The National and the Universial: Can There Be Such a Thing as World Culture?
Author(s)
Wallerstein, Immanuel
Abstract
I would start with a model of successive historical systems in which what is certain is only that there has been and will be a succession of systems, leaving quite open what both its content and its form might be. However the very concept of culture poses a paradox; as it is on the one hand particularistic and on the other hand a tacit reference to presumed universal or universalist values and criteria. How culture might be best understood, and whether or not a world culture is intelligible under such an understanding is the subject matter of this entry.
