The history of capitalism is more than a field of research. It is a shared intellectual premise.

No matter their primary disciplinary identification, historians of capitalism begin with the basic contention that capitalism is a historically-specific social formation, shaped in particular times and places by power relations, and not an organic expression of human nature. History allows us to question divisions that recur under capitalism, such as those between the “economic” and the “political,” between “nature” and “society,” and between “production” and “social reproduction.”

At the Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies, our affiliated faculty and students employ a wide variety of research methods and analytical frameworks, drawing variously from heterodox economics, cultural political economy, post-colonial studies, critical race theory, radical feminism, Marxist geography, and science and technology studies.