Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations
Over the past three decades, the Fernand Braudel Center has built an enviable, world-wide reputation for innovation and excellence in social science. The activities of the Center fall loosely into four categories: hosting international scholars, sponsoring major conferences and scholarly meetings, initiating and supporting Research Working Groups, carrying on an active publication program. We operate on two assumptions. One is that there is no structure that is not historical. In order to understand a structure one must not only know its genesis and its context; one must also assume that its form and its substance are constantly evolving. The second assumption is that no sequence of events in time is structureless, that is, fortuitous. Every event occurs within existing structures, and is affected by its constraints. Every event creates part of the context of future events. Of course, there are ruptures in structures which represent fundamental change. But such ruptures too are explicable in terms of the state of the structures. We therefore do not separate the study of historical sequence and the study of structural relationships. We believe that the problem is not to find an interdisciplinary meeting ground of the study of historical sequence (history) and the study of structures (anthropology, sociology, and other social sciences). It is rather to perceive our study as an imbricated whole within which different scholars will of course emphasize different immediate concerns and therefore frequently use different approaches, emphases, methodologies. We are further uncomfortable with the traditional divide of the humanities versus the (social) sciences. At least at the level of explaining large-scale social change over time, we find that it is not very meaningful to distinguish between a humanistic and a scientific approach. We wish primarily to explain systematically and coherently what is fundamentally a single occurrence, the development of the modern world-system.
Mail Address:
Fernand Braudel CenterBinghamton University, State University of New York
PO Box 6000
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 Telephone: (607) 777-4924
Fax: (607) 777-4315
Email: fbcenter@binghamton.edu
Contact Us
Director, Richard E. Lee rlee@binghamton.edu Deputy Director, Dale Tomich dtomich@binghamton.edu Administrative Assistant, Amy Keough akeough@binghamton.edu Publications Officer, Kelly Pueschel review@binghamton.edu FBC Office/ Staff Assistant,Kelly Pueschel
fbcofc@binghamton.edu
Announcements
It is with profound sorrow that we at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations join the family, friends and colleagues of Immanuel Wallerstein, founding Director of the Center, in mourning his passing Saturday last, 31 August 2019. Immanuel changed the way we see the world; indeed, he changed the world that we see. He changed the way we understand what we experience and the forms of meaningful action we can take to transform our world into a more egalitarian and substantively rational one. But we shall miss more than his intellectual leadership and scholarly example; we shall miss the man—his consideration, humor, and generosity. He practiced his own dictum, “It is encouraged to encourage.” For all who knew him, it was a supreme privilege.
Richard E. Lee
located at UFF in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Free and Open to the Public
Comparative History of the West Indies is the last book in the series HISTORY OF THE WEST INDIES led by Consuelo Naranjo Orovio from the CSIC Institute of History that concludes the project in five volumes devoted to the history of Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico Antilles non-Hispanic and Comparative History (2009–2014).
For the first time a global, specific and comparative view of the Caribbean from the Conquest to the present through the support of the Fernand Braudel Center.
film by Dale Tomich:
"Caribbean Journey: Conversations with Sidney Mintz" (pdf, 73KB)Available for purchase by contacting fbcenter@binghamton.edu
Check out our FBC Events Calendar
FBC Authors
Fernand Braudel Center Series in Historical Social Sciences, SUNY Press
- Power, Political Economy, and Historical Landscapes of the Modern World (March2019)
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Christopher R. DeCorse - Editor - Race and Rurality in the Global Economy (October 2018)
Michaeline A. Crichlow - Editor
Patricia Northover - Editor
Juan Giusti-Cordero - Editor - The Trade in the Living (September 2018)
The Formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Luiz Felipe de Alencastro - Author - The Politics of the Second Slavery (December 2016)
Dale W. Tomich - Editor - Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar, Second Edition (April 2016)
Martinique and the World-Economy, 1830-1848
Dale W. Tomich - Author - New Frontiers of Slavery (March 2016)
Dale W. Tomich - Edited and with an introduction by - The Longue Durée and World-Systems Analysis (May 2012)
Richard E. Lee - Edited and with an introduction by - Questioning Nineteenth-Century Assumptions about Knowledge, III (November 2010)
Dualism
Richard E. Lee - Editor
Immanuel Wallerstein - Foreword by - Questioning Nineteenth-Century Assumptions about Knowledge, II (October 2010)
Reductionism
Richard E. Lee - Editor
Immanuel Wallerstein - Foreword by - Questioning Nineteenth-Century Assumptions about Knowledge, I (October 2010)
Determinism
Richard E. Lee - Editor
Immanuel Wallerstein - Foreword by
Fernand Braudel Center Books,
Rowman & Littlefield
- The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery (February 2014)
Eric Williams - Author
Dale W. Tomich - Edited by
William Darity Jr. - Introduction by
Other Books
- Pelo Prisma da Escravidão: Trabalho, Capital e Economia Mundial (2012)
Dale W. Tomich - Author - Knowledge Matters (January 2011)
The Structures of Knowledge and Crisis of the Modern World-System
Richard E. Lee - Author