Definition
This essay examines the life and seminal contributions of US sociologist, economic historian, and world systems theorist Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019).
Early Life and Academic Influences
The child of German émigrés to the US, Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein was born in New York on 28 September 1930. Jews who had emigrated to Berlin from elsewhere in the Austro-Hungarian empire earlier in their lives, Wallerstein’s mother and father relocated once more to New York as did other members of his extended family to parts far and wide amidst the changing political situation in inter-war Germany (Wallerstein et al. 2012, p. 10). His early youth was imbued with a sense of political consciousness grounded in the polyglot culture of his parents and issues of Jewish nationalism, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the great split within the global left between the Second and...
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References
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Chaudhry, F.I. (2021). Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice (1930–2019). In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29901-9_336
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