Frontiers in Human Geography: Capital, Land & Power

This course aims to grapple with many of the big themes in political and economic geography nationalism, globalisation, financialisation, neoliberalism, and so on but rather than deal with these in the abstract sense, or based on case studies far away, we will consider how they manifest in the spaces around us. The course considers the making of specific sites in the Scottish landscape and links this to a study of capitalism in its mutating forms. The focus ranges from the public housing estate to the forestry plantation, from the Clearance village to the set-pieces of commodity tourism. Students will be encouraged to adopt a critical way of seeing where we strive to explain and understand the environments in which we live. The course will place particular emphasis on putting theoretical insight together with contextual detail, and the importance of using one to support the other. In particular, this course will serve as an engaging introduction to Marxist geographies. The content is historically grounded, but the focus runs right up to the present (and, with a little imagination, into the future). Credit Level: 10 Year taken: Year 3 Undergraduate