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State, Space and Globalisation

Module Description

The module aims to familiarise students with some of the most important contemporary research on the role of cities, regions, and national states in the global economy in order to better understand processes of state restructuring, the ‘re-scaling’ of governance and the emergence of new ‘political spaces’ in the context of the dominant form of late capitalism associated with the advance of neo-liberalism.

Module Topics

The module will be delivered by a weekly two-hour seminar. Seminars may include short introductory seminar-lectures by the module tutor on the following topics:

  1. Sovereignty and territory: a historical perspective
  2. Classical state theory and the problem of ‘space’
  3. Cities and regions in a networked economy
  4. Regulation, regimes, networks and growth machines
  5. The world city or global city under capitalist globalisation
  6. Spaces of competition and the new urban frontier
  7. The how and why of re-scaling state spaces
  8. Forms of state and states of capital under neo-liberalism

Preliminary Reading

Brenner, N. and N. Theodore (2002). Spaces of Neoliberalism. Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Oxford, Blackwell.

Cox, K. R. (1997). Spaces of Globalization. Reasserting the Power of the Local. New York and London, Guilford Press.

Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of Global Capitalism, London, Verso.

Leitner, H., J. Peck, et al. (2007). Contesting neoliberalism: urban frontiers. New York and London, Guilford Press.

Parker, S. (2010), Cities, Politics & Power. London and New York, Routledge (forthcoming).

Assessment

One essay of 4000 words (100% of total mark).

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State, Space and Globalisation