World-Systems Analysis

World-systems analysis is a historical-structural framework, founded by Immanuel Wallerstein in The Modern World-System (1974) and codified in his 2004 introduction, that takes as its unit of analysis not the nation-state but a single, integrated capitalist world-economy that has expanded since the long sixteenth century to encompass the globe. Within this world-economy a single axial division of labor binds together a hierarchy of zones — core, semiperiphery, and periphery — through which surplus flows unequally from peripheral to core regions. States, classes, and firms are understood by their position in this structure rather than as self-contained societies, and the system is read over the longue duree, attentive to long cycles of accumulation and to the rise and decline of successive hegemonic powers.