Terence Hopkins


Terence Kilbourne Hopkins was an American historical sociologist who collaborated with Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi and others on world systems theory. Among world systems scholars, he was "considered the specialist on all methodological questions".

Life

Hopkins gained a PhD in sociology in Columbia University, where he taught from 1958 to 1968. He worked there in a research group led by Karl Polanyi.
From 1968 to 1970, he was visiting professor at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. In 1970, he founded a graduate program in sociology at Binghamton University and taught there until retirement in 1995. He helped found the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton. On the occasion of his retirement, his students came from all over the world to hold a celebration conference; it was published as Mentoring, Methods, and Movements, highlighting his central contributions.
Hopkins argued that the standard Marxist interpretation of class formation and state formation needed to be reworked, Christopher Chase-Dunn wrote.

Works