Abstract

Fernand Braudel's three time scales - the long term, the conjunctural, and that of events -do not fit together easily. Whereas the theoretical underpinnings of duration are clear, Braudel neither seeks nor finds Justification in the social sciences for the short term or event. Braudel's lack of theorization of the short term as a present moment and the relegation of its explanation to structures or conjunctures accounts for a number of failings or lacunae attributed to Annales over the past twenty years. What is absent in Braudel's historiography is the inquiry into the effects of action on the creation of structures. In his search for the structures that envelop the products of short durations, Braudel neither seeks contradictions within either the long-term structures or the outcomes of shorter durations, nor finds contradictions within the three temporalities which he superimposes on any present moment