This course will deal with theories of money, interest, and banking, focusing on the period from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century. This course will deal with theories of private property, exchange, value, and distribution, focusing on the period from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Arguably, politics is the process by which resources, services and power are distributed. This course examines, therefore, how state and societal authorities settle rival claims to these goods. It compares the ideologies, beliefs, cultures, and forms of government that engage political processes.
Students learn skills to analyze the legitimacy of political systems in vastly different contexts.
States and regions generally seek peace and security amidst global and local change. But war often recurs. Numerous human rights conventions have thus been promulgated. This course asks how governments, the United Nations, corporations, societies, religions, non-governmental organizations, and political activists help or harm these norms. It considers the changing understandings of rights in the East and the West, and asks whether a consensus is achievable across cultures.