Overview

Global Commerce in Culture & Society (GCCS) does not offer a business training curriculum like the McIntire School of Commerce or the Entrepreneurship and Business program in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Instead, GCCS students explore the history and diversity of economic institutions. How are economic institutions and systems of exchange shaped by, and embedded in, social and cultural contexts that they affect in turn? What alternative ways of organizing commerce are suggested by world comparative and historical study? How does the organization of work affect workers and society? How have commercial forms such as companies, markets, trade networks, money and credit, legal systems, supply chains, and labor regimes contributed to forming “modernity” and shaping the environment and the contemporary world?

Curriculum

The GCCS curriculum is designed to encourage students to develop their own thematic and areal interests. It gives them flexibility to explore these through coursework in different departments, programs and schools, chosen with the guidance of their Faculty Advisor.

GCCS is a Global Studies major stewarded jointly by faculty in the departments of anthropology and sociology.  There are many faculty in those departments and elsewhere in the University who teach courses that will be of interest to GCCS students.