Contemporary Debates in Globalisation and Development
Volledige vakbeschrijving
Building on the theoretical foundations in GDS4000, Theories and Histories of Globalisation and Development, this course introduces students to empirical and theoretical approaches to globalisation and development.
We will combine the theoretical and empirical emphases in this course through readings and assignments, in which students examine how distant places within the Global South, or between Global North and South, are connected through the movement of people, things (commodities, objects, discourses) and social structures.
The course is broadly divided into two parts:
Investigating globalisation through the global movement of:
- Commodities, understood as being created through global chains of production; commodities as things with their own biographies; commodities as the media worked upon by logistics; and
- People who migrate while maintaining and generating linkages between places
- Multinational companies, finance capital and global governance structures from core to periphery regions of the world\
Investigating development at a global scale, via
- Debates about the transformation of labor as a result of changes in global political economy, automation, local and international institutions
- Contestations over the uneven and unequal distribution of means, access, and responsibilities for environmental resources
- The role of women as development actors in historical and contemporary perspectives
Together, these parts are intended to expose students to selected examples of how globalization functions in both theory and practice.
Doelstellingen van dit vak
To successfully complete this course, students should demonstrate the ability to:
- Identify actors in and explain how globalisation and poverty impact on contemporary development challenges
- Critically assess and engage with theoretical and empirical academic work on globalisation and poverty
- Describe and evaluate global flows using a recognised empirical approach (e.g. a cultural biography of an everyday object, global value chain analysis) to document the movement and transformation of materials
- Recognise how poverty, inequalities and vulnerabilities are conceptualised and measured
- Evaluate how different concepts of poverty link to different possible strategies for reducing poverty
- Conduct a data and literature search in reliable academic research
- Position oneself in an academic debate through reading, discussion, and writing
- Write an argumentative academic paper, based on secondary data collection and a literature review
- Develop an original analytical perspective by applying a theoretical approach to gathered data in an academic paper.
Voorwaarden
The courses: - GDS4000 and - GDS4002
Aanbevolen literatuur
- Cook, I. (2004). Follow the thing: Papaya. Antipode: journal of radical geography. Vol. 36, Iss.4.Pp 557-785.
- Werner, M., Bair, J., & Fernández, V. R. (2014). Linking Up to Development? Global Value Chains and the Making of a Post-Washington Consensus. Development and Change, 45(6), 1219-1247.
- Cowen, D. (2014). The deadly life of logistics: mapping violence in global trade. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
- De Haas, H. (2010). Migration and development: A theoretical perspective. International migration review, 44(1), 227-264.
- Lam, A., & Rui, H. (2023). Global human mobility and knowledge transfer: Highly skilled return migrants as agents of transnational learning. Global Networks, 23, 311–331.
- Suwandi, I. and Foster, J.B. (2016). Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital. Monthly Review, July. https://monthlyreview.org/2016/07/01/multinational-corporations-and-the-globalization-of-monopoly-capital-from-the-1960s-to-the-present/#fn13, Accessed 27 October 2023.
- Smith, J. (2016). Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super Exploitation and Capitalism’s Final Crisis. Monthly Review Press.
- Van Beemen, O. (2019). Heineken in Africa. C. Hurst and Co. Ltd.