Political Economy Courses
FALL TERM 2025
This Fall 2025 term, the Institute of Political Economy will not be hosting a visiting professor.
PECO 5000F [0.5 credit]
Theories of Political Economy
Instructor: Randall Germain
Students analyze and synthesize the core concepts and ideas proposed by both the founders and modern practitioners of political economy. The course focuses on theories of power relations and inequalities and assesses the consequences of these theories.
This seminar examines both foundational and contemporary theoretical perspectives of capitalism, settler colonialism, the modern state, and relations of power. Contending views of the dynamics governing economic, political, and cultural changes in the modern era, and of modernity itself, will be explored. What light do these theories shed on processes of socio-economic change and the complex relationship between the economic, the cultural, and the political? How ought we to identify the collective actors engaged in making these changes, the sites of their interaction, and the processes through which collective identities are constituted? What are classes, and are they important? What of sex and gender, race, and other bases of both identity formation and oppression? Is ‘capitalism’ still a discrete entity (and was it ever so)? How does it intersect with racism and settler colonialism in Canada today? What is ‘neoliberalism’, and is ‘globalisation’ a new phenomenon? How do we make sense of economic and social crisis?
PECO 5002F (SOCI 5806) [0.5 credit]
Political Economy of Work and Labour
Instructor: Jane Stinson
Students analyze and synthesize key concepts and debates in the political economy of work and labour with particular attention to divisions of labour, power structures, and histories of struggle.
Students in this seminar will analyze the social, political and economic conditions within which capital and labour interact in Canada. Key events in the history of Canadian work and labour as well as current concerns and emerging challenges will be examined. Actions by trade unions will be central in this analysis. Through the readings and discussions, we will consider and assess organizing, bargaining and political action strategies focussing on core concepts of mobilization and solidarity. The theme of equity in work and in the labour movement will be woven into readings and discussions. We will develop intersectional analytical skills to note and address inequalities of class, gender, race, abilities and sexual orientation in work and labour. Particular attention will be paid to the public sector, to the role of unions in challenging the growth of inequality and precarious employment and to the future of work post-pandemic.
Questions for seminar discussions include: What are the elements of effective organizing and bargaining strategies? How can the union movement mobilize and build solidarity between workers and with other members of society? What are decolonizing and inclusive strategies for the labour movement? Why is intersectional analysis important and what difference will it make? Why is it important to recognize experience and build in reflective practices?
PECO 5501A (PSCI 5501/SOCI 5504) [0.5 credit]
Special Topics in Political Economy I
Instructor: Course not offered fall 2025
Topic varies from year to year.
Course Outline
PECO 5501B (GEOG 5600) [0.5 credit]
Empire and Colonialism
Instructor: Emilie Cameron
Theoretical approaches to empire and colonialism: postcolonial, feminist, Indigenous, anti-racist, queer, decolonizing, and political-economic approaches. Consideration of a range of sites of imperial and colonial formation, including land, territory, nature, the body, sexuality, gender, and race, as well as forms of resistance, resurgence, and decolonization.
PECO 5501F (HIST 5315F) [0.5 credit]
State and Society in Canadian History
Instructor: Course not offered in fall 2025
A seminar on selected topics related to the histories and historiography of political culture, state formation, and social relations in Canada.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Course Outline
PECO 5503F (SOCI 5503/ PSCI 5504) [0.5 credit]
Special Topics in Work and Labour I
Instructor: Course not offered fall 2025
Topics and emphasis vary from term to term according to current policies and events influencing the distribution and benefits of work and labour including migration, technological and environmental change, privatization, austerity, and transnational legislation.
Course Outline
PECO 5900 [0.5 credit]
Tutorial in Political Economy
Directed readings on selected aspects of political economy, involving preparation of papers as the basis for discussion with the tutor. Offered when no regular course offering meets a candidate’s specific needs.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the Director.
Form: Tutorial Approval Form
WINTER TERM 2026
This Winter 2026 term, our visiting professor is Beatriz Bustos, who will be teaching PECO 5502 and PECO 5504.
PECO 5001W [0.5 credit]
Methodologies of Political Economy
Instructor: David Hugill
Students conceptualize and design an interdisciplinary research project in political economy, using an appropriate methodological approach. Methodological alternatives are compared.
This seminar prepares students to undertake a significant independent research project at the graduate level. Designed largely as a workshop, the course provides hands-on training in how to design, conduct, and produce scholarly research. Course materials provoke students to think critically about methodology and their own methodological choices as researchers. Topics include the relationship of methodology to matters of theory and evidence, as well as to epistemology and the ethics and politics of knowledge production. These concerns will also be linked to more nuts-and-bolts issues, including how to turn a broad project topic into one or more researchable questions. It sets out to expand students’ awareness of the range of methodologies they might enlist in their work and provide them with tools for evaluating the research methods best suited to their own questions, training, and objects of inquiry.
PECO 5502 Y (PSCI 5502 W/SOCI 5505 W) [0.5 credit]
The Geography of Commodities
Instructor: Beatriz Bustos
This graduate seminar examines the political ecology of commodities, analyzing how natural resources become integrated into global capitalist circuits of production and accumulation. Through critical engagement with political ecology scholarship and case studies of specific commodities (copper, salmon, oil, bananas, wine, water), students will develop advanced analytical capabilities to assess the social, environmental, and geographical transformations resulting from resource extraction and commodity production.
PECO 5502 Z (PADM 5702 W) [0.5 credit]
Policy Seminars
Instructor: Course not offered winter 2026
Topic varies from year to year.
Course Outline
PECO 5504W (SOCI 5502/PSCI 5505) [0.5 credit]
The Political Economy of Work and Nature
Instructor: Beatriz Bustos
This graduate seminar explores the intersections between labor theories and ecological processes in understanding extractive economies, with particular attention to Latin American contexts. The course challenges traditional political economy frameworks by examining nature not as a passive resource but as an active, transformative agent in capitalist production and accumulation.
The seminar is structured in two interconnected parts. First, we revisit classical debates in political economy, examining labor theory of value alongside feminist interventions on social reproduction and unpaid work. This foundation allows us to critically assess what is gained and lost when extending value theory to encompass nature’s work. Second, we engage with ecological Marxist scholarship on metabolism, entropy, and ecological contradictions to understand how nature’s material agency shapes and constrains extractive capitalism. Throughout the course, we grapple with a central question: Can we integrate the work of nature into a theory of extractivism? Students will analyze how the labor-intensity of primary commodity economies – with their attendant social struggles – intersects with the challenges that “taming nature” poses for capital accumulation. We examine the institutional and political forms through which nature’s work is organized, contested, and transformed within extractive relations.
This reading-intensive seminar emphasizes critical theoretical synthesis, with students developing integrated frameworks that bridge classical political economy and contemporary ecological thought. Through case studies of Latin American extractive processes, students will apply these theoretical tools to analyze concrete struggles over labor conditions, environmental governance, and natural resource conflicts.
PECO 5505W (SOCI 5804) [0.5 credit]
Modern Marxist Theory
Instructor: Justin Paulson
An examination of topics of theory and research in modern Marxist literature; the central focus is on problems of class analysis, the state, and politics in advanced capitalist societies.
PECO 5900 [0.5 credit]
Tutorial in Political Economy
Directed readings on selected aspects of political economy, involving preparation of papers as the basis for discussion with the tutor. Offered when no regular course offering meets a candidate’s specific needs.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the Director.
Form: Tutorial Approval Form
PECO 6000W [0.5 credit]
Political Economy: Core Concepts
Instructor: Laura Macdonald
Students analyze and synthesize the historical evolution of, and contemporary debates in, political economy through interdisciplinary dialogue. Students develop knowledge of political economy theories compatible with their own research interests.