World-systems theory has recognised that local histories of how labour has been configured in particular (racialised) contexts cannot grasp the ways in which these histories form part of the capitalist world-system. But, in pursuing world-historical analyses of racially subordinate labour, there is also a danger of ignoring what is historically specific about such labour. Focusing on the affinities between Cedric Robinson’s work, particularly in Black Marxism, and that of Terence K. Hopkins in the late 1970s and early 1980s points to ways in which this challenge can be overcome.
Immanuel Wallerstein , ‘World system versus world-systems: a critique’, in Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills (eds), The World System: 500 years or 5,000? ( London, Routledge , 1993), pp. 292-296.
2.
Gyan Prakash , ‘Post-colonial criticism and Indian historiography’ , Social Text (Vol. 10, nos 2-3, issue 31/32, 1992), p. 13 .
3.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot , Silencing the Past: power and the production of history ( Boston, MA, Beacon Press , 1995), pp. 107, 176.
4.
Barbara Christian , ‘The race for theory’, in Abdul JanMohamed and Davil Lloyd (eds), The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse ( Oxford, Oxford University Press , 1990), p. 38.
5.
Cedric Robinson , ‘Preface to the 2000 edition’, in Black Marxism: the making of the Black radical tradition ( Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press , 2000), p. xxxi.
6.
The quote comes from Oliver Cromwell Cox , The Foundations of Capitalism ( London, Peter Owne , 1959), p. 19.
7.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., pp. 9-28.
8.
Cedric Robinson , ‘C. L. R. James and the world-system’ , The C. L. R. James Journal (Winter 1992), pp. 57-73 .
9.
Aníbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein , ‘Americanity as a concept, or the Americas in the modern world-system’ , International Social Science Journal (No. 134, 1992), pp. 550-551 .
10.
A partial exception to this trend may be found in Immanuel Wallerstein , ‘Oliver C. Cox as world-systems analyst’, in Herbert Hunter (ed.), The Sociology of Oliver C. Cox: new perspectives ( Stamford, Research in Race and Ethnic Relations, Vol. 11, JAI Press , 2000), pp. 173-183.
11.
Howard Winant , The World Is a Ghetto: race and democracy since world war II ( New York, Basic Books , 2001).
12.
Terence K. Hopkins , ‘World-systems analysis: methodological issues’, in Hopkins et al., World-Systems Analysis: theory and methodology ( Beverly Hills, CA, Sage Publications , 1992), pp. 146-147, 149.
13.
and ‘Spaces of slavery, times of freedom: rethinking Caribbean history in world perspective’ , Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (Vol. 27, no.1, 1997), pp. 67-80 .
14.
Hopkins, ‘World-systems analysis: methodological issues’, op. cit., p. 147; my emphasis.
15.
McMichael, op. cit., p. 386; emphasis in original.
16.
Ibid., p. 386; emphasis in original.
17.
Dale Tomich , Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique in the world economy, 1830-1848 ( Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press , 1990).
18.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., p. 9.
19.
and ‘World-systems analysis, globalization, and incorporated comparison’ , Journal of World-Systems Research (Vol. 6, no. 3, autumn 2000), pp. 668-690 .
20.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., pp. 29, 30.
21.
Ibid., pp. 35-6.
22.
Terence K. Hopkins, ‘Notes on class analysis and the world-system’, in Hopkins et al., op. cit., p. 84.
23.
Terence K. Hopkins, ‘The study of the capitalist world-economy: some introductory considerations’, in Hopkins et al., op. cit., p. 22.
24.
Ibid., pp. 22-3.
25.
Ibid., p. 37.
26.
See the section titled ‘Cedric Robinson: short biography and selected works’, in ‘Capitalism, Marxism and the Black radical tradition: an interview with Cedric Robinson’ , Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (Vol. 3, no. 1, spring 1999), <http://flag.blackened.net/ias/5robinsonbio.htm> viewed on 8 December 2003.
27.
Hopkins, ‘The study of the capitalist world-economy’, op. cit., p. 23.
28.
A partial exception to this rule is Tomich’s recent unpublished paper, ‘Thinking through slavery: labor and race in nineteenth-century planter thought’ , presented at the Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power and History, Johns Hopkins University, spring 1998.
29.
Fernand Braudel , Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The structures of everyday life ( Berkeley, University of California Press , 1992), p. 560.
30.
Wynter, ‘Afterword: beyond Miranda’s meanings’, op. cit., p. 359.
31.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., p. 30.
32.
Ibid., p. 31.
33.
Ibid., p. 124.
34.
Fernand Braudel , ‘History and the social sciences’, in Peter Burke (ed.), Economy and Society in Early-Modern Europe ( New York, Harper & Row , 1972), p. 25.
35.
Here I am also in part paraphrasing from Fernand Braudel , Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 2: The wheels of commerce ( Berkeley, University of California Press , 1992), p. 21.
36.
Ibid., p. 21.
37.
Fernand Braudel , Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 3: The perspective of the world ( Berkeley, University of California Press , 1992), p. 18.
38.
Du Bois, ‘The color line belts the world’, op. cit., p. 42.
39.
Du Bois, ‘The Negro problems’, op. cit., pp. 48-9.
40.
Frederick Cooper , ‘Back to work: categories, boundaries, and connections in the study of labour’, in Peter Alexander and Rick Halpern (eds), Racializing Class, Classifying Race: labour and difference in Britain, the USA and Africa ( London, Macmillan Press and St Anthony’s College , 2000), pp. 213-214.
41.
Karl Marx , Capital, Vol. I ( New York, Vintage Books , 1977), pp. 128-137.
42.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., p. 121.
43.
Ibid., pp. 121-2.
44.
Dipesh Chakrabarty , ‘Marx after Marxism: history, subalternity, and difference’, in Makdisiet al. (eds), Marxism Beyond Marxism ( New York, Routledge , 1996), p. 60.
45.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., p. 124.
46.
Marx, Capital, op. cit., pp. 915-16.
47.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., pp. 31-42, 110-30.
48.
Michel Foucault , Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison ( New York, Pantheon Books , 1977), pp. 220-221.
49.
Robinson, Black Marxism, op. cit., pp. 16, 109-13, 115-30.
50.
Ramon Grosfoguel , ‘Colonial difference, geopolitics of knowledge, and global coloniality in the modern/colonial capitalist world-system’ , Review (Vol. 25, no. 3, 2002), pp. 203-224 .
