Course Description
This graduate colloquium focuses on the feedback loop between “societies” and “economies.” It asks how particular ideas and social arrangements have shaped the forms that economies have taken and how economies have impacted conceptual categories and human relationships.
Athena Title
Economy as History
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students who complete this course will be familiar with some classic theories of economic life in addition to recent research, and they will be more comfortable integrating “theory” and history in productive ways. They will be able to identify the following questions as critical to the history of economies, and they will be familiar with some substantial arguments that address them: 1. What are the defining elements of an “economy”? 2. How have systems of rationality/commitments/ideologies shaped the form that economies have taken? 3. What social structures/institutions have made particular economies possible? 4. How have economic processes affected conceptual categories? 5. How have economic processes affected social formations?
Topical Outline
1. Labor 2. Modes of production 3. Commodities 4. Currency 5. Credit and debt 6. Land 7. Economic rationalities 8. Political economy 9. “Embeddedness” and the state 10. Gifting 11. Accounting 12. Creating trust (New Institutional Economics) 1 13. Creating trust (New Institutional Economics) 2 14. “Self interest” and models of human agency
Syllabus
Public CV