AP/HREQ 3010 6.00
Imperialism, Racism and the Global Economy
This course examines imperialism, racism, and economics from a critical human rights perspective. Topics include economic class division, racial discrimination, and refugee migration, as well as the perpetual war economy, including the impact of race, class, culture, and gender as axes of domination in the globalized world.
We will begin our examination by briefly looking at the development of classical political economy. The works and ideas of Smith, Marx, and Keynes will be studied in order to familiarize students with the functioning of a modern capitalist economy. The ways in which capitalism functions as a system of inequality tied to a global system of exploitation will be emphasized. We will then turn to concrete and contemporary questions about the inequality in standards of trade, production, and economic and political decision-making at the global level. We will ask such questions as ‘what is the source and historical origin of global inequality’?; and what are the processes, ethical choices, and political institutions required to reduce the high levels of inequality?’ The structures of global dominance will be shown to be both material and economic as well as ideological and political. As a result, racism and inequality are inextricably bound as co-factors in the production of the division between the global north and global south. We will end with a discussion of how resistance is also a feature of this relationship and what may be the prospects for a re-definition of the economic, political, and ecological meaning of a global context.
Prerequisites: 24 credits, including AP/HREQ 1010 6.00 (formerly AP/HREQ 2010 6.00) and AP/HREQ 2030 6.00
Course credit exclusion: Prior to Fall/Winter 2018: AP/HREQ 3010 6.00, AP/POLS 3255 6.00 Human Rights and the Global Economy