Subject Area: Politics
This course can also be studied in the following specialisations: Globalisation Studies; International Relations

Though the matter is still disputed we may be living through a new stage in the creation of a world economy - a stage which began in the late 1960s or early 1970s and is usually referred to as 'globalisation'. This stage could not have been reached without a long prior history of global trade and investment, and indeed of global movements of population, a history going back to the sixteenth century at least. The course aims to identify both the continuities and discontinuities between this earlier history (often referred to as the history of European colonialism and imperialism) and the contemporary period of rapid economic and cultural globalisation. In addition, the course examines the implications of this process for the poorest people of the world. In particular it examines an important debate between those theorists of globalisation who argue that its implications for the poorest people of the world are predominantly negative, and those who argue the process is more complex and that there are some real benefits for the poorest people of the world.