Global Structures: A Graduate Seminar

Convened by József Böröcz jborocz@rci.rutgers.edu Office hours: M 4-5pm, B207 LSH or by appt Department of Sociology // Rutgers University Fall 2005, 16.920.571.01 // 01.920.491.02 M 1:10-3:50pm

This is a graduate seminar in the historical sociology of the interconnections among some of the world’s largest and most consequential social institutions. It is a survey course, organised around a critical analysis of such key concepts as ‘development’, the ‘world-system,’ ‘hegemony’, ‘empire’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘coloniality’. The purpose of the course is gaining literacy, devising critiques and deriving inspiration in some areas of overlap among political economy, geopolitics and studies of representations of inferiorised otherness. You are expected to:

• come to class prepared, with an active interest in both macro-social analysis, an investigative curiosity and a mature intellectual agenda relating to the issues at hand,

• present one or two 5-10-minutes-long, sharply focussed remarks introducing the given week's readings as a stimulus for class discussion (schedule of remarks will be assigned in first class meeting),

• present a 15-minute review of a book on the broad theme of the course, that only you have read (for the list of available books, see page 4 of this syllabus),

• bring a less-than-one-page list of problem items (the most clearly formulated critical questions you would pose to the authors if they were here) to each class, in as many copies as members of the class, (these will serve as bases for discussion and, later, as reminders of some of the key points),

• contribute your unique perspective, erudition and experience to the discussions, and • write a high-quality research paper on a relevant subject on time.

Grading will be a judicious combination of your contribution to the discussions, your presentations, homework and your paper.

Paper: Write a research paper—maximum 4000 words’ length—about a topic of your choice regarding the links among various kinds of global structures. Your task is to make some theoretical proposition and some empirical observation to bear on each other in a way that is novel and relevant to some literature in this area of research. Please submit your one-paragraph topic statement by the time of the 6th class meeting—i.e., by 17 October. Please use my office hours for discussions of possible topics, problems and solutions as soon as they occur to you. Deadline for the finished paper: 4pm, 12 December 2005. Please deliver your paper, in a print form, to my mailbox.

The books have been ordered through the Livingston College Bookstore. With some luck, you might also be able to find them on Graduate Reserves in Alexander Library.

Schedule date Topics Readings 9/12 Introduction:

- to the course - to some of the basic issues & concepts in global analysis

Film in class: Caravans of Gold (UK -

Nigerian, dir/prod.: Basil Davidson, 1984).

Homework (deadline: next class; bring to class in as many copies as people): Prepare two sets of viewer notes (each maximum 200 words): /1/ How does the film contribute to understanding global structures and change? /2/ What are some of the main problems with the way in which the film addresses those issues?

9/19 Basics of global analysis: Modernizationism, dependency, world-systems and post-colonial studies

Gereffi, Gary. 1994. “The International Economy and Economic Development..” Chapter 9 (pp. 206-23) in Neil J. Smelser & Richard Swedberg (eds.) The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton UP.

Böröcz, József. 2005. “Redistributing Global Inequality: A Thought Experiment.” Economic and Political Weekly, 26 February. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jborocz/redistributing.epw.pdf

Recommended: So, Alvin. 1990. Social Change and Development.

Modernization, Dependency, and World-System Theories. Sage Library of Social Research 178.

9/26 World-System Analysis: Approaches, Issues

and Openings

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. World-Systems Analysis. An Introduction. Duke UP.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16,4(Sep):387-415.

Recommended: Skocpol, Theda. 1977. “Wallerstein’s World

Capitalist System: A Theoretical and Historical Critique.” The American Journal of Sociology, 82,5(Mar):1075-90.

Zolberg, Aristide. 1981. “Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link.” World Politics, 33,2(Jan): 253-81.

10/3 Rise and Demise

Chase-Dunn, Christopher K. & Thomas D. Hall. 1997. Rise and Demise. Comparing World-Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Goldstein, Joshua. 1985. “Kondratieff Waves as

War Cycles.” International Studies Quarterly, 29:411-44.

10/10 Hegemonies: The Substantive Implications of ‘Periodisation’

Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso.

Recommended: Christopher Chase-Dunn, Rebecca Giem, Andrew

Jorgenson, Thomas Reifer, John Rogers and Shoon Lio. 2002. “The Trajectory of the United States in the World-System: A Qualitative Reflection.” Sociological Perspectives, 48,2, 233-54.

10/17 ‘Governance’ and Change

Arrighi, Giovanni and Beverly Silver. 1999. Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

10/24 Global History: How to Think without Euro-centrism?

Frank, André Gunder. 1998. Re-ORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Recommended: Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 2005. “Paradigm Making by

Paradigm Breaking: André Gunder Frank.” Review of International Political Economy, 12,3(August): 383-6.

Gills, Barry. 2005. “André Gunder Frank: Prophet in the

Wilderness (1929-2005).” International Development Economics Associates, http://www.networkideas.org/news/apr2005/news26_Andre_Gunder_Frank.htm .

10/31 The ‘West’ as a Detour

Hobson, John M. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge UP.

11/7 Orientalism

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. NY: Vintage. Mohanty, Chandra T. 1991. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist

Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Pp. 333-58 in Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sarkar, Mahua. 2004. “Looking for Feminism.” Gender and History, 16,2(August):318-33.

11/14 Coloniality

A slide for a lecture on genetics and race at the State Academy for Race and Health in Dresden shows the Black offspring of a German woman and an African colonial soldier stationed with French troops occupying the Rhineland after World War I. Some 500 teenagers--pejoratively called the "Rhineland bastards"—were forcibly sterilized after 1937 as part of Nazi policy to "purify" the German population. Ca. 1936. Library of Congress

Césaire, Aimé. 2000. (1950) Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. NY: Grove Press.

11/21 The Universal Exhibition

Mitchell, Timothy. 1988. Colonising Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.

11/28 Dominance without Hegemony and the Power of Histories

Guha, Ranajit. 1997. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

12/5 The Rule of European Difference

Wolff, Larry. 1994. Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford UP.

Wolff, Larry. 2001. in Venice and the Slavs. The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford UP.:

- “Introduction..” Pp. 1-24; and - “Conclusions and Continuities: The Legacy of

Venetian Enlightenment in Napoleonic Illyria, Habsburg Dalmatia, and Yugoslavia.” Pp. 319-62.

Böröcz, József: “Goodness Is Elsewhere.” MS. Online location TBA.

12/12 Summary, Patching-Up and Implications

Items for book review presentation: Date of

presentation Alatas, Syed Hussein. 1977. The Myth of the Lazy Native. A study of the image of the Malays,

Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th century and its function in the ideology of colonial capitalism. London: Frank Cass.

Amin, Samir. 1989. Eurocentrism. Translated by Russell Moore. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Arrighi, Giovanni, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden (eds.) 2003. The Resurgence of East Asia. 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives. London: Routledge.

Babb, Sarah. 2001. Managing Mexico. Economists from Nationalism to Neoliberalism. Princeton UP.

Balibar, Etienne & Immanuel Wallerstein. 1991 (1988). Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso.

Barkey, Karen and Mark von Hagen (eds.) 1997. After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-building. The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Duara, Prasenjit. 2003. Sovereignty and Authenticity. Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Grosfoguel, Ramón and Ana Maregarita Cervantes-Rodríguez (eds.) 2002. The Modern / Colonial / Capitalist World-System in the Twentieth Century. Global Processes, Antisystemic Movements, and the Geopolitics of Knowledge. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Grovogui, Siba N’Zatioula. 1996. Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans. Race and Self-Determination in International Law. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

James, C.L.R. 1989 (1963).The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Second Edition, Revised. New York: Vintage.

Mignolo, Walter D. 2000. Local Histories / Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton UP.

Smith, David A., Dorothy J. Solinger and Steven C. Topik (eds.) 1999. States and Sovereignty in the Global Economy. London: Routledge.

Smith, Neil. 2003. American Empire. Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley: UC Press.

Wingfield, Nancy M. (ed.) 2003. Creating the Other. Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe. New York: Berghahn Books.