Introduction to Political Economy

An interesting article from the front page of the New York Times online on worker militancy provoked by the recession.

Workers laid off from a Chicago factory on Saturday at what they called an occupation of the plant. They criticized their former bosses, the company’s creditors and the federal government.

Read article.

Folks

Here are the readings for our last two lectures on “Trade and Globalization”

E4E, Ch. 21 & 22
Field Guide Ch. 10
Tom Friedman, The World is Flat, Ch. 1 (Part 1 and Part 2) & Ch. 5
Ha-Joon Chang- Kicking away the ladder: The “Real” History of Free Trade, ONLINE at

Folks

These are some notes ad slides from the two classes this week on Ecology and Consumption. Plus you can download Assignment Four here if you missed it in class. The assignment is due last day of class, Dec 11th.

Ecology Notes  Ecology Slides

Consumption Notes   Consumption Slides

Assignment Four

Folks

This week we will be doing Political Economy of Ecology and Consumption. The readings and videos are:

1. E4E Chapter 15 and Field Guide Ch. 8

2. The Overspent American (Introduction) by Juliet Schor (PDF)

3. Confronting Consumption (Introduction) by Thomas Princen (PDF)

4. The Story of Stuff

5. Majora Carter’s inspiring talk on “greening the ghetto” (click on this if you can’t get the embedded video to work)

Below I am posting some notes from the last two lectures on Political Economy of Race and Gender. These notes draw on the readings for these topics that were posted a few wees ago.

PE of Race (PDF)

PE of Gender (PDF)

Folks

Here is a document listing the guidelines and possible topics for the final paper.

Final Paper Guidelines and Topics (PDF)

For those who were unable to download Assignment 3 from the website, I am linking it here as well.

I will accept all late-work until the last day of class. No work (other than the final paper) will be accepted after that.

Assignment Three (PDF)

Folks

Here are some notes and slides from the two lectures on Finance we did last week.

lecture 18 notes (PDF)

lecture 19 slides (PDF)

 Folks

These are the readings listed on the syllabus for the PE of Race and Gender part of the syllabus.

Political Economy of Race and Gender (doc format)

Nancy Folbre: Supporting Care (doc format)

The New Latino South (PDF)

If you aren’t already completely fed up with news and analysis of the current economic crisis, here is a great set of five articles on it. This series takes you through the short-term events that led to the financial crisis, all the way to the medium and long term consequences for the real economy. I highly recommend it.

Global Economic Crisis