Gender, Race and Class in Global Political Economy

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor and tutor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: three 1000-word learning journals (10% each), seminar attendance (10%) and a 3000-word essay (60%)

Why are men paid more than women in most parts of the world? Why do white Americans have seven times the wealth of Black Americans on average? Why are former colonies so much poorer than former colonial powers? How does class formation relate to industrial change? How do gender, race and class relate to each other? And how do they structure how we participate in economic life?

This module will give you the tools of analysis you need to answer these burning questions. You will study the concepts and theories developed by feminist political economists, scholars of racial capitalism and related approaches, and Marxist and other theorists of class and social inequality. The module will also develop your ability to use economic data, policy reports, activist publications and archival material in original political economic analysis.

Indicative module syllabus

• Introduction: What is (global) political economy?
• Gender and (global) political economy
• Race and (global) political economy
• Class and (global) political economy
• Thinking relationally about gender, race and class in political economy

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• describe and analyse the gender, class and racial dimensions of the global political economy
• write analytically about gender, race and class in relation by combining political economic theory with detailed case studies
• work with political and economic data within informed theoretical frameworks
• demonstrate familiarity with key global scholars within the broad political economy canon and summarise and analyse their key contributions.