Worlds of Wealth and Power

INTS 30101, MW 11-12:15, Fall 2023

How do street orphans survive and profiteers thrive in wartime? What happens after the war? What strategies and networks do rural families in China use to pay for their farming? What is the role of law in creating wealth and inequality? How do gangs acquire and distribute wealth? How about individual gang members? How and why do the rich hide their wealth? 

This course examines these and other questions, building on scholarship and insights from a wide range of fields, including Anthropology, Sociology, Law, Political Science, African-American Studies, and Economics. Over the course of the semester, we will see how multiple forms of wealth interact with multiple forms of power to create the worlds we live in, from the local to the global. Throughout, we will also explore how we can make a positive impact on those worlds.

Worlds of Wealth and Power takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying the ways in which power and wealth are experienced in a wide range of settings.

It is open to all majors, will count toward your upper-division graduation requirements, and has no pre-requisites. It also fills an upper-division elective requirement for the International Relations Major.