MA Global Political Economy

Global Capitalism: Theory and History

Global Capitalism: Theory and History

This module combines a variety of approaches from history, sociology, and political economy in the study of the global political economy. You'll focus on the connection between global economic integration and domestic socio-economic transformation in the making of the contemporary world order. Further, you'll explore how theories have shaped policies in the context of increasing integration of the global economy.

In the first segment of the module, you'll be introduced to some of the major scholarly contributions to political and economic theory and thought. You'll develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework incorporating political economy and world history that will greatly aid us in the subsequent analysis of the global political economy.

The second segment of the module will trace the historical development, structure, and function of the global political economy. The theoretical framework will include a brief introduction to the national income accounting and the balance of payments, the determination of exchange rates, and different exchange rate regimes. You'll employ this theory to better understand the historical evolution of the International Monetary System and the role of the International Financial Institutions in the global political economy.

The last segment of the module examines the origins and nature of global trade integration with a particular emphasis on the experience of developing countries in the global economy. Key topics include:

The Political Economy of the Anthropocene

The Political Economy of the Anthropocene

In this module, you'll explore a series of key contemporary issues of environment and development. You'll examine what it means to say we are living in the age of the ‘Anthropocene’. You'll then consider different perspectives for thinking about the environment in political economy terms of who wins, who loses, how and why.

Finally, you'll take this historical and conceptual grounding to the world, exploring the environmental politics of a range of key issues energy, climate change, food, water, waste and the uneven impacts of global environmental decay.

Dissertation

Dissertation

As part of the MA in Global Political Economy, you will be required to write a 10,000-word dissertation.

It is compulsory for all MA students who have passed all written papers and is undertaken after the summer term. The dissertation comprises a critical review of the literature and/or original analysis of documentary and/or other evidence on a chosen topic within the fields of your programme. Your work for the dissertation will be supervised by a member of staff with particular expertise or interest in the area chosen for study.

Experts and Economies

Experts and Economies

Economic policy and regulation are shaped by experts and cultures of expertise. This has been true at an international level for over a century, never more so than with the design of the Bretton Woods system of international monetary regulation.

Today, the question of technocratic government in contexts such as the European Union is a divisive and urgent one. In this module, you'll pay critical, empirical and theoretical attention on the role of experts in economies, in national, international and neo-colonial contexts. You'll combine history of economics and philosophy of economics with political sociology of institutions and policy, to consider how knowledge and expertise are crucial to the governance, regulation and representation of economic activity and economic space.

Topics to be addressed include:

You'll be introduced to some key ideas on the politics of knowledge from Marion Fourcade, Anne-Marie Djelic, Michel Foucault, Philip Mirowski, Timothy Mitchell, Michel Callon, Steven Shapin and others.

Development for the 21st Century

Development for the 21st Century

“Development” has been a long-desired goal for societies and peoples, and the pursuit of it has been decisive in shaping the modern world. Most mainstream takes on development treat it as an uncontested term; something the Global North already has, but which the Global South lacks, and which those trained in the ‘subject’ can help it acquire.

By contrast, you'll learn to approach development as the site of contestation. Major changes in recent decades, including the emergence of new geopolitical powers on the international stage, growing challenges to neoliberal dogmas, heightened concern with increasing global inequality, and recognition of the danger of ecological devastation, have meant that ‘development’ – what it means and how it is to be achieved – has become a site of struggle, one where new forms of politics have emerged.

You'll examine these changes and this contestation, and asks, how can we talk about development in the 21st century? The module is intended to last one academic term (10 weeks) and will be dealing with some of the most important topics in contemporary development studies, including

Finance and Power

Finance and Power

In this module, you'll explore the political economy of money, debt and finance in the contemporary world. You'll gain an understanding of finance as a contested site of social struggles and power that shapes capitalist relations and policymaker actions. You'll examine key theoretical debates on the place of finance and its relation to the real economy. You'll then takes these debates and applies them across different empirical areas:

Politics of Human Rights

Politics of Human Rights

In this module, you'll explore the politics of human rights and the challenges of securing rights in the contemporary context. You'll engage critically with theory, drawing on political philosophy, legal theory and international relations approaches to defining and critiquing human rights. You'll also focus on case studies, looking in depth at key contemporary human rights struggles and issues.

You'll begin with an introduction to the state of the debate on human rights politics, then examine the major theories and political concepts underpinning modern understandings of human rights and the political and legal institutions established to promote and protect human rights. You'll also consider the role of human rights actors, including transnational advocacy networks, social movements and NGOs, analysing their approaches and methods. You'll explore intersections between human rights, and the politics of humanitarianism and development where relevant, examining the spectrum of human rights violations and contestations, ranging from civil and political, to social and economic rights.

The module employs a problem-based approach, involving participants in identifying and analysing critical human rights problems through individual research and interactions with practitioners. Students will each produce a research-based essay, which will be developed in stages and with supervision, including through a formative presentation. The module is designed to develop knowledge and understanding of human rights as concept, law and practice and to evaluate the significance and potential of human rights in the context of contemporary politics.

Memory and Justice in Post-Conflict Societies

Memory and Justice in Post-Conflict Societies

In this module, you'll explore how societies emerging from different types of conflict (such as war, genocide, ethnic violence and grave human rights abuses) engage in the process of coming to terms with their past. You'll examine official mechanisms of ‘transitional justice’ such as trials and truth commissions, as well as cultural forms of remembrance and local community practices.

By exploring the complex relationship between conflict, memory and justice in various cross-cultural settings, you'll gain an understanding of the ways in which such processes can promote or hinder reconciliation and the rebuilding of social and inter-communal ties.

The module will also assess the role of external factors (particularly through the creation of international war crimes tribunals) in terms of how they have affected such internal processes of facing the past. Various case studies, including Germany, Japan, Serbia, South Africa, and Rwanda will inform the theoretical discussions and provide a comparative perspective.

Decolonising Knowledge: Debates in Human Science

Decolonising Knowledge: Debates in Human Science

This module aims to raise questions about whether the concepts and categories through which we seek knowledge of the world are adequate to the task. You'll critically examine categories of the social sciences and humanities that are usually simply presupposed and ’applied', and which, despite their Western or European origins, are assumed to be ’universal'.

You'll closely examine some of the most important theoretical writings of the post-WWII period, focusing upon books and debates which had repercussions far beyond their immediate disciplinary boundaries, including books by Kuhn, MacIntyre, Foucault, Said, and others.

You'll explore the claim(s) that far from being objective and universal, our knowledge is shaped by culture, history and politics. In seminars we ask, can different ’conceptual schemes', ’paradigms' or ’traditions' be compared to see which one is better, or are they incommensurable? Do theories and explanations triumph over rival theories because they are ’better'- or for other reasons? The module additionally juxtaposes these questions to texts and debates, mostly issuing from the Global South, that develop radically different approaches to knowledge and self-consciously address questions regarding the politics of knowledge This module requires students not simply to advance their knowledge of politics, but to explore the politics of knowledge, and to do so, in particular, by enquiring into whether the categories and concepts of the social sciences are genuinely international and universal, or merely modern/Western and parochial.

Psychopolitics

Psychopolitics

Politics is an activity that regularly draws upon, and seeks to shape, subjective motivations and emotional dispositions. Psychoanalysis encourages us to understand these in terms of unconscious fantasies, repressed memories, and as unresolved psychic tensions that give rise to perverse, violent or inexplicable behaviours and obsessions. States, political elites, and movements address such tensions in numerous ways, to stir public feelings and to incite support.

In this module, you'll examine how psychoanalytic theory can contribute to the analysis of politics, particularly of the way public language and memory express desires for power, subjugation, or even reparation. You'll focus primarily on the texts of Freud, Klein and Lacan to develop analytical insights to understand contemporary events.

Islam, Revolution, and Empire

Islam, Revolution, and Empire

This module will give you a critical grounding in contemporary debates around Islam and the political as well as delineate the plural and agonistic nature of Muslim political ideologies and practices over the course of the last century. Is Islam an inherently political religion as many Orientalists have contended? Why has this question been repeatedly posed through to the present? Is there such a thing as a “Muslim politics”? How has Muslim political activism found itself Othered and stigmatised in recent decades and why has such activism provoked questions over the legitimacy of political engagement by Muslims? How have Muslims been historically racialised and what connections can be drawn between the legacy of Orientalism, colonial racisms and contemporary Islamophobia? Furthermore, how might we complicate mainstream understandings of “fundamentalism” and “Islamic law” and the relationship between Muslim political practices, liberal citizenship, secularism, resistance and the impact of Western colonialism and/or imperialism in the Islamicate world?

Islam, Revolution & Empire

Decolonising Politics: Actions and Ideas from the Global South

Decolonising Politics: Actions and Ideas from the Global South

The core aim of this module is to provide you with an understanding of the processes, actors and ideas that are shaping radical politics in the so-called Global South. It is designed to encourage you to think critically and creatively about the study of politics and political ideas, and to provide the intellectual foundations for the development of their own research agendas.

This module takes as its point of departure the following considerations:

You'll explore all of these issues, paying particular attention to ideas and practices that contest what in the early 1990’s seemed to be the unsurpassable horizon of neoliberalism. You'll analyse the rediscovery of colonialism for contemporary political language. The module is intended to last one academic term (10 weeks) and will be tackling both theoretical issues and case studies.

Gender and Politics

Gender and Politics

This module considers both theoretical and empirical analysis of gender and politics: the course begins with a discussion of a range of political thinkers who have helped develop our understanding of gender including Judith Butler, Catherine MacKinnon, RW Connell, Patricia Hill Collins and Jack Halberstam.

The second half of the course will focus on substantive issues which allow us to consider the various discursive, juridical and classificatory ways in which gender impacts upon our everyday lives as well as the geopolitical sphere.

The module draws upon examples from various world regions and time periods to assess: debates concerning equal rights, the organisation of social movements and the construction of various femininities and masculinities.

Gender theory has provided a radical and challenging critique of mainstream political ideology and the module will consider the multiple ways in which gender equality activists seek to resist biological determinism. By examining the conceptual and empirical impact of gender upon the study of politics this module introduces students to the complex ways in which gender relations permeate both formal institutions and societal relations.

Armed Politics and Political Violence

Armed Politics and Political Violence

International relations have traditionally been occupied with questions of war and peace. This module zooms into the places in between. Places of protracted armed conflict, many of which don’t classify as zones of war but are also far from peaceful. It investigates the emergence of violent political and social orders that need be understood in order to engage in meaningful conflict transformation.

The conceptually-driven module draws on interdisciplinary scholarship to equip you with a wide range of concepts, theories and methods that help with analysing armed politics and political violence in a variety of empirical contexts around the world.

Structured in three parts, the module looks at:

The integrated lecture/seminars are complemented by film seminars and an excursion visiting a relevant organisation or exhibition in London.

Race, Empire and Nation

Race, Empire and Nation

This module will examine how histories of Western imperialism have shaped the landscapes of the present. Our task is to explore how contemporary racial and national formations (ideas about ‘Britishness’, ‘whiteness’, and so on) exist in a complex and intimate relationship to longer histories of empire. In addition to introducing key concepts from critical race and postcolonial studies, lectures will also offer phenomenological interpretations of how race structures the present often by receding into the background, as well as drawing on theories of affect and emotion to explore how security regimes become racial regimes. Our concern is with how histories of empire ‘get under the skin,’ and set reading include works that reflect on the experience of being or becoming strangers, or ‘bodies out of place.’ We attend to the intersection between race, gender and sexuality throughout

Technology, Mobility, and Justice

Technology, Mobility, and Justice

In this module, you’ll focus on how technology has restructured regimes of mobility control and labour, discussing which justice claims can be raised. You’ll explore how digital platforms, databases interoperability, biometric technologies and digital identity systems have been incorporated in mobility governance and labour regimes. You’ll examine literature on justice as well as recent works that have elaborate justice theory in light of the political and economic transformation generated by technology. You’ll engage with current debates about technologies, datafication of mobility and new forms of labour precarity and situates the present context within a longer history of racialised surveillance. The module is highly interdisciplinary. You’ll learn about critical security studies, postcolonial theory, digital labour scholarship and migration literature.

Learning is structured in three main parts.

Re-Envisioning Gender: Body, Sexuality, Power

Re-Envisioning Gender: Body, Sexuality, Power

From western antiquity until modern times, the body in the west has been aestheticised, vilified, eroticised and pathologised. It is in and through the body that both self and society have been fashioned and disciplined.

It is at the heart of the emergence of sexuality as a modern discourse, and a constituent feature of the politics of identity, formed around race, gender and sex. For all the different debates the body has generated, they have always been framed within the mind/body, and nature/culture distinctions, which have been at the core of western thinking since the eighteenth century.

Counter-Mapping: The Politics of Space

Counter-Mapping: The Politics of Space

There is nothing new to the concept that space is infused and structured according to dominant forms of power in society - be they nationalism, neo-liberalism, the state, or patriarchy - and that such articulations have corresponding representational forms in maps, charts, surveys, and censuses. Far from being the neutral scientific endeavour it is often claimed to be, cartography has always tended to reinforce and replicate dominant spatial logics, erasing indigenous claims to land, ostracising minorities from the political landscape, and setting racial, gender and class hierarchies (quite literally) in stone, brick and asphalt.

Increasingly, however, we are seeing a growing number of both artists and social movements coming to an awareness that our representations of space carry with them an intendant politics. Intent on redressing this imbalance, counter-mapping is the still somewhat speculative practice of harnessing dominant representational strategies in an effort to invert, subvert, and make clear what has been erased in an effort to seek political change. From feminist re-mappings of the city according to safe and dangerous places, to indigenous narratives of ancestral wanderings; from students co-opting google maps to avoid police tactics of ‘kettling’, to artist Janet Cardiff’s memory walks; from local anarchist groups revealing locations of CCTV cameras in Camberwell Green, to W.G. Sebald’s literary re-mapping of East Anglia.

This module not only studies emerging forms of counter-mapping, but encourages students to engage in their own practice of re-mapping, re-walking, and re-appropriating the cityscape.

The module will consist of weekly 2hr seminars devoted to both the study of emerging trends in counter-mapping as a practice, as well as to practical workshops and site visits determined each year by the module convenor based on student interests and types of projects undertaken. Topics covered will include:

Rethinking (In)security

Rethinking (In)security

Questions of international security and insecurity lie at the very core of International Relations as an academic field of enquiry. While these questions served as the discipline’s cradle as a problem-solving policy science, they also generated some of the most critical interventions in the study of world politics.

This module charts the contested field of International Security Studies. Drawing on critical theoretical approaches and post-positivist methods, the module aims to destabilise common-sense concepts such as security, violence, war, and peace. Doing so serves as:

Structured in two parts the module will first discuss different conceptual approaches to studying international (in)security. Focusing on the boundaries of contemporary scholarship, inter-disciplinary excursions into Sociology, Anthropology and Geography will encourage debates beyond the traditional remits of International Relations. In a second step, the module will apply and develop these perspectives by discussing phenomena contemporarily framed as security challenges, including war between and within states, terrorism and the so-called global war on terror, humanitarian assistance and interventions, migration and forced displacement, poverty and development, and environmental degradation and disasters.