Economic and Political Geography

The course aims to provide students with the essential and most useful tools for navigating the profound contemporary economic and political transformations of spaces and territories. After an excursus on methodology and the foundations of the subject, the course analyzes the modern territorial state in its historical dynamics, its institutional aspects and its influences on the economic dimension. Afterwards, the course explores the evolution of the territorial state in the contemporary world, the dynamics of the welfare state, the contemporary schism between political and economic space, the evolution of borders, the development of networks and the fate of globalization. Particular attention is paid to the reappearance of barriers and the building of new walls and borders, responsible for both the paralysis of the free movement of goods, capital, people, typical of the formation of new, delimited spaces of welfare and exclusion. The main goal is to provide students with tools to understand and reason about, with knowledge and critical spirit, all changes in spatial and territorial, political and economic, national and global dimensions.

Ability to understand the main concepts and issues of Economic and Political Geography. At the end of the Course the student should acquire basic knowledge to understand the global economic and political dynamics that depend on geographical determinants and which in turn react on these factors, producing more or less predictable results. bility to understand, analyze and interpret, applying the theoretical tools and knowledge acquired, the most relevant phenomena readable through the lens of Economic and Political Geography, which is based on a complex multidisciplinary perspective often lacking in similar subjects.