Outflanking world-system analysis: Silent struggle over the meaning of centres and peripheries of knowledge production

Abstract

Demarcating between centres, peripheries and semi-peripheries has always been a challenging task and topic of scholarly debate. Layers of complexity are added when one writes about centres and peripheries of knowledge production. This paper argues that much of this complexity stems from the conflation of two approaches: Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system analysis and Joseph Ben-David’s strongly anti-Marxist sociology of science. First, the paper presents the causes of their ostensible similarity, contextualising the relations of both sociologists with US informal imperialism, which motivated them to outflank each other, rather than attack each other openly. The paper then shows that both Wallerstein and Ben-David describe historical geopolitical inequalities, changes in the position of the centre, and the possibility of multiple centres. However, Ben-David conceptualised centres and peripheries of science as competition without end, ruled by scientific universalism. For Wallerstein, academia plays a supplementary role to the economic system, with universities as places of constant social struggle, and the universalism of science entering a deep crisis. By conducting this detailed comparison, the paper sheds light on substantial differences between Wallerstein’s and Ben-David’s approaches and shows how influential contemporary sociological works either conflate them or outflank world-system analysis by undermining its Marxist roots.