Global Capitalist Assemblages: A Historiographical Appraisal of Multinational Enterprise in the Global South

Following the recent resurgence of capitalism as a key subject in historical analysis, historians have highlighted the globally interconnected making and remaking of capitalism. Commodity-centered histories in global history have shown how to write locally grounded histories of global capitalism, emphasizing the complex and contingent relationship between the local and the global. In these accounts, however, businesses and global firms rarely appear as the analytical centerpiece. We argue that the globally active firm provides an ideal prism for writing locally grounded histories of global capitalism. Furthermore, drawing on recent usages of assemblage theory in economic history, we propose viewing “the global firm” as a “capitalist assemblage” in order to capture the spatiotemporally contingent processes through which capitalism and distinct ways of organizing business, labor, and life under capitalism emerged and evolved at specific sites and times. This approach will contribute to global studies and address limitations in business history’s treatment of the global firm.