Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 09:43:29 -0500 Subject: Braudel's methodology
From: Dru Simmons
SUNY Brockport
DS0064@ACSPR1.acs.brockport.edu
This is a query regarding Fernand Braudel and "The Mediterranean". I am a graduate student at SUNY Brockport and I am currently undertaking research on Fernand Braudel and the methodology he posed in "The Mediterranean". I am trying to discuss its usefulness as an approach to global history. My determination of global history is the search for connections between varying regions and the nature of those connections. Can his methodology be used? Has it been done? I am leaning towards the idea that the concept is simply to large and inclusive to be used in the study of global history. Any comments or suggestions (including sources) would be most appreciated.
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 10:10:31 -0500 Subject: Braudel's methodology
From: Haines Brown
Central Connecticut State University
BROWNH@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.edu
Dru,
Somewhere in Braudel I read he admission that, despite considerable effort and thought, he never was able to reconcile (establish a determinant relation between) his three time frames. That strikes me as an admission that the whole project was a failure. Whatever he did for integrating geography and history, I so no reason to attribute to him a satisfactory conception of world history as a whole.
Sorry I don't recall off hand where I read his admission of failure.
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 10:32:06 -0500 Subject: Braudel's methodology
From: Bill Schell
Murray State University
A28443F@MSUMUSIK.MURSUKY.edu
Dru Simmons wrote with regard to Fernand Braudel
>
> Can his methodology
>be used? Has it been done? I am leaning towards the idea that
>the concept is simply to large and inclusive to be used in the
>study of global history. Any comments or suggestions (including
>sources) would be most appreciated.
I would argue that the Annales school which Braudel, Ladurie, and Pirenne created (total history) is the only basis that can support attempts tp teach world civilization. It is impossible to cover every geographic region, every mentality, every economic trend, every political movement etc -- but at every point in your teaching, you must remind the students that history is the conjunction of all things, even if our reconstructions are merely selections of all things.
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 14:11:14 -0500 Subject: Braudel's methodology
From: Jack Owens
Idaho State University
owenjack@fs.isu.edu
http://isuux.isu.edu/~owenjack
Perhaps the closest approach to Braudel's used now is the world systems one. For a start on that, take a look at:
Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Peter Grimes
1995 "World-Systems Analysis." *Annual Review of Sociology* 21:
387-417.
Sanderson, Stephen K. (ed.)
1995 *Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World
Historical Change*. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira
Press.
You might also look through issues of *Review*, the journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, particularly the Braudel memorial issue (the citation to which I don't have in front of me).
Tom Hall will probably want to kill me for this, but since he is a member of this list, perhaps he could say a bit about his forthcoming book with Chris Chase-Dunn, *Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems*. As we all are just now, I know Tom is busy and may want to duck this request :-)
Finally, I have been struggling with your problem since I first plowed through the French first edition of *The Mediterranean...* in 1966. If you want to see my current ideas on what needs to be done to make use of this sort of approach, you may look at the materials for my "Spanish Empire" course, particularly the statement of analytic approach and the questions for each lecture. The URL is:
http://isuux.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/spemp.html
I hope that some of this information is helpful.
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 15:24:26 -0500 Subject: Braudel's methodology
From: Andre Gunder Frank
University of Amsterdam
agfrank@epas.utoronto.ca
Immodestly, I inform that the Sanderson ed. book recommended by Jack Owen contains among others, chapters by/entitled:
6. "The Modern World System Revisited: Rereading Braudel and
Wallerstein," by A.G. Frank
7. "Let's be Frank about World History," by A. Bergesen
Both disagree with Dru Simmons' concern [Braudel's is too big] and argue instead that Braudel's is TOO LITTLE, and that only a ONE [WHOLE] WORLD history will do. That is, rather than see Braudel's methodology as too big, and in contrast to Bill Schell who seems to suggest that it is just right/large enough, I am [for the] THIRD BEAR, since it is NOT large enough for me, or it seems to me for the world.
To the same effect, also see A.G. Frank "The World Economic System in Asia before European Hegemony" in THE HISTORIAN 56,2 WINTER 1994, PP 260-76, not to mention one in preparation from which some extracts were kindly posted on this net by the powers that be.
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 08:27:30 -0500 Subject: Braudel's methodology
From: Tom Hall
DePauw University
THALL@DEPAUW.edu
Jack has been most generous in citing our work. And he is right, I'm just now coming out of shellshock of grading all papers on hang (before come on hand next week...) & Chris C-D and I are trying to finish revisions to Rise & Demise before I leave the country in Jan.
However, there is probably not much directly on the Braudelian methods, at least as I've skimmed that thread, in R&D.
John R. Hall (UC Davis) [and no relation to me] has two articles that are exactly on the topic. Both are worth careful reads:
Hall, John R. 1980. "The Times of History and the History of Times."
History and Theory 19(February):113-131.
Hall, John R. 1992. "Where History and Sociology Meet: Forms of
Discourse and Sociohistorical Inquiry." Sociological Theory 10:2(Fall):164-193.
The latter is an annual "journal".
I can also supply JRH's email address--but I can't cut and paste it from where I am in my system!
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 11:16:59 -0800 Subject: Re: Braudel's methodology (fwd)
From: Bill Schell, Murray State <A28443F@MSUMUSIK.MURSUKY.EDU>
Andre Gunder Frank wrote re Braudel's methodology:
... in contrast to Bill
>Schell who seems to suggest that it is just right/large enough,
>I am [for the] THIRD BEAR, since it is NOT large enough for
>me, or it seems to me for the world.
>
I didn't realize that we were measuring bear suits here. I said nothing about size or scope of world history (I presume that it is THE WORLD). I merely said that the Annales school and Braudel broadened the scope of what one was expected to accomplish in writing history -- a shift from political-economic history to "total history." I also don't recall Braudel saying that his scheme for three waves of time was a failure. I believe he had trouble integrating cause and effect across the three. Bruadel's model of long-term, intermediate and short-term trend/time cycles applies the three-tiered model of cultural materialism/structuralism to time.
Bill Schell
History Dept phone: (502) 762-6572 Murray State University fax: (502) 762-3424 MURRAY, KY 42071 EMAIL: A28443F@MSUMUSIK.MURSUKY.EDU
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 10:03:26 -0800 Subject: Re: Braudel's methodology
From: Dru Simmons, SUNY Brockport
DS0064@ACSPR1.acs.brockport.edu
Thank you for the responses to my query. It is an honor for a graduate student like myself to receive such input. Here is more contribution to the discussion.
any corrections of my assumptions or further suggestions are appreciated. I would recommend the readings that have been passed on to me so far to anyone interested in the topic.
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 11:54:48 -0800 Subject: Braudel's methodology -reply
From: A. Gunder Frank, Univeristy of Toronto <agfrank@epas.utoronto.ca>
in re Dru Simons' point 2, from gunder frank: the point is not [just] that Braudel's world-econ is too small to encompass the period prior to the one he mostly deals with, but that it is too small to manage the one world economy [without a hyphen]/system during the early modern period he does deal with. THAT is what my now published critiques of Braudel pretend to show - also by quiting him against himself about 70 times - and what my Ms in progress about the 1400-1800 period attempts to show through a REinterpretation of the availabl evidence [in both the cxritiqe and the alternative, incidentally ALSO by showing how SIMULTANEOUS events in different parts of the world were connected and commonly/mutually caused by their particpation in ONE system [which was NOT European originated nor based]. THAT is why Braudel's and Wallerstein's european generated modern wold capitalist sysem is TOO SMALL a category to account for/explain what went on then - or now!
respectfully responded/submitted by Gunder Frank [after xmas break]
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