Global Study 1 Midterm Essay
haku
Lecture_1Spring1.pptxWhat Is Globalization? What Is Global Studies? Examples from Current Events...
The revolution in Hong Kong (2019)
Prompted by the “Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill” of last March
Hong Kong was “returned” to China after British colonial rule (1997)
“One country, two systems”
Produced calls for the resignation of Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of Hong Kong
Expanded to include demands for:
Universal suffrage for local elections
Impartial investigation into police brutality
What Is Globalization? What Is Global Studies? Examples from Current Events...
Election of Jair Bolsonaro as President of Brazil (2019)
Pursued deforestation and land conversion
The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s largest carbon dioxide “sink,” absorbing more than 20% of global production
Devastated by unprecedented wildfires starting in June
International pressure developed in the face of this catastrophe (G7 Summit in France in August)
French President, Emmanuel Macron, and his allies described the Amazon as a world heritage
Bolsonaro’s government denounced the French government for its “lamentable imperialist stance”
How Do These Events Elucidate the Concept of Globalization?
Globalization – the processes by which the world has become an increasingly interconnected place
Manfred Steger:
The expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across time and space
A complex and uneven dynamic linking the local, national, and regional to the global
Global Studies – the interdisciplinary field dedicated to examining those processes, along with how people have furthered them, resisted them, and understood them
How Do These Events Elucidate the Concept of Globalization?
More analytical concepts central to Global Studies:
Globality – social condition characterized by tight global interconnections and flows that make most borders and boundaries irrelevant
Global Imaginary – people’s growing consciousness of thickening globality
This course will focus on three areas of increasing interconnectedness:
1) History
2) Culture
3) Ideology
How Do These Events Elucidate the Concept of Globalization?
What is history?
History is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves – who we are, how we came to be, where we are headed…
This definition can be derived from the word’s origin
Take, for example, the French language, from which the English word is derived – histoire means both history and story
History is a story rooted in evidence, whose truthfulness we try to evaluate, and whose relevance we try to determine, according to selective principles drawn from contemporary cultures
How Do These Events Elucidate the Concept of Globalization?
What is culture?
Anthropologists have played a central role in developing the modern, scholarly definition of this term
Clifford Geertz – a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life
We shape the past through the writing of history, and the past shapes us through the culture we inherit – this is a feedback loop
How Do These Events Elucidate the Concept of Globalization?
What is ideology?
Derives from the French word idéologie, which, in its modern sense, was coined by Napoléon Bonaparte, who mocked a group of intellectuals that claimed to have created a “science of ideas”
Today, it means mostly:
Abstract speculation/impractical theorizing
A systematic scheme of ideas, usually relating to politics, economics, or society and forming the basis of action or policy
Ideology – a particular kind of cultural system that claims to possess an internal coherence and special relationship to truth and that shapes the way people think/behave (e.g., nationalism, democracy, communism…)
