POLITICAL ECONOMY-I

Course Description

This course explores changes in the organisation of production, labour market institutions and corporate structure. It goes on to study the consequences of globalization, especially of financial flows, for the role of the state, economic performance, gender issues, environment, human welfare and development.

Course Outline

1. Introduction and Historical Overview

Perspective on political economy with a historical overview: capitalist development in

the pre-second world war period, the ‗golden age‘ and later.

2. Changing Dynamics of Capitalist Production, Organisational Form and Labour

Process 

Fordist and post-fordist production; changing dynamics of organisation of production, markets and labour process; the changing nature of job security and labour rights.

3. The State in the Era of Globalisation: Welfare, Development and Autonomy

Globalisation and the limits of the welfare state, development and state autonomy.

4. The Changing Role of Finance

The changing role of finance in capital accumulation and corporate structure; finance and globalisation - financialisation, financial liberalisation and financial crisis.

5. The Social Dimension

Globalisation and uneven development – growth, inequality and exclusion.

6. New Perspectives

Gender in work, accumulation and globalisation; issues in environment and

sustainability; alternatives ahead.

THIS SECTION COMPRISES PREVIOUS YEAR PAPERS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY I

• 2017

• 2018

Readings:

1. Michel Beaud, A History of Capitalism, 1500-2000, trans. by Tom Dickman and

Anny Lefebvre, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.

2. Ash Amin (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader, Blackwell, 1994.

3. Fran Tonkiss, Contemporary Economic Sociology: Globalisation, Production, Inequality, Chapter 4 (Fordism and After), Routledge India 2008 reprint, 2006.

4. S. Hymer, "The Multinational Corporation and the Law of Uneven Development", in H. Radice (ed.) International Firms and Modern Imperialism, Penguin Books, 1975.

5. G. Gereffi, J. Humphrey and T. Sturgeon, 2005, ―The Governance of Global

Value Chains‖, Review of International Political Economy, Volume 12: 78–104.

6. Narasimha Reddy, ―Economic Globalisation, Past and Present – The Challenges to Labour‖ in Jomo K.S. & Khoo Khay Jin (ed.) Globalization and Its Discontents, Revisited, Sephis -Tulika Books, 2003.

7. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, OUP, 2005.

8. Andrew Glyn, ―Challenges to Capital‖, in Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalization and Welfare, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (Ch. One, pp. 1-24),

2006.

9. G Dumenil and D Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism, Harvard University Press,

2011.

10. K.S. Jomo (ed.), The Long Twentieth Century: The Great Divergence: Hegemony, Uneven Development and Global Inequality, OUP, 2006.

11. Gary Dymsky, 2005, ―Financial Globalization, Social Exclusion and Financial

Crisis‖, International Review of Applied Economics, Vol. 19: 439–457.

12. E. Stockhammer, ―Financialization and the Global Economy‖, in G. Epstein and M.H. Wolfson (ed.) The Political Economy of Financial Crises, Oxford University Press, 2010. [Also in Working Paper Series, No. 240, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst]

13. J.P. Smith and M.P. Ward, 1989, ―Women in the Labour Market and in the

Family‖, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 3: 9-23.

14. Marilyn Power, 2004, ―Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist

Economics‖, Feminist Economics, Volume 10: 3-19.

15. John Bellamy Foster, Ecology against Capitalism, Monthly Review Press, 2002