World-systems analysis
Journal: Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)
Year: 2018

World-systems analysis studies the development of our world-system. Its units of analysis to explain social change are not nation-states, but world-systems. There were until the nineteenth century many different and dissimilar types of world-systems – world-empires and world-economies - in the world. These have over the centuries been subjugated by the capitalist world-economy which emerged at the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. Analysing these long term historical processes is central in worl