(reposting because I got no replies last time) I'm midway through the book and struggling to sustain interest and take it all very seriously. Firstly, the sheer amount of repetition is wearisome. Secondly, the entire premise of cycles of accumulation seems to be based on four data-points (Genoese, Dutch, British, US) - it seems like a lot of wishful extrapolation, especially with three of the four centered around locations in a thousand kilometre radius of each other. It seems rather dodgy that someone would try to build a grand unified theory using such little data, and all of it so closely clustered geographically. And finally, there appears to be a presumption of determinism that Arrighi takes for granted. Any ideas and suggestions on how to read this book (or even if I should continue) are appreciated.
I will preface this by saying I haven't read the book in question.
But there are several strategies to take when reading academic books.
/u/sunagainstgold wrote an excellent piece for a recent Monday Methods thread about how to read an academic book. You should read through that, and see if anything in there will help. I think it will, as the whole point isn't to read the whole book, but to get all the relevant information out of it.
He wrote that book in 1994. Arrighi got it right that we lived back then in the american bell-epoque and he predicted to certain extent the ( according to his theory) inevitable crash in 2008. Maybe it is just my reading, but his book (theory) allows, even encourages, such a reading. I think it's quite impressive theory from the "little data" he used.
To your question: Notice that at the beginnig of the book he makes a subtle distinction between "territorialism" and "capitalism". I think, what makes his theory sounds like wishful extrapolation is that he tracks only the leading states in the exponentially growing of "capitalistic" system. Moreover he writes only about the top store: about capitalism as anti-market in Braudelian sense. And this world is always shady and opaque ( one can say full of conspiracies :)), otherwise they couldn't make sky-high profits.