their
nomothetic versus idiographic debate, Braudel was transcending these
categories in his holistic history. Above all Braudel is a "homme de la
conjuncture," with the Annales resisting in the French academy as a "third
force" in the period of the cold war (p. 196). It is in this spirit that we should
understand Braudel's unusual definition of capitalism in terms of monopoly
dominance-the antithesis of competitive markets, no less-which Wallerstein
celebrates in chapters 14 and 15 as turning capitalism "upside down." I think
Wallerstein is correct in arguing that social scientists have yet to appreciate the
challenge Braudel's work represents.
In his development of the notion of TimeSpace as constitutive of social systems

in chapter 10, Wallerstein combines specific types of "social spaces" with
Braudel's well-known "social times." Although very interesting, this does not
appear to be successful. Although the typology works when adding the
structural space of core-periphery to Braudel's structural time, the tongue duree,
other combinations are not adequately justified. Perhaps this is our problem in
seeing space and time as a single construct when we are used to treating them as
separate dimensions. I think it is more than this. The problem is Wallerstein's
method of equating a particular type of space with one type of time. This is
actually quite a big step in limiting combinations and I do not think we have yet
thought enough about a single "space-time" construct to constrain our
theoretical options so. Wallerstein says as much when he finally offers his "five
kinds of TimeSpace" as "starting down a very difficult, very unsettling road of
questioning one of the bedrocks of our intelligence, our certainties about space
and time" (p. 148).
Wallerstein's ultimate purpose is to construct frameworks that illuminate rather

than presume the historical choices that lie ahead (p. 184). His framework for
space and time may be premature but in general we are provided with
patternings of constructs that are invariably insightful and force us to "unthink."
In this con- text, the first and the final chapters are perhaps the key to the whole
project. Chapter 1 sets up what we have to unthink in terms of frameworks that
link world ideologies with social sciences and political movements that between
them define our twentieth-century (ne'e nine-teenth-century) certainties. Chapter
20 describes Wallerstein's prescription for the "second phase" of world-systems
analysis which confronts the economy-polity-society trinity as separate arenas
of social action (p. 271). If none of the trinity can ever be autonomous, what is
the function of the division of social action in the modern world-system? Rather
than reflect reality, perhaps our social science, including so-called
multidisciplinary studies that reify the divisions, obscures that reality. This
illustrates my final point. Opponents of world-systems analysis often treat it as a
dogma. Readers of this book will appreciate that its raison d'etre is to open up
questions, not close them down.
Contents:
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction: Why Unthink?
Part I: The Social Sciences: From Genesis to Bifurcation

1. The French Revolution as a World-Historical Event
2. Crises: The World-Economy, the Movements, and the Ideologies
Part II: The Concept of Development

3. The Industrial Revolution: Cui Bono?
4. Economic Theories and Historical Disparities of Development
5. Societal Development, or Development of the World-System?
6. The Myrdal Legacy: Racism and Underdevelopment as Dilemmas
7. Development: Lodestar or Illusion?
Part III: Concepts of Time and Space

8. A Comment on Epistemology: What is Africa?
9. Does India Exist?
10. The Inventions of TimeSpace Realities: Towards an Understanding of our
Historical Systems
Part IV: Revisiting Marx

11. Marx and Underdevelopment
12. Marxisms as Utopias: Evolving Ideologies
Part V: Revisiting Braudel

13. Fernand Braudel, Historian, "homme de la conjoncture"
14. Capitalism: The Enemy of the Market?
15. Braudel on Capitalism, or Everything Upside Down
16. Beyond Annales?
Part VI: World-Systems Analysis as Unthinking
17. Historical Systems as Complex Systems
18. Call for a Debate about the Paradigm
19. A Theory of Economic History in Place of Economic Theory?
20. World-Systems Analysis: The Second Phase

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Unthinking Social Science: Limits of

Nineteenth-Century Paradigms (Second

In this work on the roots of social scientific

Reviewed by Peter J. Taylor

The important subject is the nature of the knowledge we generate as social

All of this material is relevant to geographers in many ways. Our discipline is

Chapter 11, on "Marx and Underdevelopment," is Wallerstein's clearest

In his development of the notion of TimeSpace as constitutive of social systems

Wallerstein's ultimate purpose is to construct frameworks that illuminate rather

Part I: The Social Sciences: From Genesis to Bifurcation

Part II: The Concept of Development

Part III: Concepts of Time and Space

Part IV: Revisiting Marx

Part V: Revisiting Braudel

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