|
This course studies the transformation in the understandings
of state power, of property and of law, and the historical
background to these changes that can be traced back to the
formation of centralized monarchies and the commercial
expansion of the 16th century. While this early history
formed the background of the histories of modernity, the
rupture in terms of the ways individual societies were
governed, economic activity was organised, and property
rights or resource allocation was affected, actually
took place only in the 18th and the 19th centuries. These
forms have subsequently been associated with the process of
modernity, and were universalized given thecontext of
competition, imperial penetration, and international
economic expansion. The course will focus on the debates
of 18th and 19th century political economists
and political theorists including the Physiocrats,
Montesqieu, Adam Smith, David Ricardo,
Jeremy Bentham and Alexis de Tocquevılle. It will then
address the historical context these conceptualizations
grew out of and responded to.
|
