GLOS3215: Supercapitalism: Labor, Consumption & the Environment in the New Global Economy

From the jeans you buy online to the place mats you purchase at Target, most of the items we consume are made somewhere else. Global production networks link consumers of fresh green beans in Britain with growers, pickers, and packers in Zambia. And it isn't only products that move around the globe; so do people. Thanks to immense economic inequalities, wealthy families in the global North enjoy the cheap labor of Eastern European, Filipino, and Honduran nannies, house cleaners, and gardeners. How did this global economy come to be, how has it impacted workers, consumers, and ecosystems, and what are its ethical and political implications? This course focuses on the changes that have occurred over the last 70 years in the realms of labor, consumption, and the environment. We'll examine the movement away from regulated national economies to an integrated global economy; changing patterns and organization of production, distribution, consumption, and waste disposal; and new forms of capital-labor-state relations. Some of the topics we explore include the global trade in body parts; the rise of shareholder capitalism; the new "platform" economy; the growing insecurity of work; and the environmental changes global capitalism has wrought. We end by considering alternatives to the "business-as-usual" (BAU) economy.

View on University Catalog