I Foundations of the modern world system
1.0 The idea of “development”: key concepts of human nature from Adam Smith to “homo economicus”.
a) Western concepts of the nation-state and the “economy”
b) Theories of “comparative advantage”
c) “development” as revelation: the stripping away of “irrational behavior”
d) “The best of all worlds” and the undoing of “tradition” and the triumph of modernism.
2.0 Contestant Discourse and the critique of modern economics: human nature
a) Marxist criticism of modern capitalism: social being, historical being
b) Utopian imaginary of the alternative to modern human society
c) Ideology and the “glue” of modern societies.
3.0 The crises of the early 20th Century and the prelude to the Second World War
a) The Mexican Revolution
b) The Russian Revolution
c) World War 1 and the “Spanish flu”
d) The Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe
e) The Second World War: the war economy East and West
f) Planning for the post-war era
g) Structures and change in the 20th century
4.0 Bretton Woods and the foundations of the new international system in Western countries
a) The Marshal Plan for Europe and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD
b) The International Monetary Fund, IMF
c) From IBRD to The World Bank
d) The IFC, IDA, MIGA and bank “windows”
e) Regional Multilateral Banks
f) The World Trade system, the GATT
5.0 The United Nations and Multilateralism
a) The UN Group, Security Council and General Assembly
b) WHO, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNEP,
c) OAS, OAU, ASEAN
d) The FAO and agriculture
6.0 Walt Rostow and the stage theory of development
a) The centrality of infrastructure
b) Trade policy and the primacy of exports
c) The golden age of mass consumption?
7.0 US foreign policy and the development of “international aid”
a) PL 480 and agricultural surpluses
b) USAID
c) EXIMBANK
d) OPIC
e) US participation and influence in the World Bank and IMF
II. The Emergence of the global system and its critics
8.0 Rostovian “take-off” theory and World Bank lending
a) Phase One: infrastructure: highways, airports, ports, dams, hydropower
b) Phase Two: "Basic Needs" micro-enterprises and women
c) Phase Three: "Structural Adjustment" Lending
d) Phase Four: sustainable development
9.0 Raul Prebisch and the ECLAC School
a) The theory of dependency
b) "The development of underdevelopment" according to Andre Gunder Frank
c) Teotonio dos Santos, Riu Mario Marini and Fernando Cardoso
d) Samir Amin and Arrighi: Unequal exchange
e) World Systems Theory and the core/periphery model
f) The Latin American strategy; “Desarrollo hacia Adentro”
g) Import Substitution Industrialization, ISI
10.0 Third world nationalism and resource exploitation
a) Mao’s “three worlds” theory
b) Mexican nationalizations
c) Tito and Yugoslavian non-alignment
d) The UN and non-alignment
11.0 The end of Keynesian economics and the emergence of Neo-liberalism
a) The 1973 coup in Chile and Pinochet—the "shock doctrine"
b) The “Chicago School” and the imposition of Milton Friedman’s theories
c) Reagan, Thatcher, Hayek and the attack on “statism”, the triumph of “monetarism”
d) The IMF and structural adjustment lending: the Latin American crises.
e) Currency devaluations and the “fiscal crisis of the state”
f) Privatizations, free trade, resource exploitation.
12.0 The Asian “dragons” and export-oriented industrialization
a) Japan in the post war era as exporter
b) Chinese economic “reforms” and the emergence of Chinese capitalism
c) Taiwan as an export platform
d) South Korea and ASEAN
e) Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia and Southeast Asia
13.0 The new international division of labor
a) Asian export platforms
b) Mexican maquiladoras
c) "De-industrialization", capital flight and the American “rust belt”
d) The EU and the OECD and their peculiar peripheries
14.0 Trade agreements and the formal global system
a) New international treaties
III Case studies in economic development
15.0 The invention of “rural development”
a) Norman Borlaug and the “Green Revolution”
b) Agricultural development and the threat of the Red Revolution
c) Irrigation and high yield varieties of patented cultivars
d) Capitalization and the rise of modern agro-exports
f) the destruction of the “peasantry”
e) Rural displacement and rural to urban migration in the developing world
16. 0 Large scale development projects: Riverbasins and hydrodams
a) Dams in Africa before 2000
b) Foç d'Iguazu: Brazil and Paraguay
c) Narmada Dam in India
d) Three Gorges Dam
e) Dams in Ethiopia: Renaissance and Gibe 3
17.0 Urbanization and Development Projects
a) The formalization of the “marginal settlement”
b) Megacities and the urbanization of the species
c) Chinese urban development
d) African cities and challenges to development from Cairo to Lagos to to Capetown
e) The demographic transition and cities
18.0 Mineral development and the primacy of fossil fuels
a) Oil and gas development in Africa and Latin America
b) Offshore resources for oil and gas
c) Rare Earth minerals and the tech industry
d) Coal in India, Australia and China
e) Strategic metals and US foreign policy
f) Impacts on indigenous peoples
19.0 The Blue Revolution and the FAO
a) UNCLOS and the Law of the Sea
b) The EEZ and development of coastal resources
c) Aquaculture and the shrimp markets
d) Aquaculture and global demand
e) Ocean territorial grabbing
f) The export imperative and depleted resources
IV Climate Crisis, “Sustainable Development” and the Crisis of 2020
20.0 The environmental critique of the development idea
a) The pernicious permanence of the growth model
b) The concepts of natural capital
d) Sustainability of what? for whom?
21.0 Global inequality and the ideological crisis of global capital in the 21st Century
a) The “pink tide” in Latin America and the rejection of the neoliberal model
b) The commodity boom of the first decade of the 21st century and the successes of Lula in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela
c) The Arab spring
d) The fiscal crisis of the EU
22.0 IPCC, Kyoto and the failure of the global system
a) Kyoto and US rejection
b) Agenda 21 and the effort to protect biodiversity
c) The Paris Accords and the global failure to engage with the crisis
d) Chinese development and failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
e) US political intransigence and the weakness of the multilateral system
f) India’s industrialization and GHG emissions
23.0 Advances in sustainable development and lessons for the world
a) The agroecological model
b) Decarbonization and dematerialization of the economy
c) The circular economy
d) Localization and Regionalization
e) Biodiversity protection and reducing the modern footprint
f) The 50% for nature idea
24.0 Political organization, international coordination, local control
a) Crisis is also opportunity: challenges to capital
b) Dismantling the global system
c) What are sustainable egalitarian systems like?
d) Making communities function
e) From multilateralism to internationalism
1.0 The idea of “development”: key concepts of human nature from Adam Smith to “homo economicus”.
a) Western concepts of the nation-state and the “economy”
b) Theories of “comparative advantage”
c) “development” as revelation: the stripping away of “irrational behavior”
d) “The best of all worlds” and the undoing of “tradition” and the triumph of modernism.
2.0 Contestant Discourse and the critique of modern economics: human nature
a) Marxist criticism of modern capitalism: social being, historical being
b) Utopian imaginary of the alternative to modern human society
c) Ideology and the “glue” of modern societies.
- i) Modern societies as structured and organized
- ii) Modern societies as chaotic and crisis-ridden
3.0 The crises of the early 20th Century and the prelude to the Second World War
a) The Mexican Revolution
b) The Russian Revolution
c) World War 1 and the “Spanish flu”
d) The Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe
e) The Second World War: the war economy East and West
f) Planning for the post-war era
g) Structures and change in the 20th century
4.0 Bretton Woods and the foundations of the new international system in Western countries
a) The Marshal Plan for Europe and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD
b) The International Monetary Fund, IMF
c) From IBRD to The World Bank
d) The IFC, IDA, MIGA and bank “windows”
e) Regional Multilateral Banks
f) The World Trade system, the GATT
5.0 The United Nations and Multilateralism
a) The UN Group, Security Council and General Assembly
b) WHO, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNEP,
c) OAS, OAU, ASEAN
d) The FAO and agriculture
6.0 Walt Rostow and the stage theory of development
a) The centrality of infrastructure
b) Trade policy and the primacy of exports
c) The golden age of mass consumption?
7.0 US foreign policy and the development of “international aid”
a) PL 480 and agricultural surpluses
b) USAID
c) EXIMBANK
d) OPIC
e) US participation and influence in the World Bank and IMF
II. The Emergence of the global system and its critics
8.0 Rostovian “take-off” theory and World Bank lending
a) Phase One: infrastructure: highways, airports, ports, dams, hydropower
b) Phase Two: "Basic Needs" micro-enterprises and women
c) Phase Three: "Structural Adjustment" Lending
d) Phase Four: sustainable development
9.0 Raul Prebisch and the ECLAC School
a) The theory of dependency
b) "The development of underdevelopment" according to Andre Gunder Frank
c) Teotonio dos Santos, Riu Mario Marini and Fernando Cardoso
d) Samir Amin and Arrighi: Unequal exchange
e) World Systems Theory and the core/periphery model
f) The Latin American strategy; “Desarrollo hacia Adentro”
g) Import Substitution Industrialization, ISI
- i) :The Andean Pact
10.0 Third world nationalism and resource exploitation
a) Mao’s “three worlds” theory
b) Mexican nationalizations
c) Tito and Yugoslavian non-alignment
d) The UN and non-alignment
11.0 The end of Keynesian economics and the emergence of Neo-liberalism
a) The 1973 coup in Chile and Pinochet—the "shock doctrine"
b) The “Chicago School” and the imposition of Milton Friedman’s theories
c) Reagan, Thatcher, Hayek and the attack on “statism”, the triumph of “monetarism”
d) The IMF and structural adjustment lending: the Latin American crises.
e) Currency devaluations and the “fiscal crisis of the state”
f) Privatizations, free trade, resource exploitation.
12.0 The Asian “dragons” and export-oriented industrialization
a) Japan in the post war era as exporter
b) Chinese economic “reforms” and the emergence of Chinese capitalism
c) Taiwan as an export platform
d) South Korea and ASEAN
e) Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia and Southeast Asia
13.0 The new international division of labor
a) Asian export platforms
b) Mexican maquiladoras
c) "De-industrialization", capital flight and the American “rust belt”
d) The EU and the OECD and their peculiar peripheries
14.0 Trade agreements and the formal global system
a) New international treaties
- i) The GATT becomes the WTO
- ii) NAFTA
- iii) TPP and TTIP
- The Lomé convention
- i) Mercosur
- ii) ALBA
- iii) BRICS
- iv) The limits of South-South trade
III Case studies in economic development
15.0 The invention of “rural development”
a) Norman Borlaug and the “Green Revolution”
b) Agricultural development and the threat of the Red Revolution
c) Irrigation and high yield varieties of patented cultivars
d) Capitalization and the rise of modern agro-exports
f) the destruction of the “peasantry”
e) Rural displacement and rural to urban migration in the developing world
16. 0 Large scale development projects: Riverbasins and hydrodams
a) Dams in Africa before 2000
b) Foç d'Iguazu: Brazil and Paraguay
c) Narmada Dam in India
d) Three Gorges Dam
e) Dams in Ethiopia: Renaissance and Gibe 3
17.0 Urbanization and Development Projects
a) The formalization of the “marginal settlement”
b) Megacities and the urbanization of the species
c) Chinese urban development
d) African cities and challenges to development from Cairo to Lagos to to Capetown
e) The demographic transition and cities
18.0 Mineral development and the primacy of fossil fuels
a) Oil and gas development in Africa and Latin America
b) Offshore resources for oil and gas
c) Rare Earth minerals and the tech industry
d) Coal in India, Australia and China
e) Strategic metals and US foreign policy
f) Impacts on indigenous peoples
19.0 The Blue Revolution and the FAO
a) UNCLOS and the Law of the Sea
b) The EEZ and development of coastal resources
c) Aquaculture and the shrimp markets
d) Aquaculture and global demand
e) Ocean territorial grabbing
f) The export imperative and depleted resources
IV Climate Crisis, “Sustainable Development” and the Crisis of 2020
20.0 The environmental critique of the development idea
a) The pernicious permanence of the growth model
b) The concepts of natural capital
- i) The concept of sustainable development inside the global system
- ii) The concept of sustainable development outside the global system
d) Sustainability of what? for whom?
21.0 Global inequality and the ideological crisis of global capital in the 21st Century
a) The “pink tide” in Latin America and the rejection of the neoliberal model
b) The commodity boom of the first decade of the 21st century and the successes of Lula in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela
c) The Arab spring
d) The fiscal crisis of the EU
22.0 IPCC, Kyoto and the failure of the global system
a) Kyoto and US rejection
b) Agenda 21 and the effort to protect biodiversity
c) The Paris Accords and the global failure to engage with the crisis
d) Chinese development and failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
e) US political intransigence and the weakness of the multilateral system
f) India’s industrialization and GHG emissions
23.0 Advances in sustainable development and lessons for the world
a) The agroecological model
b) Decarbonization and dematerialization of the economy
c) The circular economy
d) Localization and Regionalization
e) Biodiversity protection and reducing the modern footprint
f) The 50% for nature idea
24.0 Political organization, international coordination, local control
a) Crisis is also opportunity: challenges to capital
b) Dismantling the global system
c) What are sustainable egalitarian systems like?
d) Making communities function
e) From multilateralism to internationalism