Institutions of Modern Capitalism

Calendar

For full details of the readings listed below, see the Bibliography page. From among the weeks when reading responses are due, students select two weeks’ readings to respond to; for descriptions of that assignment and the final paper assignment, see the Assignments page.

WEEKs	Readings	DUE DATES
1. Introduction and Course Overview	“The 1619 Project” Fraser, “How Feminism Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden” Kelley, “What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?” Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy (video) Optional: Coates, “The Case for Reparations” Krugman, “Why We Are in a New Gilded Age”
I. Foundations: Conceptualizing Capitalism
2. Historicizing Capitalism: Race and the New History of Capitalism	Beckert, “Building War Capitalism” Beckert and Desan, American Capitalism, introduction Girvan, “Aspects of the Political Economy of Race,” pp. 1–34 Robinson, Black Marxism, chapter 1 Optional: Classics Dubois, Black Reconstruction in America James, The Black Jacobins Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 51–84 Contemporary Beckert and Rockman, Slavery’s Capitalism, Introduction Dawson, “Hidden in Plain Sight” “Economies of Dispossession” Fraser, “Expropriation and Exploitation in Racialized Capitalism” Johnson, River of Dark Dreams Rosenthal, “From Memory to Mastery”
3. The Rise of “Market Society”	Hirschman, “Rival Interpretations of Market Society” Marx, “The German Ideology” Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd,” pp. 76–94 Optional: Dobbin, “How Institutional Economics is Killing Micro-Economics”	Reading responses due
4. Markets Good, or Markets Bad? Champions and Critics	Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Introduction and chapters 1-2 Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order Polanyi, The Great Transformation, chapters 1–2, 4, and 5 (pp. 59–60) Posner and Weyl, “Property is Monopoly” in Radical Markets Somers and Block, “From Poverty to Perversity” Optional: Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, chapter 7 Hayek, “Economics and Knowledge” Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” Hicks, “Free Market and Religious Fundamentalists versus Poor Relief” Marx, “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” Polanyi, “Our Obsolete Market Mentality” Posner and Weyl, Radical Markets, introduction Somers and Block, “A Reply to Hicks”	Reading responses due
II. Capitalist Governance: Theories of States and Markets
5. The State	Dobbin, “Why the Economy Reflects the Polity” Mitchell, “State, Economy and the State Effect” Scott, Seeing Like a State, introduction Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back” Optional: Brenner, “Globalization as Reterritorialization” Brenner and Ibanez, “Globalization as Reterritorialization” (video) Chibber, Locked in Place Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, chapter 1 Ferguson, “Seeing like an Oil Company” Fligstein, “State Building and Market Building” in The Architecture of Markets Fourcade, “State Metrology” Gupta, Red Tape Hall, “Policy Paradigm, Social Learning and the State” Katznelson, Fear Itself Mitchell, “Carbon Democracy” Morgan and Orloff, The Many Hands of the State, introduction Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States	Reading responses due
6. Postcolonialism (Postcolonial Capitalism)	Birla, “Jurisprudence of Emergence” Birla, Stages of Capital, introduction Goswami, “From Swadeshi to Swaraj” Mitchell, Rule of Experts, introduction and chapter 1 Optional: Go, “Race, Empire and Epistemic Exclusion” Irani, Chasing Innovation Lenin, “Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism” Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa	Reading responses due
7. Platform Capitalism	Posner and Weyl, “Data as Labor” in Radical Markets Rahman and Thelen, “Broken Contract” Srnicek, Platform Capitalism Zuboff, “The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism” Optional: Fitzmaurice et al., “Domesticating the Market” Mozorov, “Capitalism’s New Clothes”	Reading responses due
III. Techniques and Technologies of Capitalist Governance
8. Neoliberalism (Neoliberal Capitalism)	Block and Somers, The Power of Market Fundamentalism, chapter 1 Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, chapters 1–2 Maclean interview (video) Slobodian podcast (audio) Stedman-Jones, Masters of the Universe, chapter 1 Optional: Theorizing and Defining Neoliberalism Ferguson, “Uses of Neoliberalism” Foucault, “On Governmentality” Foucault, Security, Territory, Population pp. 12–23 Gordon, “Governmental Rationality” Harcourt, “Neoliberal Penality” Neoliberalism as a Political Project Campbell and Pedersen, “Policy Ideas, Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political Economy” Campbell and Pedersen, The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, chapter 1 Maclean, Democracy in Chains Mirowski, “Shock Block Doctrine” Plehwe, introduction to Mirowski and Plehwe, Road from Mont Pèlerin Slobodian, Globalists Effects of Neoliberalism Brenner et al., “Variegated Neoliberalization” Fourcade and Healy, “Classification Situations” Gereffi, “The Global Economy” Hall and Soskice, “An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism”	Reading responses due
9. Informal Markets, Illicit Markets, Illegal Markets	Fourcade and Healy, “Moral Views of Market Society” Halley, “Conclusion: Distribution and Decision” Informal Markets Rittich, “Formality and Informality in the Law of Work” Roy, “Urban Informality” Illicit Markets Ahmed and Jackson, “Sex, Markets and Political Economy” Almeling, Sex Cells, chapter 1 Illegal Markets Barsukova and Radaev, “Informal Economy in Russia” Santos, “The War on Drugs and the Challenges to Liberal Legality” Optional: Informality Castells and Portes, “World Underneath” Portes and Haller, “The Informal Economy” Roy, “Urban Informality” Roy, “Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities” Sassen, “The Informal Economy” Song, “Planning with Urban Informality” Morals and Markets Almeling, “Selling Genes, Selling Gender” Anteby, “Markets, Morals, and Practices of Trade” Blair, I’ve Got to Make My Livin’ Chan, “Creating a Market in the Presence of Cultural Resistance” Cohen and Jackson, “Moral Technologies of Market Construction” Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners Healy, Last Best Gifts Livne, “Economies of Dying” Quinn, “The Transformation of Morals in Markets” Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy Zelizer, “Human Values and the Market”	Reading responses due
10. Global Capitalism as Gendered Capitalism, or Gender and Globality	Hoang, Dealing in Desire, chapters 1–3 Matlon, “Racial Capitalism and the Crisis of Black Masculinity” Roy, “Subjects of Risk” Optional: Roy, Poverty Capital	Reading responses due
11. Algorithmic Governance (guest speaker Anush Kapadia, IIT Bombay)	Benjamin, Race after Technology Gillespie, “Algorithm” O’Neal, Weapons of Math Destruction Pasquale, Black Box Society Ziewitz, “Governing Algorithms” Zuboff, “The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism” Background on Algorithms “A Visual Introduction to Machine Learning” Optional: Benjamin, “Introduction: Discriminatory Design, Liberating Imagination” Burrell, “How the Machine Thinks” Fourcade and Healy, “Classification Situations” Fourcade and Healy, “Seeing like a Market” Kitchin, “Thinking Critically about and Researching Algorithms” Rosenblat, Uberland Seaver “Knowing Algorithms”	Reading responses due
IV. Capitalism and Futurity
12. The Politics of Socio-technical Imaginaries	Jasanoff, “Future Imperfect” SASE Winter 2018 Newsletter Turner, “Burning Man at Google” Optional: Beckert, “Imagined Futures”	Reading responses due
13. Whither the Future of Market Society? Student Proposals and Projects	Boltanski and Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, pp. 3–27 and  57–64	Final papers/projects due