290222 VU Introduction to economic geography (for TA students) (2008S)

The course is designed for TA students in their second semester. Main targets are (1) the development of ba-sic understandings for important interrelations between economic, social, ecological and spatial processes, (2) the acquaintance with different traditions to perform the art of economic geography, (3) the knowledge of and critical reflection on different theoretical approaches, concepts and models which are used in economic geog-raphy (a) to capture the factors governing and structuring entrepreneurial investments in space, (b) to analyse the socioeconomic dynamics at different spatial scales with respect to production/services, trade/traffic, work/employment and/or capital/finance, and (c) to inform policy development.
The course is divided in a lecture part (2 hours per week) and a tutorial part (1 hour per week, four groups su-pervised by tutors) in which the relevance of different concepts and models for analysing present socioeco-nomic dynamics will be discussed. Requirements for graduation are a written exam and a short paper (discuss-ing a current newspaper article on economic dynamics) at the end of the course.