Uncertainties of Time

Examining the concept of TimeSpace in the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and its crucial role within world-systems analysis, Uncertainties of Time brings together important but previously hard-to-access material from Wallerstein’s writings.

TimeSpace is a concept developed from his earliest days in the 1970s until well into the twenty-first century, drawing from the historian Fernand Braudel and the chemist Ilya Prigogine to rethink historical time’s two overlooked modes—long enduring or eternal time, on the one hand, and, on the other, uncertainty in world-systems. Wallerstein, thereby, invented a fresh version of historical social science that brought together the customary disciplines associated with economics, politics, and sociology.

This book is an essential volume for understanding Immanuel Wallerstein’s unique contributions to the understanding of the modern world-system, which he argued came to an end after the world revolution of 1968—leaving us now in an indeterminate world of chaos. This is thereby a sourcebook for researchers and students who care about the history and decline of our now chaotic world.