THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF CAPITALISM
This unit studies capitalism as a contingent mode of organizing a variety of social, cultural, and political developments across diverse historical societies. Our purpose is to explore the histories that have come together to produce the economic world we live in and often take for granted as natural.
In the years since the 2008 financial crisis the explicit study of capitalism as a social, economic, political, and cultural process has been reinvigorated. This lecture course starts from the notion that the broad processes associated with capitalism—waged work; commodity production; the division of labor; market culture; industrialization; the development of the firm; financial capital and associated instruments; rationalized markets; knowable risks; the corporate form; and modernity itself—are historically mediated. Thus, we will not study capitalism as a fixed or transhistoric economic system but rather as a contextual and contingent mode of organizing a variety of social, cultural, and political developments across diverse historical societies. Capitalism, in this class, never acts. Rather, people and politics produce it and different versions thereof at different times and places. Our broad purpose will thus be to explore the long histories, events, and social politics that have come together to produce the economic, business, and workplace world we live and often take for granted as natural, always keeping in mind that people along with institutional and class power make capitalism at any given moment and not vice versa. We will begin with a thorough discussion of a variety of theoretical elucidations of capitalism as a social/economic system. Following this, we will trace the development of capitalisms and their associated processes and institutions from the crucible of Early Modern Europe to our present day, stopping in such diverse locales as the bookkeeping of 16th Century Florence, 17th Century slave ship, the 18th Century 'Satanic mill,' the 19th Century bucket shop, the 20th Century department store; and the planning for the upcoming 2022 Soccer World Cup.