First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Capitalism and Democracy

Semester and Year	FA 2011
Course Number	FIRST-UG42
Section	001
Instructor	Kimberly Phillips-Fein
Days	Tue,Thu
Time	11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Notes/Restrictions

Open to Gallatin first-year students only.

Description

For many political and economic thinkers, the free market and the private economy are the fundamental building blocks of democratic political systems. Yet activist movements of the past twenty years have been increasingly critical of the ways in which private corporations and the inequality of wealth negatively affect our democracy. This seminar will interrogate the relationship between capitalism and democracy, exploring the relationship between economy and politics in the United States and possibly other countries. What are corporations, and what are the philosophical, economic, historical, and political justifications for their existence? What are the essential characteristics of American democracy, and how does our political system cope—or fail to—with large concentrations of private power and wealth? Possible readings may include Upton Sinclair, Max Weber, Milton Friedman, and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation .

Course Type

First-Year Program: Interdisciplinary Seminars (FIRST-UG)