Reading Group Seminar on Giovanni Arrighi: The Long Twentieth Century

The Critical Studies of Capitalist Transformation (CSCT) network is pleased to invite you to a reading group seminar at the Centre for Global South-Asian Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies on Giovanni Arrighi: The Long Twentieth Century. Money, Power and the Origins of our Times.

Giovanni Arrighi’s major treatise on the history of capitalism was first published in 1994 and has since been translated into more than ten languages, and was updated and reissued in 2010 following Arrighi’s untimely death in 2009. Educated in economics in Milan, Arrighi was a global scholar who spent a great part of his formative years in Southern and Eastern parts of Africa at the height of the anti-colonial struggles before settling at the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University where he developed his longue durée perspective on capitalist transformation in collaboration with Immanuel Wallerstein. In “The Long Twentieth Century” Arrighi unfolds his thesis on the three hegemonies of historical capitalism dating back to the Italian city states in the 15th century in an effort to provide a critical commentary on current global dynamics.

The CSCT reading group seminars explore classical studies debating capitalist transformation in order to deepen the scholarly engagement with present conjunctures. The format is based on active participation with each participant choosing a chapter or section of the entire work to focus on and prepare a 5-7 minute presentation upon.

The seminar is open to all. To sign up, please write to hirslund@hum.ku.dk no later than November 23, clearly indicating which part of the work your contribution will encompass.