Bachelor of Behavioural Science - Postsecondary Education Quality ...

Upper
or
Lower
Lower
Upper
Course Title
Ecology, Nature
and Society
ENGL 106
Economic Boom &
Bust: Capitalism In
Question
Calendar Course Description
gender, sexuality, and morality across the human life span.
Moreover, they will examine the social contexts of development
including family relations, peer groups, and friendship. The
course will end with an examination of death and grieving.
This course is an elective for students in Humber degree
programs. It is designed to develop students‘ reading, writing,
and critical skills through understanding, discussing, and writing
about a variety of non-fiction essays drawn from different
academic disciplines and focused on the theme of ecology,
nature, and society. Its main objectives are to develop students‘
critical skills and academic writing abilities by 1) encouraging
analytical depth in textual analysis and 2) developing students‘
breadth of understanding through a focus on the
interrelatedness of the texts studied. These skills will be
developed through lecture, class discussion, and a series of
written essay assignments that will increase in complexity and
evaluative weight as the term progresses. The principles of
clear writing and reasoned argumentation will be emphasized in
lectures and expected in all assignments. In the final essay and
final exam, students will be expected to present a cumulative
and synthetic understanding of all texts studied during the term.
The 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis shook the global economy
with a force unseen in the developed world since the 1929 stock
market crash. Our future prospects, in terms of employment and
social stability, seem much less secure than a mere decade
ago. Indeed, if we look back from our current vantage point, we
see that the history of the world economy over the past hundred
years has been characterized by cycles of crises, by speculative
excess and financial fallout. The champions of capitalism tell us
that in the long run things will get better. But taking a cue from a
well-known social theorist who argued that ―only the
exaggerations are true,‖ this course will critically investigate
what economic crises can tell us about the very nature and
underlying principles of our purportedly stable economic system.
Specifically, from the vantage point of the most recent global
economic crisis, this course will explore the contexts and
consequences of the Great Depression (1929-1939), the Bretton
Woods Conference and post-World War II global financial
architecture, the 1973 oil crisis, and the polarization of North
and South through economic relations of debt and dependence.
Further, the international economic policies of the 1980s-2000s
that preceded financial and food crises throughout the
developing world will be examined. Lastly, the current economic
crisis and the politics of austerity that are now shaping the very
structure of the global economy urge us to consider what is
more likely to come in the future, if not endless prosperity. We
need to debate such questions since in a globalized economy
what happens ―over there‖ can have a direct impact on the
Bachelor of Behavioural Science Section D, Page 69