The Development of an Intellectual Position
Immanuel Wallerstein
This text is a very slightly adapted version of the introductory essay to The Essential Wallerstein (New Press, 2000).
My intellectual biography is one long quest for an adequate explanation of contemporary reality, so that I and others might act upon it. The quest was both intellectual and political, and I have always felt it could not be one without being at the same time the other — for me or for anyone.