FALL TERM 2023
This Fall 2023 term, our visiting professor is Marianne Marchand. She will be teaching two courses, PECO 5501 and PECO 5503.
PECO 5000F [0.5 credit]
Theories of Political Economy
Instructor: Stacy Douglas
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 [0.5 credit]
Political Economy of Work and Labour
Instructor: Jane Stinson
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]
Gendering Political Economy
Instructor: Marianne Marchand
Since the 1990s gender specialists and feminists have criticized the field of political economy for its neglect of gender and diversity issues and, while a substantial literature on gender / feminist political economy issues and concerns has emerged, to some extent this situation continues to exist. This course’s overall objective is to look at the field of political economy through a gender and diversity lens. Such objective implies more than formulating a feminist/gender critique of the field of political economy as it takes the gendered nature of political economy as starting point and intends to “unpack” its (gendered) complexities, invisibilities, intersectionalities, structures and epistemologies. In other words, it will look at both central concepts and issues of PE, such as trade, finance, the market, and the state, as well as non-traditional themes including everyday life, decolonialities, and geographies of marginality. As this course aims to be highly interactive, students are expected to participate through presentations, blogs, and off-campus visits to “site” gendered political economies. The course will also make use of audio-visual materials.
PECO 5501F (HIST 5315F) [0.5 credit]
State and Society in Canadian History – Natural Resources Extraction in Canadian History
Instructor: Dominique Marshall
An exploration of the complex history of the extraction of natural resources in Canada. It addresses Canada’s transnational relations of labour and business, Indigenous and traditional understandings of rights to the land at home and abroad, contrasting traditions and perspectives on the ecology and management of natural resources amongst users, activists, government agencies and civil society organizations, social and cultural histories of science and technology, questions of gender and generations, relations between humans and non-human inhabitants of the environment. It pays a particular attention to political and legal conflicts over the regulation of resources extraction, regulations of all sorts about use and preservation, contested or collaborative. The course features corresponding transnational perspectives, in conversations with African environmental/resource management experiences/practices from African and Latin American regions. The course also relies on the shared knowledge of an interdisciplinary group of students.
PECO 5503F (SOCI 5503/ PSCI 5504) [0.5 credit]
Political Economy of Migration
Instructor: Marianne Marchand
Migration is a complex phenomenon that needs to be approached from inter/multi/trans disciplinary approaches. However, economic explanations (such as push-pull and rational cost-benefit analysis) have had a major influence in the debates on migration. This course intends to go beyond these economic/economistic explanations by developing a political economy approach to understand and analyze complex migration processes. It will address such themes as the development of a migration industry, the migration-development nexus (in sending communities), the political economy of border securitization, ethnic entrepreneurship, and the political economy of migrant communities (in receiving states), as well as the political economy of transnational / diasporic communities. Examples will be taken from the corridor of Mexican and Central American migration to Canada and United States, but also from other migrant communities residing in Canada. The course will involve off-campus visits to get acquainted with local political economic geographies of migrant communities. As this course aims to be highly interactive, students are expected to participate through presentations, blogs, and field visits. The course will also make use of audio-visual materials.
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 2024
This Winter 2024 term, our visiting professor is Margaret FitzGerald who will be teaching PECO 5502 and PECO 5504.
PECO 5001W [0.5 credit]
Methodology of Political Economy
Instructor: Karen Hébert
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 Political Economy of Vulnerability and Need
Instructor: Maggie FitzGerald
This course will critically examine and assess the ways in which ‘vulnerability’ and ‘need’ are understood and debated in political economic literature and our political economic systems more broadly. The course will also focus on the political-economic processes through which certain vulnerabilities and needs are obfuscated or marginalized, while others are centred. We will explore how needs are met (or not) in our political economic systems and we will consider alternative arrangements for responding to individual and community vulnerabilities.
PECO 5504W (SOCI 5502/PSCI 5505) [0.5 credit]
Precarious Work, Precarious Labour, Precarious Life
Instructor: Maggie FitzGerald
This course begins with the notion of the precariat as a new class (e.g. Standing 2011; 2018), defined as those who face chronic labour insecurity and thus have a unique relation to production, distribution, and the welfare state (e.g. Fudge and Owens 2006; Vosko 2006). We will then examine the difference between precarious work (e.g. Millar 2014) and precarious labour (e.g. Bourdieu 1998), and consider seriously challenges from the Global South that have argued that precarious labour only appears to be a ‘worse’ form of labour when compared to Western labour norms (e.g. Barchiesi 2012; Goldín 2011; Millar 2014; 2017; Munck 2013; Neilson and Rossiter 2008; Scully 2016; Zhan and Huang 2012). In so doing, the class will together consider the ways in which precarious work and labour might (somewhat paradoxically) serve as well as disrupt capitalist relations of production. Lastly, the course will consider how the experience of precarious work and labour shapes precarity at the ontological level more broadly (e.g. Butler 2004; 2009; Casas-Cortés 2014).
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
Drawing on classical and contemporary writings, this course provides an opportunity to reflect on core concepts in political economy. Topics will be selected in consultation with participating units, taking into account the potential number of students, their research interests and those of the participating units.