PSC 252 - Global Value Chains

Course Units: 1

(Not offered this Academic Year) This course examines the intertwining of power, politics and markets that undergird the production and consumption of everyday consumer goods, from coffee to cars to iPhones. It examines the primary countries where these goods are produced, their differing labor regimes, the international agreements regulating them, the transnational corporations which coordinate the chain of production and consumption, how goods are globally traded and the relative winners and losers these linkages create, usually between developing and developed countries. Each product also corresponds with an underlying theoretical topic, such as natural resources and the global commons or heavy industrialization and industrial policy. The course will introduce some basic conceptual building blocks which will help us organize the extraordinary variety of places, production processes, policies and populations engaged in global value chains. But, we will spend most of the course examining one commodity or product at a time, using what we learn along the way to build an increasingly sophisticated understanding of global production and exchange. Finally, for a final project, students will conduct research on their own product of choice and explore a theoretically important concept associated with it.