GEOG 186 - Special Topics:

May be repeateable for credit.

SPRING 2024

TOPIC 01: LABOR GEOGRAPHY - In order to meet our needs and desires, most of us need to work. This course proposes that space, time and mobility are key to our understanding of work and workers. The course will: interrogate what does and does not count as work and the consequences of this; consider the wide variety of forms that work takes and the inequalities that this reflects/contributes to; examine how the conditions of work are determined; and reflect on how workers exercise agency as well as how their agency is constrained. Course content will allow students to become familiar with the key contributions of labor geography as well as its limitations. In order to address the latter, the course will also include content from other subfields of human geography and from other social sciences.

TOPIC 02: GEOGS RACIAL CAPITALISM - This course offers an overview of theories of racial capitalism and their uptake geography. It will investigate how dominant economic processes depend on racial hierarchies to produce value, and how these processes are inseparable from the social production of space, difference, and inequality.  We will begin with a brief review of the Marxist approach to capitalism, in order to situate racial capitalism as a critique of this tradition. We will then survey the different ways racial capitalism is shaping geographical approaches to the study of diverse spatial phenomena: including cities, nature, healthcare, prisons and schools. Throughout, we will engage with scholarship from other social sciences and humanities traditions to better understand the theory of racial capitalism and its relationship to the discipline of geography’s history and limitations.

Course Designation/Attribute: VP

Anticipated Terms Offered: Occasionally