Sociology
281, Political Economy and Global Social Change
Fall 2005 Wednesday
4-7
College Building South- Map Room C.
Chase-Dunn
Suggested topics for Five-Page
Essay
The
five-page essay should use readings and seminar discussions from the course to
address a question or problem that is germane to political economy and global
social change. The five-page essay is due in class on December 7. A
one-paragraph description of the essay topic is due on November 2. You may propose your own topic or select
from the suggested topics listed below. One or more of these could be combined.
- Discuss
Marx’s conceptualization of the commodity and the process of
commodification and its relevance to his definition of capitalism as
commodity production by means of wage labor.
- Discuss
the idea of peripheral capitalism as commodity production using coerced
labor.
- Discuss
Max Weber’s definition of the state as the monopoly of legitimate violence
and his conception of law as they are relevant for the problem of global
governance.
- Discuss
the relationship between Polanyi’s types of economic integration and
Marx’s definition of capitalism. How are these useful or problematic for
understanding the development of human societies?
- Discuss
and compare the idea of class structures with the idea of core/periphery
relations.
- Discuss
Frederic Lane’s concept of protection rent and its relevance for
understanding the capitalist state.
- Discuss
the role that racism has played in modern and premodern core/periphery
hierarchies.
- Discuss
and critique the idea of a global stage of capitalism.
- Discuss
the distinction between globalization as integration with the
“globalization project.”
- Discuss
the problems of supply chain labor organizing in the context of
contemporary global political economy as considered by Bonacich and
Wilson.
- Discuss
the plausibility of the idea that market socialism, as defined by Boswell
and Chase-Dunn, could be the basis of a more sustainable and just global
society in the coming century.