300071 Containers, Flows and Borders: Figures in Global Economy's North-South Asymmetries (S) (SoSe 2017)

Like giant pieces of lego thousands of containers are moved every hour from port to port, they are symbol of a extremely close-knit transnational economy. Some go "as far as to suggest that if Marx were with us today, he would begin his analysis with the container in place of the commodity." (Cohen 2014). In "Containers, Flows and Borders" we will discuss asymmetries, spaces and logics of world economy from an innovative vantage point: The focus will be on emblematic figures of our current global economy such as the cotton plantation (where it all starts), the container and ship (where gender relations materialize), electronic energy waste dumps (where linear thinking ends), the (stock)market or the factory in its current shape. Rather than moving from abstract theoretical texts to the concrete, we will take these figures as starting points and from there work out inherent logics of the global economy and different interpretations.
The emblematic figures of economy will bring to our attention four essential relations:
between legal and illegal economy (what do cocaine and gold have in common?),
between capital and gendered and racialized labour (what gender relations are cristallized on a cargo ship?)
between investment/finance and production (what role does production still play, and which is the place of labour in global investment?), and
between economy and security (how does modern logistics reference war?).
The course will employ post-colonial, critical political economy and feminist approaches to look at current asymmetries in global economy.

Bibliography

Beckert, Sven (2014): Empire of Cotton. A Global History, Borzoi/Random House: New York.

Cohen, Deborah: Disrupting Distribution: Subversion, the Social Factory, and the “State” of Supply Chains, in: Viewpoint Magazine: https://viewpointmag.com/2014/10/29/disrupting-distribution-subversion-the-social-factory-and-the-state-of-supply-chains/, accessed 28th Nov 2016.

Enloe, Cynthia H. (2000): Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, University of California Press.