Topics & Text Assignments
Unit 1: Introduction to Global Issues
Week 1 – Course Intro & Metacognition: How well can we know our own minds? Why does it matter? When debating global issues, how do we formulate and change our own opinions?
Week 2 – Intuition & Cognition: What factors might impact our ability to understand people and problems in other parts of the world? Assignment: Haidt, Ch. 2 of The Righteous Mind
Week 3 – Debating Global Issues: Why do good people allow so many bad things to happen? Why is it hard for us to care about problems in other parts of the world Assignments: Slovic, “If I look at the mass…”; Miller, “Fostering Global Concern or Nihilism?”
Week 4 – Urbanization: What factors are driving the migration of people from rural to urban areas in different parts of the world? What unique problems do modern cities create? Assignment: Glaser, “A World of Cities…,” Journal of the European Economic Association (Oct. 2014)
Week 5 – Human Migration: What would it mean for migration to be a “human right”? How do different kinds of economists and philosophers think about and justify or oppose human migration? Where in the world is migration happening, and what factors are driving migration? Assignments: Freakonomics podcast, “Is Migration a Basic Human Right?”; Martin, “The Global Refugee Crisis”
Unit 2: Current Debates in Global Economics
Week 6 – Free Trade & Globalization: What is “free trade,” and why might people support or oppose it? What is “globalization,” and how do people experience it in different parts of the world? How do local economies and governments interact with the global system? What are exchange rates, and what do they signal in a global economy? Assignments: Planet Money, Episode 725: “Trade Show”; Wright, excerpt 1 from The World and a Very Small Place in Africa
Week 7 – Farming in a Global Marketplace: What factors impact the success of small farmers in a globalized marketplace? How could policy assist small farmers in the developing world? Assignments: Wright, excerpt 2 from The World and a Very Small Place in Africa (women & Fatou Faye); Planet Money, Episodes 496, 224 & 723: “Where the Planet Money T-Shirt Began,” “The Cotton Wars,” and “The Risk Farmers”
Week 8 – Work in the Global Economy: Who in the global economy does what kind of work, and why? How do workers’ lives and communities change as a result? How does technology fit into the story? Assignments: Planet Money, Episodes 497, 498 & 715: “Love, Betrayal and the Planet Money T-Shirt,” “The Last T-Shirt in Colombia,” and “The Sewing Robot”
Week 9 – Social Capital: What is “social capital”? How do people create it, gain, and lose it? How might we change the global distribution of social capital? Assignments: Slate Money, ep. 124, “The Robot Apocalypse Edition” (w/Ryan Avent); Avent, excerpts from The Wealth of Humans
Week 10 – Structuring Global Trade: How do government policies and international agreements shape the global system of trade? Is the international system of trade rational? What factors determine the prices of products in the global system, and what does that tell us about who benefits from trade? Assignments: Planet Money, Episodes 499-503: “Richard Nixon…,” “The Humble Innovation…,” “A Shirt, A Meat Grinder…,” “The Afterlife of a T-Shirt,” and “Adding Up The Cost…”
Unit 3: Contemporary Global Issues
(NOTE: This unit will be driven by current events, so the readings in Weeks 11-15 will almost certainly change. This syllabus will be continuously updated on Blackboard throughout the semester.)
Week 11 – Megacities and Public Health: How do recent patterns of urbanization create public health problems? What does public health policy look like in today’s megacities? Assignments: Khan & Pappas (eds.), excerpts from Megacities & Global Health: “Megacities and Emerging Infections” (Rio case study) and “Slums, Pollution, and Ill Health” (Dhaka case study)
Week 12 – the “Resource Curse”: What is the “resource curse,” and how might it affect people in different parts of the world? How does the resource curse fit into the history of globalization? Assignments: Samuel Schubert, “Revisiting the Oil Curse,” Development 49:3 (2006); Planet Money, Ep. 731, “How Venezuela Imploded”
Week 13 – The Problem of Proliferation: What factors are driving the spread of nuclear weapons? How do weapons of mass destruction differ from other weapons? How might a nuclear war happen? Assignments: Kestenbaum, This American Life, “How I Learned to Start Worrying and Fear the Bomb”; Park, “How I escaped North Korea…”; Friedman, The Atlantic, “Can America Live With a Nuclear North Korea?”; Dreazen, Vox, “What war with North Korea would look like”; Hundley, Vox, “India and Pakistan are quietly making nuclear war more likely.”
Week 14 – Proxy Conflicts and the Modern Middle East: What is a proxy war? Who are the combatants in different ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and what do they want? Are any of the players or issues present in multiple conflicts? Assignments: Today Explained (podcast), “It’s never too late to understand the war in Syria”; International Crisis Group, “A Huthi Missile, a Saudi Purge and a Lebanese Resignation Shake the Middle East”
Week 15 – Famine: What places and populations in the world are currently threatened by famine? How do factors like climate change and political violence relate to the problem of famine? Assignments: Craig, The Guardian, “‘Only God can save us’: Yemeni children starve as aid is held at border”; Kasinof, Slate, “The Deep Roots of Yemen’s Famine”