ABSTRACT
This chapter interprets the seven reformers through the concept of antisystemic movements, which is one of the elements of geoculture within Wallerstein’s Modern World-System approach. After briefly summarizing Wallerstein’s statements on this concept, the chapter demonstrates that these reformers can be interpreted as representing antisystemic movements. This is done by drawing from their writings and speeches with respect to three aspects, which are discussed by Wallerstein with respect to antisystemic movements: first, they usually vacillated between the cultural and the political option. Second, while they can be subsumed under the sub-type of ethnic/nationalist movements, their thought also contained more universalist religious elements. Third, just like the nationalist movements analysed by Wallerstein they, while not being unsympathetic, kept a distance from workers’ movements and expressed a lukewarm form of feminism. In the chapter’s conclusion, it is argued that Wallerstein’s account of antisystemic movements should be slightly modified, especially through adding religious movements as a fourth sub-type.
