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Reading Globalization: An Annotated Bibliography

2008 Ford Scholars Project Description

Description of the Project:

The global spread of capitalism is a phenomenon with profound political, social and environmental implications.  In the last thirty years, this topic has generated tremendous writings and heated debates in many social disciplines.  I regularly teach a course, Economic Geography: Spaces of global capitalism (Geog276) at Vassar.  While the course touches upon many questions on global capitalism, I have always felt the need to design a more advanced course to push the discussion into deeper theoretical debate with multidisciplinary perspectives.  With the assistance of a Ford scholar, I plan to generate an annotated bibliography of the landmark works in the vast literature of globalization and capitalism in the hope to develop a course syllabus on reading globalization. This bibliography will not only identify the key arguments of the significant work on global capitalism, but also map the contexts of the writing, both geographically and historically. Such contexts are very useful for students to understand the motivations behind the arguments. The bibliography will be essential for me to prepare for a seminar (reading globalization) that I plan to teach the following year.
 
There are several major areas we will concentrate on:

1. Origins of global capitalism system. t is argued by prominent scholars such as Wallerstein (1974) that the current globalization process has its roots in the western colonization since the 15th century.  However, more recent studies including the work by Frank (1998) and Abu-Lughod (1989) claim that globalization has an even deeper history with Asia as the center of global trade since the 10th century.  What is at stake in this debate is not just the history of the world economy, or who has the claim about origin of globalization, but the validity of Eurocentric world view and the alternative vision of the future evolution of the world system. I would like to assemble the major writings in this debate. 
2. Key writings on globalization. There have been tremendous discussions on the benefits and costs of globalization. Sometimes it can be confusing as the prominent works are quoted over and over again without situating them in the original historical/geographical context.  We will select some landmark work on global capitalism and the annotated bibliography will help to highlight both the arguments and the contexts of the work. 
3. Comparison of capitalism in Latin America and East Asia.  Latin America and East Asia are the two world regions that have generated some of the major theoretical discourses on global capitalist development during the post war era, including the dependency school (Latin America) and state-led development (East Asia). I would like to collect key writings on these two discourses.

Anticipated Summer Activities during the Summer:

It is a short (five-week) session.  The student assistant will mostly engage in the literature research.
I will help to identify the initial list of books or articles for the annotated bibliography.  The student will do research, identify related works and collectively, we will generate a tentative syllabus for the globalization course.

Preferred Student Qualifications/Skills:

Strong reading and writing skills; strong interest and course work background in the globalization issues;
excellent work ethic, self-motivated, responsible, good organizational skills; some international background would be helpful.

Anticipated Follow-up Teaching/Professional Activity for the Student:

Student will be presenting at the Ford Scholars Symposium. S/he can take the seminar or be the TA for the seminar.