Immanuel Wallerstein papers
Scope and Contents
The Immanuel Wallerstein papers contain materials from Professor Wallerstein’s careers at Columbia University, McGill University, and his academic positions and organizations he was affiliated with during his career at Binghamton University (SUNY Binghamton), including at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations. There is a small amount of material in the collection covering his time before becoming a professor, as well as the end of his career when he was at Yale University as a Senior Research Scholar. Early materials cover Wallertein's involvement in World Assembly of Youth (WAY), his education, and his research on African liberation movements. The collection includes miscellaneous publications and pamphlets.
Columbia University materials reflect Professor Wallerstein's tenure as a member of the Department of Sociology at Columbia University (1958-1971). These include correspondence, material from different organizations and conferences, manuscripts of book chapters written by Professor Wallerstein and revisions of the chapters, articles and reviews written by Professor Wallerstein, and material related to campus events at Columbia University in the 1960’s. Professor Wallerstein wrote about campus crises and some of the research material concerns other university campuses (ie: Kent State), but he utilized the Columbia University campus as part of his research as well.
Materials related to McGill University documents Professor Wallerstein’s activities and associations while in Montreal, both in an academic and civic capacity. He left Montreal in 1975, but maintained contact and association with organizations and individuals. Materials include course information, minutes and reports of various committees, departmental records, newsletters of McGill University Faculty Club, correspondence, annual reports, materials pertaining to OXFAM (a group of non-governmental organizations working worldwide to fight poverty); and material pertaining to grants.
Binghamton University Department of Sociology files represent Professor Wallerstein’s academic positions and organizations he was affiliated with during his career (1976-2000) at Binghamton University. Documents include course syllabi, departmental records, memos and correspondence, newsletters from various organizations, conference materials, and union information. Correspondents include publishers, journals, and conferences requesting Professor Wallerstein to contribute.
SUNY Press materials contain minutes of the editorial board, correspondence, reports, manuscripts, pamphlets, catalogs, texts, procedural guides, purchase orders, and advanced book information. Professor Wallerstein was a member of the SUNY Press Editorial Board.
American Sociological Council papers contain minutes, reports, pamphlets, questionnaires, newsletters, committee information and lists, workshop proposals, audit reports, project lists, catalogs, newsletters, workshop proposals, and correspondence. Professor Wallerstein was a member and held different offices for this organization during his tenure at Binghamton University.
Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations records represent Professor Wallerstein’s academic positions and organizations with which he was affiliated while the Director of the Fernand Braudel Center (1976-2005). Files contain correspondence; copies of papers and articles written by Wallerstein; publications from various organizations; manuscripts, and notes from several books by Wallerstein; correspondence with publishers; invitations requesting Professor Wallerstein to contribute to a particular journal, seminar, lecture, or conference; and correspondence pertaining to Professor Wallerstein’s review of articles, manuscripts and books.
Dates
- Creation: 1921 - 2018
Conditions Governing Access
This collection contains restricted materials and has not been fully processed. Please contact the University Archives & Special Collections in advance to request access or for more detailed content lists.
Biographical Note
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (September 28, 1930 – August 31, 2019) was an American sociologist and economic historian. He is best known for his development in sociology of world-systems theory.
Immanuel Wallerstein first became interested in world affairs as a teenager in New York City, and was particularly interested in the anti-colonial movement in India at the time. He attended Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in 1951, an M.A. in 1954 and a Ph.D. in 1959, and subsequently taught until 1971, when he left to become professor of sociology at McGill University. As of 1976, he served as distinguished professor of sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY Binghamton) until his retirement in 1999, and as head of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations (1976-2005). Wallerstein held several positions as visiting professor at universities worldwide, was awarded multiple honorary degrees, intermittently served as Directeur d’études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and was president of the International Sociological Association between 1994 and 1998. During the 1990s, he chaired the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. The object of the commission was to indicate a direction for social scientific inquiry for the next 50 years. In 2000 he joined the Yale Sociology department as Senior Research Scholar. In 2003 he received the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association.
Wallerstein wrote in three domains of world-systems analysis: the historical development of the modern world-system, the contemporary crisis of the capitalist world-economy, and the structures of knowledge. His books include The Modern World-System (4 vols.), Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the Twenty-first Century, and Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms.
Wallerstein died on August 13, 2019.
From the New York Times obituary of Wallerstein in 2019 by Neil Genzlinger:
"He wrote two books on [Africa] in the 1960s, Africa: The Politics of Independence and Africa: The Politics of Unity. ... His time in Africa, where colonialism was still in force, showed him the limits of much sociological scholarship.
"The student uprising at Columbia in 1968, as well as other events in that tumultuous year, resulted in a 1969 book, University in Turmoil: The Politics of Change.
"World-systems analysis, as he called his approach, occupied only a modest part of his wide-ranging scholarship, which also included numerous other books, among them Unthinking Social Science (1991), After Liberalism (1995), The Decline of American Power (2003), The Uncertainties of Knowledge (2004) and The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the 21st Century (1999).
"He was also fully engaged with the times, writing on current events throughout his career and sometimes being directly involved in them. In 1968, as a professor at Columbia University, he was part of a faculty committee that sought to mediate the student uprising there. In 2014 he delivered a lecture to more than 1,000 students in Iran, where his writings have been widely read because of his criticism of capitalism and his view that the United States is on a downward trajectory. An activist thread ran through his career and his writings.
"Dr. Wallerstein argued that no world-system, to use his term, lasts forever and that the current one, based on capitalism, is slowly disintegrating. For years he elaborated on these and other ideas in a series of commentaries on his website, written on the first and 15th of each month."
Extent
285 Linear Feet (approximately 285 linear feet)
Language of Materials
English
French
Spanish; Castilian
Portuguese
German
Italian
Russian
Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Germanic languages
Abstract
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1930–2019) was an American sociologist and economic historian. He is best known for his development in sociology of world-systems theory. The Immanuel Wallerstein papers contain materials from Professor Wallerstein’s careers at Columbia University, McGill University, and his academic positions and organizations he was affiliated with during his career at Binghamton University (SUNY) including the Fernand Braudel Center. There is a small amount of material in the collection covering his time before becoming a professor, as well as the end of his career when he was at Yale University as a Senior Research Scholar.
Other Finding Aids
There are some preliminary content lists for the collection that are available upon request. Please contact speccoll@binghamton.edu.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This collection was acquired from Immanuel Wallerstein in 1999, with additional materials received in 2006, 2011, 2019, and after his death. In addition to Immanuel Wallerstein’s papers, there is a large volume of books and other printed materials that have been or are being cataloged separately.
- Title
- Guide to the Immanuel Wallerstein papers
- Author
- Yvonne J. Deligato, Binghamton University Archivist, and Madison White, Archival Processing Manager
- Date
- 2024
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections Repository