World - Systems Analysis , Globalization , and Incorporated Comparison *

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: from basic needs, through participation in the world market, globalization, to local sustainability. But development, the organizing myth of our age, has never recovered. The world-systemic critique of development succeeded in part because of its relevance to world conditions at the time. National developmentalism was unraveling as the shortcomings of the fi rst development decade were becoming clear, and as a global money market formed. The currency of the world-system critique owed considerably to the terms in which it was World-Systems Analysis, Globalization, and Incorporated Comparison*