Syllabi for Graduate Seminars:
Theories of Imperialism
Course description: Few terms in the vocabulary of politics are so confused as “imperialism.” Does it refer essentially to colonial rule? Or is it primarily an economic phenomenon, connected to the export of capital? What is its relation to state actors, and to nationalism? Which societies, in the past or present, can be properly described as imperialist? This graduate seminar will explore a range of theoretical and empirical debates that bear on the question of what imperialism is, how it functions in relation to capitalism, the state, and class relations, and its relevance as an analytical category in the contemporary global order. Topics for reading and discussion will include debates concerning the historical linkage between racial capitalism and empire, the impact of capitalist development on different societies around the world, whether and how imperialism can be exercised through non-territorial rule after the age of formal empire, and the extent to which the contemporary capitalist system is governed by imperial relations or something more multipolar in form. The seminar aims to deepen our understanding of theoretical approaches to studying imperialism within broadly Marxist and critical traditions of social theory, and second, to examine empirical studies that explicate the relation between these theories and concrete historical, ethnographic, and interdisciplinary social scientific investigations.Logics of Inquiry
This graduate seminar addresses a variety of themes that are central to critical social theorizing, and, in doing so, engages a variety of core “problematics” of global studies and of global social inquiry more broadly. It is designed to be an exploration of some of the modern logics that have been employed as forms of inquiry in the social sciences, the humanities, and beyond. By “logics of inquiry,” we mean qualitative ways of knowing and modes of thinking that link theory to interpretive method. The course aims to help graduate students understand, synthesize, and acquire a strong theoretical foundation for global empirical analysis and research. Readings will be situated in fields of inquiry associated with the analysis and interpretation of the field of the social. Themes explored include: Thinking structurally; world orders and global social formations; society and community; concepts of the “human”; justice, responsibility, and the politics of difference; Theories of social change.Cutting across and integrating these theoretic themes is what I take to be a cluster of constitutive concerns for any critical perspective, namely the production and operation of structured relations of power, domination and exploitation, and the politics of resistance to and struggles to transform and/or transgress those relations—to denaturalize and de-normalize the often taken-for-granted social relations through which power operates, and to open conceptual space for a world that might be otherwise. Many of the issues arise, either directly or indirectly, from the concepts and theoretical framework of Marx’s historical materialism, but now typically with explicit reference to the contemporary (late modern) context of globalizing capitalism. Other themes, concerning, for example, the scope and operation of power, difference, and rule in global racialized and patriarchal relations, derive from post- and de-colonial, queer, feminist, critical race/ethnicity strands of global social theory. The intent is not to present a comprehensive survey of global social theory nor to present these concepts as dogma, as if the concepts and commitments of Marxist, post-Marxist, post-colonial, critical race, and other theories have fixed meaning, which must be learned and repeated. Instead, my expectation is that we will explore the analytic avenues that such concepts and theories open for us as we view them, in turn, as historically situated and socially constituted. In all, the expectation is that the seminar will afford us with a deeper engagement in interrogative and critical logics of inquiry, and in critical scholarly work on crucial concerns of the world order of our time.
Infrastructures and Technologies of Globalization
While infrastructures such as sewage systems, electrical grids, and railroads are often understood as “boring things” (Star 1999) – the underlying material substrata that support our everyday lives – the study of technological innovation often focuses on hyper-visible modern artifacts and systems of technical hardware – from the automobile to the iPhone and the drone – that alter the relations between human ends and their technical means. This course aims to bring the study of technical artifacts and their underlying systems together, considering their co-constitutive role as powerful transformative forces in shaping and reflecting processes of globalization. Drawing attention to the transformative social force of large-scale socio-technical systems, we will consider how technical arrangements and physical systems produce and reflect various forms of global order. Course themes include: the historical development of mechanization, industrialization and processes of mass automation in the making of global capitalism and militarism; the role of technology in social difference (class, race, gender, sexuality, disability etc.); histories of conflict around the access, use, and the construction of infrastructural and technological projects; and the ways in which transportation infrastructures and technologies have been crucial in remaking global dynamics such as displacement, extractivism, unemployment, disease, etc. Specific examples examined might include railroads, electricity, undersea cables, logistics and energy systems, bitcoin, the cloud, financial technologies, drones, and border surveillance technologies.