PG 328 | Development, Exploitation, and Political Change

This course offers an intellectual history of the evolution of the interdisciplinary research program concerned with issues of economic development, exploitation and political change. Working in the field of comparative political economy, students examine the classical theories of eighteenth and nineteenth century political economy and political sociology (Smith, Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber), post-WWII neo-classical theories of modernization and development, and theoretical approaches at the global level in the wake of the collapse of the dominant modernization paradigm. Students apply these theories to contemporary puzzles of development, underdevelopment and political change and address broader issues of the growth of knowledge in the social sciences.