抖音黑料

讲座题目：Capitalism, A Concept Too Big To Fail?

时间：2026年5月29日10：00- 11：30

地点：抖音黑料 （中关村校区）明德主楼729

主讲人：James Craig Muldrew  剑桥大学历史系教授

讲座简介：

This lecture will assess how historians of the early modern world have used the concept of capitalism as an interpretive framework. It examines how the term came into being in the early twentieth century, and then how different historians took it up to argue that it emerged in European societies in the period from roughly the Italian Renaissance until the end of the eighteenth century. The use of the term capitalism is so pervasive today that trying to define what it means in practice seems impossible. Yet, understanding it is undeniably crucial to any aspect of politics, individual choice, and collective action, since the concept continues to be used, in many different and ambiguous ways. This paper argues that greater understanding can only be gained by being more precise, and that to call something capitalism it must fundamentally involve the use of the abstract financial value, which came to be called capital in the early modern period. The formation of such value eventually gave its owners much power, but before that could happen the institutions and beliefs which supported the existence of such intangible value needed to be created and spread through society.

主讲人简介：

克雷格·穆尔德鲁（Craig Muldrew）教授，英国剑桥大学历史系教授，是国际早期现代英国经济史、社会史与信用史研究领域的重要学者。其研究主要围绕早期现代英国的信用关系、市场秩序、契约文化、债务诉讼、劳动与消费、物质生活以及金融资本主义的社会起源等议题展开，尤其关注信用、信任与社会关系如何构成市场运行的基础，以及前工业化社会中劳动组织、消费扩张和金融观念变化如何共同推动经济社会转型。其代表作《义务的经济：近代早期英格兰的信用文化与社会关系（The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England）》是早期现代英国信用文化研究的重要著作。他的研究以扎实的档案材料、细腻的社会史分析和跨越经济史、法律史与思想史的综合视野见长，为理解早期现代英国市场经济的形成、社会关系的重组以及资本主义发展的历史机制提供了重要解释。