Postmodernism and World-System Analysis

Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Jürgen Habermas, are all sociological theorists that post modern theorist like Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, and David Harvey all agree are what is called Grad-theory. Grand-theory is supposed to be able to explain everything; each theorist explains a whole system. For example take Weber who develops theories on bureaucracy increase and how it affected the alienation of the people; he attempted to explain the increase levels of alienation. Grand-theories keep the status quo and as a result only depict one answer as a correct; typically these answers are determined by those in power, the Bourgeoisies for example. And those like the Proletarian, or minorities, who do not have power to depict the outcome, are force to follow the status quo.
One of the critics about Grand-theory is that since it only depicts one answer, it only depicts one narrative that of the elite. It ignores all other narratives from the rest of society. Some say that Grand- theory should be re-titled Grand-narrative. Grand-theory/narrative in a postmodern society would account for all narratives, of every person regardless of their status or power in a society. It will be up to an individual to decide whether they want to accept the narrative as reality or not.
In a postmodern world we need to understand our social reality and the meanings behind in our world, the way we accomplish this feat thorough the use of language. According to French linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure language has two components, Langue and Parole. Langue is the formal structure of language it is the structural dimension of language that is composed of the concrete system of shared meanings that is well defined and can be subjected to study. Parole is the...

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...alysis primarily on socio economic relations to explain social change. They are forgetting about the Nature-Culture relations. Wallerstein, Frank and Grills are too anthropocentric; they are to focus on human interactions and ignoring the natural reasons for contractions in the world system. Ultimately the economy is based on nature. If a natural disaster hits and limits nation’s resources or cuts them off from their resources the economy is going to being to fail and eventually collapse. When this occurs we see either a rapid contraction or an extend one this is labeled as a dark age. These periods of dark ages are not always harmfully, in the long run, nature gets a change to recover and heal from any damage that has occur, and cultures decentralized and hegemon falls, as a result after the dominate culture had fallen new cultures will blossom over time.