Capitalism as a “total social order”: Guest instructor Mikael Omstedt teaches Geographies of Global Capitalism this spring

This spring semester, Mikael Omstedt has joined Bard College Berlin as a guest faculty member to teach the course Geographies of Global Capitalism.

Omstedt is a political economist and historical geographer working at the intersections of uneven development, politics of money and finance, and the history of capitalism. His work has appeared in Antipode, Geoforum, and Environment & Planning A, and he is currently writing a dissertation at the University of British Columbia.

In the course, students will consider the origins of capitalism and its global expansion, capitalism’s relationship to race and gender, the role of the state, and capitalism’s embeddedness within—and transformation of—the natural world. Rather than studying capitalism as simply an economic system, Omstedt will examine it as a “total social order.”

“To study the geographies of global capitalism,” he explains, “allows us to draw from the synthesizing perspective of geography to grapple with capitalism in all its economic and extra-economic complexity, across historical eras and in particular places.” 

While he has previously taught a variation of this course at a large public university in Canada—where, he notes, “students and instructors can feel rather anonymous”—he is looking forward to teaching in the intimate, liberal arts environment of Bard College Berlin. He explains, “At BCB, I will be looking forward to constructing an ongoing dialogue with students.”

Ultimately, Omstedt hopes that his students “take with them a deeply historicized understanding of capitalism as a particular mode of organizing global economic life and our mutual interrelations.” He notes that thinking historically about capitalism allows us to imagine how we could live differently—“because we have, in fact, done so in the past.”

Post Date: 02-06-2025