Course Meeting Times
Class sessions: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session
Prerequisites
None
Course Description and Objectives
Recent tumultuous developments in the global political economy have raised fundamental questions about the institutional arrangements that underpin our modern society. Many of these center on the global rise of the political right—as seen in Brazil, Europe, India, the Philippines, and the United States—and the implications for the liberal institutions upon which the global capitalist system has rested since the end of the Second World War. This resurgence of the right is predicated on an explicit challenge to the capitalist system based on race and globalization. At the same time, we are witnessing the development and deployment of new digital technologies that are reshaping how markets are conceptualized and function, and in turn how economies and societies are ordered. These political, technological, and socio-economic developments are not unrelated; they are fundamentally intertwined. These complex issues reiterate the need for interdisciplinary study of politics, society, and economy. This is a crucial starting point for making sense of interrelated developments across diverse institutional contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
This course will introduce students to a set of analytic tools and conceptual frameworks through which to assess the origins and evolution of the institutions that constitute modern capitalism. The course takes an interdisciplinary political economy approach that draws insights from economics, sociology, political science, history, geography, science and technology studies, and law. The course will critically assess the rise of what Karl Polanyi and Albert Hirschman have referred to as “market society,” a powerful conceptual framework that views the development of modern capitalism not as an outcome of deterministic economic and technological forces, but rather as the result of contingent social and political processes. Capitalism is a set of institutions historically produced by competing ideas that are socially constructed, politically contested, and morally embedded. These ideas are neither purely technical nor value-free; they are humanly-created products with specific histories and underlying systems of meaning. These systems of meaning hold powerful appeal, shaping the way we make sense of “data,” “information,” and “facts.” In this respect, humans do not simply observe the world “as it is”; we see the world through competing theories and beliefs. The course material will thus cover different theoretical perspectives that illustrate alternative conceptions of rationality, which in turn produce competing ways of “seeing” and making sense of the complexities of our social world. The ultimate objective is to expose students to a range of critical conceptual tools and frameworks through which to interrogate the current relationship between states and markets, and to consider the extent to which social actors can challenge its limits and imagine alternative possibilities.
Audience
This elective course is primarily aimed at master’s and doctoral students in DUSP, Political Science, SHASS, and the Sloan School (and is open to cross-registrants from Cambridge/Boston area universities). Undergraduate students are also welcome (with the permission of the instructor). The themes covered in the course are intended to help students who are preparing for theses, first/second year papers and dissertations to generate research questions that are both theoretically well-grounded and have real-world manifestations.
Course Materials
The course will expose students to some of the most creative and cutting-edge work on the politics of markets. To do so it draws on diverse materials including academic literature, films and videos, and articles from the popular media. Further, the scholarly material is multi-disciplinary, drawing particularly from political economy and economic sociology, but also anthropology, urban studies, history, science and technology studies, economics, postcolonial studies, and geography.1 The reading will average around 3–4 items per week (but less than 100 pages). Each class will begin with an introduction that situates the material in broader theoretical debates before turning to group discussion of the relationship between these debates and policy outcomes.2
Assessment and Grading
Student assessment will be based on class participation, two short (2–3 page) reading response papers, and a final paper or project. The response papers should critically engage with readings from selected weeks of the student’s choosing. They will be due by 9 PM the day before class and will be graded on a ✓+/– scale. The final paper (~15–18 pages) can be written as a research proposal that critically assesses an area of interest to generate original research questions, propositions, and testable hypotheses. This is intended to support first/second year papers, dissertation proposals, or chapters. Masters students have the option of doing a final project to be decided upon in consultation with the instructor.
The weighted distribution of these assignments in the overall course grade is indicated below.
| Activities | Percentages |
|---|---|
| Class participation | 30% |
| Two reading responses | 20% |
| Final paper or project | 50% |
MIT Writing Support
The MIT Writing and Communication Center [note: only open to MIT students] offers free one-on-one professional advice from communication experts. No matter what department or discipline you are in, the WCC helps you think your way more deeply into your topic, and helps you see new implications in your data, research, and ideas. The WCC also helps with non-native speaker issues, from writing and grammar to pronunciation and conversation practice.
1 The course’s Calendar page also includes a list of optional readings under each weekly heading, and the Bibliography page lists further additional readings (at the end of the document) that may be of assistance to students’ thesis and dissertation research. I will update the latter over the course of the semester and am happy to work with students to identify additional readings that may be of use in advancing their research interests.
2 This syllabus has benefited from (and continues to benefit from) syllabi of colleagues at many other institutions. The title and much of the “Foundations” section is a nod to the highly recommended “Political Economy of Modern Capitalism” at Harvard organized by Sven Beckert and Chris Desan.
