Histories of the Present: Giovanni Arrighi &amp; the Long Duree of Geohistorical Capitalism

Thomas E Reifer

doi:10.5195/jwsr.2009.324

Abstract

One of the more telling features of the present conjuncture is the scarcity of analysis able to squarely place todays global turbulence and the current crises in geohistorical perspective. In terms of the longue duree of capitalism since its late medieval and early modern origins right up to the present, arguably no intellectual has developed a more formidable analysis of the present crisis than Giovanni Arrighi. Arrighi of course, along with Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989) and the late Terence Hopkins, was one of the originators and foremost proponents of the world-systems perspective on European domination, global capitalism, global income inequalities and development (see Arrighi, Hopkins & Wallerstein, 1989). The world-systems perspective itself challenging as it did the dominance of post-World War II modernization theory - came out the movements of the 1960s and brought together fruitful synthesis of Marxism, Third World radicalism, and critical currents in social science, from the work of the French Annales school to that of the German historical school (see Goldfrank 2000).

Highlights

Wallerstein and Hopkins developed the world-systems perspective at Columbia University and eventually migrated to Binghamton University in the 1970s
The conference in Madrid was intended to be a sort of reunion and an occasion to discuss the current crisis and Giovanni’s work in historical perspective
Trained in neoclassical economics in Italy and involved in a series of different business enterprises, Arrighi eventually migrated to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the early 1960s

Summary

Introduction

Wallerstein and Hopkins developed the world-systems perspective at Columbia University and eventually migrated to Binghamton University in the 1970s. On the question of capitalist agriculture Wallerstein and Brenner, despite their great differences, following in the tradition of the Annales focus on rural history have more in common with each other than with Arrighi’s Long Twentieth Century, in which agricultural capitalism plays little to no role in the origins of capitalist development on a world scale.

Results

Conclusion