What is world-systems research and how did it emerge from the student movements of 1968? What is “diagonalism” as a mode of organization for meaningful theory and social change? From a world-systems perspective, what are the major global changes that are likely to occur within the next 30 years, and how might social movements influence those changes? In particular, what will U.S. and global higher education look like 30 years down the road?
We explore these questions and more with our guest Christopher Chase-Dunn, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California-Riverside. Chase-Dunn specializes in “crossnational quantitative studies of the effects of dependence on foreign investment” as well as “studies cities and settlement systems in order to explain human sociocultural evolution. His research focuses on interpolity systems, including both the modern global political economy and earlier regional world-systems.” He is the founder and a former editor of the Journal of World-Systems Research and a Series Co-Editor of a related book series with Springer Verlag. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001. We join him today as he prepares for retirement and reflects on his career is it developed in the foment of the 68 student movements.
*For more on world systems research, see: The Institute for Research on World Systems
** For more on his work with the SETPOL Research Group, see: Settlements and Polities (SETPOL) Research Working Group