ABSTRACT
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and one of the leading scholars of the Annales School, which established a new paradigm in the history discipline during the early twentieth century. This chapter delineates the scholarly context, which influenced Braudel's research and contributions. It introduces Braudel's works and their relevance to consumer research in the areas of time, context, and the development of capitalism. The social determinism of the Annales School sprang from their aim to grasp the totality of a historical period or society. In the social sciences, time is generally conceptualised as flowing in a linear fashion, accumulating from seconds to years. Braudel introduced a novel conceptualisation of context by defining multiple layers of time, flowing at different paces, at different levels, from the macro-structural level to the everyday level of events. For capitalism to develop, Braudel identifies another important and essential condition: world trade, which is the only means to high profits.
