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

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Periods of social time

• 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

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• Economic equilibrium: prices will stabilize over time

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• 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?

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• ^^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

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What is globalization?

• 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

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• Start: Western Europe accumulates capital and never lets it go

  • Get a massive advantage

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Importance of economic analysis

• 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

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Globalization

• The economy must:

  • Make it possible for globalization to happen
  • Provide the motivation to undertake globalization

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• 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

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How did the modern world form through globalization?

• 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

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About other world economies…

• 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

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Motivation for globalization

• Need for constant profits

• Search for trade routes

• Accumulation of resources

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Why globalization fits the longue durée?

• 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

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• 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

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• All institutions (state companies) are competing over resources → increased profits → expansion

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• 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

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