GES4750 - Sharing Prosperity: Geographies of work, Regional Development and Economy

Offered

Clayton First semester 2007 (Day)

Synopsis

Central to our approach in this unit is a focus on social equity. We explore equity at a variety of scales: between nations, and within nations, regions, communities and households. How has 'the economy' and 'globalisation' been understood? Answering these questions enables us to develop our critical thinking about: the changing social relations of work, the corporation, regional development, trade and consumption. Sharing prosperity is a unit for students wanting to understand how social inequality is produced and who want to investigate forms of governance that could more effectively enable better distributive and non-distributive forms of social and economic justice.

Objectives

Students successfully completing this subject will demonstrate the following skills and capacities:

• Knowledge about how economic and social processes are linked and together produce inequity.
• A critical understanding of globalisation and the uneven spatial implications of this process demonstrated through their essays, reports and discussion in class
• A critical understanding of the changing governance structures that underpin economic change at global, national and local scales, looking particularly at the examples of bilateral trade, 'free trade' principles, industry policy and 'labour market reform'.
• A critical understanding of how boundaries between work and home, formal and informal economies and capital and labour have come into being and play a part in the continued separation of these spaces and practices across space.
• Sound written expression, demonstrating an ability to critically analyse text, film and other data.
• Sound interpretation of graphs and maps. Students at the fourth year level will be expected to demonstrate a sophisticated level of critical analysis as evidenced particularly in the essay and fieldtrip report.

Assessment

Essay (1,000 words) : 20%
Fieldtrip report (1,500) : 30%
Class participation : 30%
Exam (2 hours) : 20%
Students undertaking this unit at 4th year level will be asked to produce additional analysis for the essay and fieldtrip report.

Contact hours

3 hours per week (seminar) + a one day fieldtrip

Prohibitions

GES2750, GES3750, GYM4750