Joshua Goldstein on the Cycles in Structural History
Discussion
Joshua Goldstein:
"The development of world political economy may be seen as an intersection of processes operating on four time scales:
1. Very long-term evolution the development of the world system and its changing geographical size and composition.
2. Hegemony cycles the rise and fall of successive international orders.
3. Long waves in economics and war at the core of the world system.
4. Day-to-day and year-to-year change, including short cycles, events, and random or local influences.
My historical interpretation emphasizes the first three levels of change: secular evolution, hegemonic cycles, and long waves. The fourth level of change people, events, locations, and dates will be largely ignored.
This "structural history," pioneered by Braudel, emphasizes the systemic level of analysis, especially the level of the world as a whole, and examines the traces of long-term forces of change in society.19Those who study history, Braudel argues, help society to develop and refine its collective self-temporalization—how we see our society in time. "World time" is Braudel's (1984:17) term for time "experienced on a world scale," which governs certain realities and excludes others.20 For Braudel, structural history means not only a new time scale but a change in focus, from the political to the economic/social/cultural aspects of history.
His interpretations tend toward "geohistory" in which politics is "secondary to other historical ensembles of action" and the emphasis is on "a space ecologically articulated rather than on a nation politically expressed" (Kinser 1981:103).
While shifting the focus away from the state and "politics," Braudel (1984:19) also steers clear of the approach in which economics drives all other aspects of society (economism):
- "It would be a mistake to imagine that the order of the world-economy governed the whole of society. . . . An economy never exists in isolation. Its territory and expanse are also occupied by other spheres of activity—culture, society, politics—which are constantly reacting with the economy. Reality is a totality, the "set of sets," in which each set (economics, politics, culture, society) "extends beyond its own area" (Braudel 1984:45)."