Answer:
Modern World-System Analysis
On the surface, world-system analysis, as eloquently formulated by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein (b. 1930) in the 1970s, appears deceptively simple. Wallerstein's world-system analysis is a grand narrative of world historical development from the sixteenth century to the present, with boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. The world-system is dynamic and constantly evolving, with "conflicting forces which hold it together by tension, and tear it apart as each group seeks externally to remold it to its advantage" (Wallerstein 1974, p. 347).
Wallerstein's modern world-system is specifically a capitalist world economy with capitalism defined as "the endless accumulation of capital" (Wallerstein 2004, p. 24). Using a metaphor that recalls the theories of Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723–1790), Wallerstein defines the world-system as a geographical division of labor. While the basic linkage is economic, the system is reinforced by political and cultural factors.
