Cardoso and Faletto, and Marini, Bambirra through The Comparative Study of National Societies: Substantive Aspects

This text is the second and final part of the article published in the previous issue (No. 42) of Almanaque Histórico Lati-noamericano on an attempt of intellectual history on the sim-ultaneous origin between dependency theory and world-systems analysis. Both parts should be read together. The aim of this sequel is precisely to deepen the argument as to why the world-systems perspective is not a mere American -or “gringo”- derivative of dependency theory. If the first part fo-cused on the “formal” aspects in terms of the theoretical properties and focal units used by the dependency theorists in their respective theoretical/historical analyses when ana-lyzed through the methodological lenses of Hopkins and Wal-lerstein, this second part will delve into the divergent “sub-stantive” aspects between the two perspectives. The latter concerns, first, the move from the comparative study of na-tional societies to the study of global totalities along with the epistemological, methodological and empirical problems this entails. Secondly, as a metatheoretical question, to criticize to what extent dependency theory really overflows or surpasses “methodological nationalism” or whether it would only con-sist of a study of the (failed) nationalization of societies in the peripheries of the world-system together with the political significance that this entails. The text concludes with a brief review of both parts and considers an early critique of the an-alytical text of Hopkins and Wallerstein which marked the further development of the latter's analysis of “multinational studies” in the direction of the world-system perspective.