A global view from the margins

by Ken Hammond

I have been using Adam Smith in Beijing in a class I teach on the history of the global political economy here at New Mexico State University. We are located in southern New Mexico, a poor and rather marginal part of the country, which doesn't really think of itself in very global ways. My students found the book very engaging, but until last Fall they sometimes didn't see it as relating directly to their own lives. With the onset of the current economic crisis, though, they suddenly began to realize the clarity and relevance of the analysis, and Adam Smith in Beijing rather morphed into "Arrighi in Las Cruces" as they came to understand what was happening around them in new ways. I have not often found a book which came to feel so real and to right for my students.