Lecture 2

Braudel

Venice + Italy: developing of market economy
Trend in history and social sciences in the past
- Event-based history: discrete political events, wars
- Should not focus on events → mass of individual facts
- Doesn’t tell you much about history
- Lack of specificity
- How to stitch them together? What is truly important?
Must zoom out and look at long-term trends/patterns!
- Most particularly in sociology
We must talk about time in the social sciences

Short-term
- Ex: GDP calculations
Medium-term: economic
Long-term/longue durée: relatively stable social structures
- 500-600 years
- Advantage: longer scope → more info → more accurate predictions
- Looking at the broader context
- Combine short-term + long-term
Longest durée: 5 000/10 000 years
Economic equilibrium: prices will stabilize over time
Short-term event-based history
- Synchronic matter: nature of a system event
- Ex: structure of gendered labour now
- 2008 crash housing patterns
- Diachronic matter: over a long time frame - Braudel
- Ex: structure of gendered labour from 1800 - now
- Why did the 2008 crash happen?
- How do patterns develop?
^^Papers:^^
- Methodology sentence in papers: Here is the theory I am using, how it relates to what we are studying, here is why it is useful for my point of view
- Specify the time period

600 years long process - apply longue durée
- Discrete enough to study it
Single trend
Profits, colonial system, states classification, specialization + division of labour between states, pattern of continuous connection
Start: Western Europe accumulates capital and never lets it go
- Get a massive advantage

According to the prof, units of time should be based on the economic system
Patterns of colonialism, extraction: start at a particular point in time → 1450
- Economy of Europe and the world = started changing at this time

The economy must:
- Make it possible for globalization to happen
- Provide the motivation to undertake globalization
Globalization: sense of interconnection
Economy: should take into account reproductive labour
- Reproductive labour: need workers, habits (keep workers alive until working age), structure (ex: schools)
Structures:
- Material: bridges, ports, railways, industrial capacity → infrastructure
- Social: patterns of behaviour, practices

Profit and profit motive
Capital has to expand, it cannot sit still if you want to grow → capitalism
- Due to competitors
Transition to a market economy
- Different classes created (some are political leaders, some produce goods)
Constant accumulation of capital (infrastructure) by core states at the expense of peripheral states
Money
- Gold + silver brought to Europe → more money → more infrastructure accumulated

Other world systems (ex: Asia)
- We shouldn’t focus on them because they didn’t expand to the whole world (like Europe)
Other world systems: had many problems, so they didn’t expand

Evolution of capitalism: don’t look at it as a series of ruptures
Omnipresent inertia: uniform, inertia! Continuation of the same process: accumulation of capital + requirement of profits - Braudel
Problem: people are trying to make profits, and this can only happen through expansion
- They thus decide to fund overseas expeditions → people sent there bring back gold → profits
All institutions (state companies) are competing over resources → increased profits → expansion
What theory fits this idea and the longue durée? World Systems Theory
- Emergence of the capitalist world
- Wallerstein: this is not only defined by the wage-labour relations → colonialism, enslavement…
- Everything in the Americas was motivated by profit
  - This is why it makes sense to study this based on the economic system