Instructor: Ken Brealey Email: Ken.Brealey@ucfv.ca
Office Rooms: Cha A102A     Office Phones: Cha 2406
                    Abb A406B                            Abb 4711

Course Outline

Economic geography studies the ways in which production and consumption are unavoidably spatial activities. While all cultures build economic systems appropriate to their own values and needs, this intermediate course will concentrate on the geographies of capitalism, a system of material, social and cultural production that first emerged in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries but has now reached, in whole or in part, to every corner of the planet. We will use a critical political economy perspective to show how the production, circulation and consumption of goods or services creates certain kinds of economic landscapes at large and small scales, and how these, in turn, influence social, cultural and political life. Special attention will be paid to the increasingly dynamic geographies of advanced capitalism in the age of globalization. These ideas will be discussed through lecture, audiovisual materials, and class discussion. There will be one field trip scheduled in week 10 and requiring a couple hours outside class time.

Required text: There is no required text for this course. You will need, though, a copy of the coursepack reader, which contains all the required readings listed in the outline below, and may be purchased in the university/college bookstore.

Recommended text (on reserve): Knox, P. and Agnew, J. 2004 The Geography of the World Economy 4^th Edition (London: Oxford University Press)

Evaluation

Participation: 20%
Term Assignment: 30%
Midterm: 20%
Final Exam 30%

Course Schedule

Wk1: Introduction to the course; outlines of term assignment and presentation selections; doing economic geography in a globalizing world
Wk2: The global, the local, and everywhere between; from static models to dynamic explanations of geo-economic change
Wk3: States, markets and regional motors; geographical patterns and processes in the world economy
Wk4: Pre-capitalist foundations, the industrial revolution, and the con-solidation of ‘organized capitalism’
Wk5: The globalization of production, and the emergence of ‘advanced capitalism’; review for midterm exam
Wk6: Geographies in flux; the spatial reorganization of the core economies
Wk7: Midterm Exam
Wk8: The unequal dynamics of interdependence; transformation of the peripheral economies
Wk9: Field Trip: From the ‘village on the edge of the rainforest’ to the ‘global village’; an economic geography of greater Vancouver
Wk10: Agriculture and development in the periphery — the primary concerns?
Wk11: Another Faustian bargain?; industrialization and spatial change in the developing world
Wk12: Transnational integration
Wk13 Economy, ecology, and the theory and practice of globalization; homo economicus in the global village; conclusion of course