Giovanni Arrighi, the George Armstrong Kelly Professor of Sociology and renowned authority in the fields of world systems analysis and historical sociology, has died after a year-long battle with cancer. Giovanni died at home peacefully on June 18, his son, Andrea, and his wife and partner in scholarship, Beverly Silver, at his side.

A retrospective interview on his intellectual trajectory was published in the March/April 2009 issue of New Left Review. It is a gem. (PDF)

Arrighi began his career teaching in Zimbabwe (1963-1966) and Tanzania (1967-1969), where he wrote landmark works on the political economy of Africa—works that set the terms of the scholarly debates in the field for decades. His most famous work was a recently completed trilogy on the origins and transformations of global capitalism, which began in 1994 with a book that reinterpreted the evolution of capitalism, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. The book is a classic in the field, published in at least ten languages; Giovanni completed a second edition of it earlier this year. In 1999, he published Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System, and two years ago, he published Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, comparing Western and East Asian economic development and exploring China’s rise as an economic world power.

Giovanni, who was born in Milan in 1937 and received his doctorate in economics from the Universitá Bocconi in 1960, came to Johns Hopkins in 1998 to anchor the Sociology Department’s comparative-historical group. He served as director of the Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power and History from 1999 to 2002 and as department chair from 2003 to 2006. Earlier this year, he was awarded with one of the school’s highest faculty honors, a named professorship.

The School of Arts and Sciences has been enriched immeasurably by Giovanni, as have those of us who knew him personally. A wonderful colleague, world-class scholar, and dedicated mentor, Giovanni will be missed terribly. Our thoughts and sympathies remain with Beverly, Andrea and Giovanni's extended family; the community of faculty, staff, and students in the Sociology Department; and his innumerable and devoted friends, colleagues, and former students around the world.

Message from Dean Adam Falk about Giovanni Arrighi

Tributes:

A major international conference was held in his honor in late May in Madrid, http://madrid2009arrighi.blogspot.com. The week-long conference, “Dynamics of the Global Crisis, Anti-Systemic Movements and New Models of Hegemony,” featured several of the field’s top scholars in an exploration of the insights of Giovanni’s work.

Giovanni will be further honored at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting with a session titled “From Rhodesia to Beijing: Reflections on the Scholarship of Giovanni Arrighi” on Saturday, August 8 from 4:30-6:10 p.m. at the Hilton San Francisco.

Other tributes are being planned and details will be posted on this site as arrangements are finalized.