AMES 27A02 - Modern Capitalism and its Institutions
Recent tumultuous developments in the global political economy have raised fundamental questions about the institutional arrangements that underpin our modern society. Many of these focus on the challenges on the liberal institutions upon which the global capitalist system has rested since the end of the Second World War. At the same time, we are witnessing the development and deployment of new digital technologies that are reshaping how markets are conceptualized and function, and in turn how economies and societies are ordered. These political, technological, and socio-economic developments are not unrelated; they are fundamentally intertwined. These complex issues reiterate the need for interdisciplinary study of politics, society, and economy. This is a crucial starting point for making sense of interrelated developments across diverse institutional contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
This course will introduce students to a set of analytic tools and conceptual frameworks through which to assess the origins and evolution of the institutions that constitute modern capitalism. The course takes an interdisciplinary political economy approach that draws insights from economics, sociology, political science, history, geography, science and technology studies, and law. The course will critically assess the rise of what Karl Polanyi and Albert O. Hirschman have referred to as "market society," a powerful conceptual framework that views the development of modern capitalism not as an outcome of deterministic economic and technological forces, but rather as the result of contingent social and political processes. Capitalism is a set of institutions historically produced by competing ideas that are socially constructed, politically contested, and morally embedded. These systems of meaning hold powerful appeal, shaping the way we make sense of "data," "information," and "facts." In this respect, humans do not simply observe the world "as it is"; we see the world through competing theories and beliefs. The course material will thus cover different theoretical perspectives that illustrate alternative conceptions of rationality, which in turn produce competing ways of "seeing" and making sense of the complexities of our social world. The ultimate objective is to expose students to a range of critical conceptual tools and frameworks through which to interrogate the current relationship between states and markets, and to consider the extent to which social actors can challenge its limits and imagine alternative possibilities.