Lecture 2

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

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