Political Economy 101: Introduction

Political Economy 101: Introduction:

Brad DeLong, U.C. Berkeley

This is--at least the way those who designed the major thought of it, which is often very different from how things work on the ground--the last core course for the political economy major.

Political economy, at least as we here at Berkeley define it, is a group of four interlinked intellectual bets:

• that the separation a century ago of the social sciences into walled, warring camps was--at least for undergraduates and at least for bird's-eye understanding--a mistake.

• that there is, nevertheless, great value in the individual social sciences' analytical modes.

• that there is even greater value in the classical social theory tradition--that set of thinkers from Nicky Machiavelli to Barry Moore who we retrospectively identify as grappling for the first time how a modern human society--one not dominated by louse-riddem thugs with spears and perfumed thugs with styluses, and composed overwhelmingly of malnourished peasants living and dying early in the small villages in which they were born--actually worked.

• that there is great value in studying the nineteenth and early twentieth-century history of western Europe and North America: Marx was wrong in claiming that the "more advanced" shows the "less advanced" the image of its own future, but they do provide a very useful set of benchmarks, yardsticks, and comparisons.

Now that was a mindful. Catch your breath and think about that for a while.

This course--the last core course--is supposed to be the payoff. This is where we cash in our winning intellectual bets, tie all the threads together, and come up with running code for a rough-and-ready framework for thinking about everything that happens at the crossroads where history and politics meet economies and sociologies in a world where village elders along the Zambezi lecture the principal deputy managing director of the Imternational Monetary Fund on the implications of the Republican convention.

However, each version of Political Economy 101 is different. We agree that these are winning intellectual bets. We do not agree on what the winnings are. My version of PE 101 is different from Bev Crawford's or Heath Pearson's or Dariush Zahedi's. This is, I think, a constructive tension. This is my version.

We are going to try to draw all the threads together by running the readings of this course along two tracks. One will gallop in a cursory and superficial way through the global history of the past century. The second, much meatier, track will consist of thinkers from Joey Schumpeter to Joey Stiglitz who try to use and develop both their disciplinary anlaytical modes and the classical social theory tradition to interpret and change the history in which they are embedded. We are going to read major chunks by nine such thinkers: Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Milton Friedman, Charles Lindblom, Benedict Anderson, James Scott, Jessica Stern, and Joe Stiglitz. I think these people are very smart, broadly right, and where they are wrong they are wrong in interesting ways. Four are economists (Schumpeter, Keynes, Friedman, and Stiglitz): I am an economist, after all, and they sing to me in the ways that others do not. Two are postmodern anthropologists (Benedict Anderson and James Scott). One is a sociologist (Karl Polanyi). One is a political scientist (Charles Lindblom). And one--Jessica Stern--is a combination of international relations specialist and cultural sociologist specializing in Al Qaeda studies. All are very much worth reading. Except for the first couple--which are online--their books are or should soon be at the bookstore and on reserve at Moffitt.

We will also have a bunch of other articles--online--to read, and my lecture notes--which should also be online week-by-week--covering both the thinkers and the history.

You can take a look at the grading policy.

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Audio File

Comments

[Miles]

Hi my name is Miles Palacios. I am transfering from DVC and junior college about 20 minutes from Berkeley. I throw for the track and field team here at CAL

[Sue Liu]

Hey everyone,
I'm Sue and I'm a 4th year double majoring in Chinese and PEIS. I love to travel but the only place I've been outside of the US is China, so hopefully in the near future I shall broaden that horizon. Looking foward to be part of the guinea pig team. =] Oh, random fact, I love llamas.

(wow, this is late)

[Amitha Harichandran]

My name is Amitha, I am currently a fourth year ISF major. I was born in southern California, but my parents are from Sri Lanka. My concentration for ISF is Globalization and the World Economy and I am sure that this class will play an integral role in my work.

[Samira Ghassemi]

Hi everyone,

My name is Samira Ghassemi and I am a senior here at Cal majoring in Environmental Economics and intend to double in PEIS. I hope this course will be interesting and full of positive engery...provided that we ensure that! Cheers.

[Will Chen]

My name is Will Chen and I'm a senior majoring in PEIS. I grew up in the Bay Area and I love it here. My interests lie in international trade and venture capital.

[Shannon Oakes]

Hi everybody. My name is Shannon. I'm a fourth year Interdisciplinary Studies field major and education minor. For my major, I'm focusing on Globaluzation and Consumer Behavior, concentrating in Business, Psychology, Political Science and Cognitive Science. This is my first PEIS course.

[Tiffany Sin]

Hi folks, my name is Tiffany and I am a fourth year doubling in Asian Studies (with a focus in China) and Integrative Biology. This is my first PEIS course and I am excited to learn more about econ. I am a pre-med student with an interest in current events around the world, especially East Asia. I just adopted the most hyper dog in the world, Callie, and I love eating and snowboarding.

[Kinzie Kramer]

Hello! My name is Kinzie Kramer and I'm a senior majoring in Society and Environment. I just successfully opened this page, which is exciting for me. As you can probably guess, I am absolutely horrible with computers and much prefer to handwrite everything. I studied abroad last spring in Paris and am thrilled to be back in Berkeley.

[jonfernquest]

Too bad there's no "pre-modern" political economy also.

How do you really know what you are unless you know where you come from?

[pe 100 is classical social theory. They are supposed to have taken that before.]

[edward cervini]

Hello, I am not in this course, but am interested in the topics and would like to participate in the discussions. What is the textbook that is used?