POL 596e - Fall 2002
Global Political Economy
Monday 6-8:30 pm; Soc Sci 332
V. Spike Peterson, Associate Professor
Office: 318B Soc Sci; 621-7600, 8984; spikep@u.arizona.edu
Premise and objectives of the seminar:
In the face of contemporary structural transformations (typically--and problematically--characterized as ‘globalization’), reigning explanatory frameworks are inadequate. Hence, we will review existing characterizations of ‘globalization’ and the activities and developments construed as ‘economic restructuring’ with an eye toward what they tell us and what they obscure or omit. The seminar focuses on readings that are critical of the uneven effects of globalization and the new (neoliberal) global political economy. We will consider a variety of analytical/theoretical frameworks with the intention of developing more adequate approaches to today’s transnational political economies. To orient our efforts, we will explore an integration that I cast as “rewriting global political economy as reproductive, productive, and virtual economies.” That is, we will attempt to specify and integrate our knowledge of reproductive (this involves identities, ideologies and practices of ‘social reproduction’; informal sector activities), productive (this includes conventional but inadequately theorized activities and developments in the ‘formal’ sphere of markets), and virtual (this refers to technologically enhanced dematerialization, deterritorialization; expanding financial markets) economies – in the Foucauldian sense of economies as overlapping systemic sites through and across which power operates.
Reading materials:
Five books have been ordered and are available at the UA Bookstore (we will be reading almost the entirety of each of these books so it is important that you purchase them):
- Scholte, Jan Aart. 2000. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Hampshire: Macmillan.
- Susan Strange. 1996. The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Sassen, Saskia. 1998. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: New Press.
- Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Additional readings will be from articles and book chapters made available online.
Seminar requirements:
1) Informed participation in seminar sessions on the basis of critical readings of all assigned materials; 2) Presentation of assigned readings and leading discussion for one seminar session (details below); 3) Preparation of a succinct, thoughtful and critical ‘response piece’ for each set of assigned reading, to be submitted by email by noon on seminar days (Mondays) (clarification below and at first seminar); 4) Preparation of a short (no more than 750 words) paper evidencing comprehension of the basic readings on globalization that comprise the first few weeks of the seminar (details below). 5) Final research paper building upon course topics/materials and shaped by your individual research interests; outlines and preliminary bibliographies must be submitted for approval by early November. You will also be asked to grade each others’ work.
Presentations:
Each participant will be responsible for leading the discussion of one seminar session. You will be expected to be especially familiar with the readings and, as much as possible, offer some contextualization of them (regarding the authors and debates, etc.). You may begin–briefly–with the key points of the readings to start us off but the objective is not to summarize the material, which everyone will have read already. Rather, the objective is to stimulate discussion and, if necessary, keep us on some coherent track (!?). Several approaches are possible: you could select themes/issues from the readings for group discussion, emphasizing themes that thread through the course, linking the material to other readings, asking integrative questions. You could pull some quotations from the readings and ask students to identify their source and significance. You could comment on what you found most/least interesting or irritating, or offer organized critique for others to complicate or contest. Your presentation should not take more than 15 minutes (you should practice timing your presentation; we rarely anticipate how quickly time flies when we are the speaker!).
You will be expected to grade your own presentation, and all seminar participants are required to grade each presentation, by e-mailing me evaluations (assessing preparation, delivery of remarks, handling the discussion; identifying a letter grade) within 48 hours of the presentation.
Response Pieces:
These must not exceed 300 words, as a key aspect of the assignment is to generate the most succinct yet substantive and critical notes on the readings. (Honing your thoughts and notes down to a tight, concise ‘core’ is very effective in facilitating both comprehension and long-term retention.) In general, you are expected to evidence thoughtful comprehension of and engagement with the readings by identifying key points/arguments and their implications, specifying claims made but not supported, and questions that should have been asked but weren’t (i.e., what are the limits of the argument, in the sense of what questions it anticipates or entails but does not engage?), linking the readings/issues/discussions, reflecting critically on the material and its political implications. The objective here is to critically assess (not just trash) what you ‘got’ from the readings. To do this well and productively is very hard work! It requires first of all (before the writing that constitutes the RPs sought here) that you comprehend the material well enough to 1) locate the piece in terms of related literature and debates, 2) articulate the key arguments succinctly and in your own words, and 3) identify the substantive points that support the argument. The more effectively you achieve this comprehension, the more readily can you generate the critical assessment and discussion called for in the RPs. You will be expected to draw on these during seminar discussions. I consider these a crucial indicator of how seriously you are engaging with the materials and making sense of them; they will count toward your seminar grade.
Short paper due October 14:
Write an essay of no more than 750 words in which you respond to the following questions by drawing on the seminar readings and discussions to date (obviously, you will have to focus on main points): Briefly identify what you consider the 3-5 most significant ‘structural’ shifts occurring that constitute a ‘new global political economy.’ How are conventional explanatory frameworks adequate and/or inadequate for analyzing the new global political economy? I.e., what are the primary issues raised by new (and not so new!) dynamics that cannot be adequately addressed by conventional theories? How are race, gender, class, and national hierarchies addressed in conventional accounts, and how would taking them seriously affect theories of GPE?
[These are ‘big’ questions but your task is to address them by reference to readings and focal points of the seminar. I am asking you to glean the most important ‘threads’ in the readings so far and put them in your own words, as a way of ‘laying the groundwork’ upon which later readings and your research can build. This is also an exercise in ‘brilliant succinctness’: make every word and point count toward answering the questions and evidencing your grasp of the issues and their implications. The Response Pieces and this paper are exercises in conveying the maximum knowledge/understanding in the fewest possible words; I am particularly invested in promoting this because expressing yourself succinctly is an invaluable skill. It is also very hard work; hence, you should expect to invest considerable time in writing this paper – and to reap considerable insights from doing so.
More generally in the course, what I imagine us working toward is identifying relationships–what are the patterns? how do things ‘hang together’?–and generating more coherent, inclusive and politically relevant analyses and frameworks. This paper is one step in the process!]
I will grade all the papers and each of you will grade one of the other student’s papers.
Seminar Participation:
I expect a group with diverse backgrounds and levels of expertise. I welcome this diversity but I do not wish/intend to spend a great deal of seminar time on reviewing basic materials. READ AHEAD if you are concerned about your level of preparation, or contact me for additional reading to bring you up to speed. I am committed to a graduate seminar that engages the material–and theory--seriously.
In general, the seminar will be most productive for each participant and most beneficial for all if:
1. You prepare well for a discussion of the readings. You should always aim to integrate the course materials: make a conscious effort to relate readings and discussions to previous readings and sessions and events/issues outside of the seminar (isolated and unconnected facts/data are easily forgotten; bringing things into relation renders them memorable and of relevance to other topics/questions/concerns/learning...).
2. You have engaged the assigned readings and prior discussions and have prepared yourself so that you are aware of what you do and don’t know and raise appropriate questions, especially regarding terminology/definitions.
3. You listen well, are sensitive to each other, and deliver criticisms in a constructive, respectful fashion.
4. Concentrate on sharing and teaching when you know something well; help to move the discussion along (it is fun but not the most productive use of our time to dwell on material we already know or all agree upon); sense where there is confusion and make it explicit.
Note: we are all here to learn; this assumes that none of us already ‘knows it all,’ that acknowledging our ignorance is a valuable group contribution (reassuring the rest of us that we can acknowledge how much we do not know), and that we advance most effectively by sharing productively with each other...
Topics/Reading Assignments:
Aug 26: Introductions. Contextualizing the seminar topics and orientation.
Sep 2 (no class)
Sep 9: Scholte book - all chapters
Sep 16: Peterson ms. Chapters 1, 2, and 3
Sep 23: Peterson ms. Chapters 4, 5, and 6
Sep 30: Strange book Preface, Chapters 1-5
Oct 7: Strange book Chapters 6-13
Oct 14: Paper Due
Oct 21: Sassen book Foreword, Chapters 1-4
Oct 28: Sassen book Chapters 5-8
Begin to prepare abstracts and anticipated bibliographic sources for your final research paper. You must clear your topic with me by Nov 18, which means communicating your ideas well before that.
Nov 4: Castells book Prologue, Chapters 1 and 2
Nov 11: No class
Nov 18: Castells book Chapters 3, 4, and 5, and Conclusion
(All final research papers should be approved by now.)
Nov 25: Readings from Ronen Palan’s edited volume: Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories (London: Routledge).
Cerny 21-35
Phillips 36-52
Guzzini 53-66
Dec 2: More from Palan’s edited volume:
O’Brien 89-99
McMichael 100-113
(Start reading Bauman book)
Dec 9: Bauman book
Dec 13: Research papers due in my mailbox or under my office door by 5 pm