As societies around the world confront the unceasing pace of globalization and capitalist urbanization, enduring questions remain about whether there is an inherent trade-off between concerns for greater market efficiency and growth with those for equity and social justice. This course will introduce students to political economy, one of the most powerful frameworks for examining the intersection of politics and economics, and of states and markets. In a word, it aims to provide students with a lens to analyze the connection between market-driven processes and social outcomes. The course will have two distinct components giving students the chance to better comprehend global economic forces and local impacts. The first part of the course will be built around urban political economy and address dynamics of urban economic growth and the highly uneven impacts it produces within and across most cities around the world in terms of income, the nature of work and economic opportunity, racial and ethnic segregation, access to housing and other key services and amenities, as well as gender discrimination. Is this unevenness a structural issue related to the inherent nature of advanced capitalism, or are changing fortunes among cities, and of groups within cities, the product of conscious policy design and forms of targeted collective action? The second part of the course will examine political economy through a macro view of how the circuits of global capital and of international financial and monetary relations between countries are continually re-shaping their position in the international division of labor. Using theoretical and analytical readings, as well as case studies, this course will critically study how economic development as a global system between countries, and within countries, produces great wealth but often at the cost of widening disparities and forms of social exclusion. Where these effects have been not as severe, we will examine the kinds of public interventions and other mechanisms of social protection which have served to lessen the effects of polarization. In this sense, the course will expose the student to a broader view of political economy than is commonly presented in much social science teaching in this area.
Subjects
- 02.001 Global Humanities: Literature, Philosophy, and Ethics
- 02.003 Social Science: Understanding Behaviour, Culture & Society
- 02.101 Darwin and Design
- 02.102HT The World Since 1400
- 02.103 Film Studies: History, Theory and Practice
- 02.104TS The History of International Development in Asia: The Role of Engineers and Designers
- 02.105DH Sages Through The Ages: Readings in Early Indian and Chinese Religion and Philosophy
- 02.106 Crime & Punishment: Introduction to Law & Literature
- 02.107 History of Chinese Urban Development
- 02.108DH Modern China: Pluralism, and Beyond Territoriality
- 02.109 Ethics of Leadership
- 02.110DH The Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Arts, Literature and Landscape Design
- 02.111 Photography in Modern Southeast Asia History
- 02.112 Space and Power
- 02.113TS The Laboratory of the Mind
- 02.114DH The Multicultural Archipelago in History and Story
- 02.115DH Global Shakespeares
- 02.116DH The Word and the World: Introducing Literary Theory
- 02.118 Film Studies II: Production
- 02.119 Introduction to Political Philosophy
- 02.120DH History of Traditional Chinese Short Fiction
- 02.121DH The Question of Being
- 02.122 The Day After Tomorrow: Environmental Apocalypse and Political Mobilization
- 02.123 Questioning Modernity in Europe and Asia
- 02.124DH The Modern East Asian Nexus – A History
- 02.125 Normalcy and Deviance: Philosophical Approaches to Sexuality
- 02.126 Southeast Asia Under Japan: Motives, Memoirs, and Media
- 02.127DH Satan and His Afterlives in Literature and Film
- 02.128DH Classical South and Southeast Asian Literature and Art
- 02.129DH Shakespeare, Race, and Religion in the Renaissance World
- 02.130TS Slums, Squatters, and Smart Cities: History and Theory of Urban Planning
- 02.131DH Non‐Fiction and Ethnographic Film: Theory and Practice
- 02.132DH Being and Time
- 02.133HT Ideal Innovations? Science Fiction & the Ethics of Technology
- 02.134 Asia Rising: Japanese and Chinese Quests for Hegemony in Global Contexts
- 02.135HT The Question of Technology
- 02.136DH Lyric Poetry
- 02.137DH Introduction to Digital Humanities
- 02.138 On Genre and Judgement: Cultures of Appraisal
- 02.139HT Form and Content in Arts, Science and Society
- 02.140TS Shaping Futures: Innovation, Work and Society
- 02.141 Cultures and Politics: Liberal, Confucian, Islamic
- 02.142 History through Literature: Rebellion in Late Colonial Southeast Asia
- 02.143DH Artificial Intelligence and Ethics
- 02.144DH Being in the World: from Homer and Heidegger to A.I.
- 02.145TS Surveys and Experiments in the Social Sciences
- 02.146 Financing Cities of the Future: Theory and Practice
- 02.147TS Interventions in Design, Technology, and Society
- 02.148HT Geographies of Money and Finance
- 02.149TS Designing Better Humans: The Ethics of Engineering Humanity
- 02.150HT Cultures and Histories of the Digital
- 02.151HT Digital Worlds, Space and Spatialities: Geographical Perspectives on Digitalisation
- 02.152TS Urban Theory
- 02.153TS A History of Nuclear Strategy, Design, Technology and Society
- 02.154HT Environmental Humanities
- 02.155HT Design Anthropology
- 02.156DH Games of Histories
- 02.157DH Histories on Screen: Framing Modern Southeast Asia
- 02.158DH Kings, monks, and merchants: A history of Asia before 1750
- 02.159HT Equitable Tech: Reimagining Our Digital Infrastructures
- 02.160TS Designing Digital Technology for Children and Teens
- 02.161DH Moral Questions and the Contemporary Novel
- 02.162DH Asian American Literature: from the food memoir to the graphic novel
- 02.163 International Trade: Free Trade, Governance and Technology
- 02.164DH Performance: Design, Dramaturgy, and Interpretation
- 02.165TS Empathy: An interdisciplinary concept (Special Topics)
- 02.166TS Urban Southeast Asia: Diversity, Sustainability and Change
- 02.167HT Fashion: East and West (Special Topics)
- 02.168 International Business
- 02.169 Leadership and Organization Management
- 02.170HT History of Surveillance in Modern Asia
- 02.171 Religion & Society in Southeast Asia (Special Topics)
- 02.172DH Imagine Dragons: Monsters and Outcasts in Literature, from Beowulf to Murakami
- 02.173DH The Medium and the Message: An Introduction to Media Theory
- 02.174TS The Design of Digital Platforms
- 02.201TS Digital Sociology
- 02.202 Organizational Processes
- 02.203 Psychological Approaches to Bilingualism
- 02.204 Technology and the Self
- 02.205 Human Development: Theory and Practice
- 02.206 Ethics and Social Responsibility
- 02.207 Organizations and People
- 02.208 Microeconomics
- 02.209 Social Theories of Urban Life
- 02.210TS Who Gets Ahead? Sociology of Social Networks and Social Capital
- 02.211 Critical Management Skills
- 02.212TS The Visual Culture of Science and Technology
- 02.213 How Culture Works
- 02.214 Magic, Science and Religion
- 02.215 Political Economy
- 02.216TS Human Behaviour, Technology and Design
- 02.217 Gender Sexuality and Society
- 02.218TS Introduction to Psychology
- 02.219TS Rice Cultures: Technology, Society and Environment in Asia
- 02.220 “How the Things People Make, Make People”: Material Things in Social Life
- 02.221 Making Maps I: Introduction to Spatial Analysis, Data Visualization and Map Design
- 02.222TS Unnatural Disasters
- 02.223TS Business Ethics
- 02.224 Sociology of Deviance and Social Control
- 02.225TS Building, Dwelling, Belonging: An Anthropology of Domestic and Vernacular Architecture
- 02.226 Leaders & Followers
- 02.227 Maps and Politics
- 02.228TS Design in the Anthropocene
- 02.229 Decision Theory and Practice
- 02.230TS Health Communication and Behavior Change
- 02.231TS Transportation Technology and Policy in Urban Progress
- 02.302 Business Culture and Entrepreneurship in China
- 02.303TS The Role of Technology and Design on Growth in China
- New (DH) – Global Film: Art and Technology
- Off Script (11 min)