GEOG 372 - Topics in Human Geography

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

This seminar focuses on advanced debates in the socio-spatial organization of the modern world. The speciif topic of inquiry varies from year to year. Students may repeat the course for credit of the topc changes.

Topic One: Geography of Social Movements. Why does collective action emerge in some places but not others? How do social movements mobilize support for their agendas – historically and in the current world? How are geographical concepts, such as space, place scale, and networks integral to collective action and how are they (re)produced, in part, through political struggle? This seminar explores these central questions through reading the traditional theories used to explore social movement mobilization and applying these theories to historic examples to understand their strengths and weaknesses. We then unpack the role of space, place, scale and (inter)networks in structuring, and with the rise of new movements and new technologies, (dis)placing and transforming collective action. What does all of this mean for the future of collective action? We focus on recent actions to control and re-envision urban space, such as the BLM movement, to explore this question. Yu Zhou.

Topic Two: Capitalist Imperatives: Space, Nature, and Technology. (Same as INTL 372) Since the financial crisis in 2008, there has been surging intellectual discussion about the fundamentals and contradictions of global capitalism. Using influential writings by scholars such as Harvey, Piketty, Brenner, Zuboff, A. Ong, Dempsey and others, this seminar explores the range of theoretical analysis during the last decade about the roles of space, nature, and technology in the accumulation and crisis of capitalism. These works underpin our understanding of uneven global development, spatial inequality, technology transformation, and environmental destruction. The following topics are discussed: political economies of neoliberalism and its crisis, accumulation by dispossession, commercialization of nature; surveillance capitalism, and alternative economic systems. Yu Zhou.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS