Unit name | Advanced Topics in Critical Political Economy |
---|---|
Unit code | GEOG30009 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | . Fannin |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
1) GEOG25110 Philosophy, Social Theory and Geography AND 2) GEOG20110 Political Economy 2 |
Co-requisites |
Available to year-three Geography and year- four Geography with Study Aboard/Continental Europe students only. |
School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
Faculty | Faculty of Science |
This final-year unit will focus on advanced topics in human geography. The unit will introduce and review key theoretical and empirical research in political, economic, and cultural geography. The unit will develop students’ ability to draw on relevant conceptual vocabularies in feminist, Marxist, post-structural, and post-colonial thinking in both geography and other social science disciplines, including: gender, race, labour, capital, accumulation, production, reproduction, dispossession, colonialism, neo-colonialism, political ecology, nature, and value. Lecture topics will focus in depth on concepts central to theorising contemporary political and economic formations, such as ‘hybridity,’ ‘primitive accumulation,’ ‘biocapital’, with an emphasis on geographies of transnational or global capital, colonial accumulation, privatisation, technologies of dispossession, enclosure, resistance, representation, and cultural economies of contemporary embodiment.
The unit aims to introduce students to contemporary theoretical and empirical debates in political economic geography and postcolonial geography. The unit also aims to help students develop the ability to pose purposeful questions within these debates and to cultivate intellectual curiosity about their socio-political, economic, and technological contexts. It provides an extension to the human geography perspectives outlined in the Year 2 units Political Economy 2: State, Economy and Society and More-than-Human Geographies through research-orientated case studies that critically detail the social processes, structures, and causes underlying capitalist development and nature/society relations.
Learning objectives
Links between learning outcomes and methods of assessment
Unseen examination questions will test conceptual comprehension and integration..
Teaching will consist primarily of a 1-hour lecture, followed by a 1-hour seminar.
50% course work assessment + 50% final examination
One coursework paper of 2500 words on a choice of two set questions. 50% of unit assessment total. Due week 12.
One 2 part final examination set in JE period. 2 hour exam. The exam will comprise 2 parts with 3 questions in each part, 6 questions total. Students will be asked to answer 1 question out of each part. Weighting: 50% for each part. Total 100%.
1. Rose, G. (1993) Feminism and Geography. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2. Waldby, C. and Mitchell, R. (2006) Tissue Economies: Blood, organs, and cell lines in late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 3. Gibson-Graham, J-K. (2006) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. University of Minnesota Press. 4.Perelman, M. (2000) The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation Duke University Press. 5. Sharp, J. (2009) Geographies of Postcolonialism. Sage. 6. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. Routledge..