Giovanni Arrighi is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His main interests are in the fields of comparative and historical sociology, world-systems analysis and economic sociology. He has done research on processes of labor-market formation and economic development in Southern Africa and Southern Europe, on the origins and transformations of the world capitalist system, and on the stratification of the global economy.

His current research focuses on the causes and consequences of inequalities in the wealth, status and power of nations. It raises a number of closely related questions. Why has the income gap between the incomes of rich and poor countries persisted over the last half century in spite of a considerable narrowing of the gaps in industrialization and modernization? Why does the welfare of the populations of equally rich or equally poor countries differ significantly? Why do the chances of moving up or down in the global hierarchy of wealth vary considerably over historical time and geographical space?

In seeking answers to these questions Arrighi uses a variety of approaches that combine quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis as well as different temporal and spatial units of analysis. At the systemic (global) level, he pays special attention to the impact that changing conditions of global governance and world-market formation have on developmental outcomes in different countries and regions. At the sub-systemic level, he has so far focused on explaining why East Asia has been the most successful region in gaining ground in the global hierarchy of wealth. But he will also focus on regions that have lost ground dramatically, Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Through this kind of systemic and sub-systemic analysis Arrighi hopes to identify the kind of strategies that are most likely to neutralize the negative effects on human welfare of the polarizing tendencies of global capitalism.