[MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to all of you.

Welcome to this course,
Configuring the World.
My name is Richard Griffiths, and
I'm Professor of International Studies
here at Leiden University.
Now I brought you here because
we're here by the river Rhine.
It's the northern tributary of the river
Rhine that originates over there in
Switzerland, flows all
the way down here and
about eight kilometers away from
here will flow down into the sea.
And it's also the frontier of
the Roman empire in Europe.
A Roman soldier stood here
would look across there, and
he would see a strange barbarian tribe
with odd customs, strange religion,
strange costumes, unfamiliar foods.
And he would look back, and he'd reflect,
how lucky he was to come from an empire,
with one rule, one language,
one coinage, one civilization.
But our barbarian chief across the water
would see our rather bedraggled Roman
soldiers stood here, and he'd see them as
a representative of an expansionistic,
militaristic, slave owning dictatorship.
It shows really that where you stand
rather determines of what you see.
One of the first things we need you to do
in this course is to try to forget your
own perspective and try to appreciate
the perspective from other countries and
other philosophies and other positions.
Now let's go now inside and I'll
explain a little more of what we mean.
Okay then here we are.
And we've subtitled the course
A Critical Political Economy Approach.
We are going to be critical in two senses.
First we are going to
criticize the assumptions and
the data that have been used by
political scientists to analyze
the connection between economics and
politics.
Particularly when they try to explain
issues like wealth and poverty.
These questions will all feature in
the first five weeks of the course.
Then we're going to be critical in raising
the question whether the answers to
poverty and prosperity can be found inside
the existing societal structures or
outside them.
And this we'll feature in the last

three weeks of the course.

So let's have a look at the course
structure in a little more detail.
We'll start by looking at some of the ways
in which we configure the world, and here,
we'll look at the data used to compare
a state's size, wealth, and poverty.
Then in the next four lectures, we'll take
a problem solving approach as we home in
on the relationship between trust,
society, governments, and
economic development.
The final three lectures will move
on to the international dimension,
as we look at globalization,
the management of the global system, and
the power relationships within it and
behind it.
Now in addition to the main lectures,
we've added a series of
visualizations in which we map out for
you the various dimensions of
the world using the very latest data.
So how will you participate in the course?
Well, in addition to
following the lectures and
visualizations, you'll also
have weekly quizzes and
you'll do a final exam in order to
receive a statement of accomplishment.
You can read the details about
this now called syllabus in
the grading policy section.
But for those of you who want
to try the advanced track.
We expect you to complete
a small project of your own.
In this project you'll choose
an area of the world and
a reference country which
you'll examine for yourself.
There are 16 regions to choose from.
And you'll describe how they fit
in to the world picture, and
speculate in that context on
the relationship you observe between size,
wealth, poverty, trust,
inequality, religious and
linguistic fragmentation, and
the quality of governance.
We provided a small written guide
on how to undertake the project.
You'll also contribute to
the peer to peer grading.
And you'll have a slightly
more advanced exam, based on
extracts from the Configuring the World
textbook, that I'm writing at the moment.
Now to get the most out of this course,
we'd love you to get involved

in the discussion forum.

We are, after all, a highly diverse
group from different backgrounds,
with different expertise and
different perspectives.
And given the very controversial issues
we'll be dealing with in this course,
this should be a really
exciting place to be.
Now in addition, the course also offers
you other facilities for you to use.
For those undertaking the project
we've constructed a course database,
which of course is open for
everyone to consult.
We have our own video library of ideas
that articulate political economy
concepts and position.
And for those who want to read more,
we've assembled a virtual library of
academic articles, statistical databases,
and recent publications of
international organizations.
I've been asked to say in a few words what
it is you'll take away from the course.
Well, at a basic level,
you'll leave with a deeper appreciation
of some of the world's problems.
And of course the limitations
in analyzing them.
Secondly, and
I promise you this, you'll never look
at numbers in the same way again.
And finally, you will have acquired a
quite sophisticated set of standpoints and
perspectives from which
to configure the world.
I'd like to leave you with
a quote I quite like.
Not everything that counts can be counted,
and
not everything that can be counted counts.
It's a pretty good mindset to
have as you approach the course.
I'm confident we're about to embark on
a truly amazing journey together and
I look forward to sharing every
step of the way with you.
See you next week.