Globalization and its Discontents

Catalog description

What has globalization meant to different people and who has benefited and who has been harmed from globalization? This course will investigate the lived experience of globalization for individuals and communities around the world in order to better understand different manifestations of globalization that have been criticized by scholars and activists. These critiques include the McDonaldization of production, the precarity of international labor migration flows, the concentration of wealth and poverty in global cities, and the economic instability often linked to global capitalism and finance. At the same time, students will also investigate the global social movements that have grown in strength in response to corporate globalization's challenges, and explore possible post-globalized worlds. Students will apply their new knowledge on a global object of their own choosing, and explore if their particular object exacerbates, perpetuates or ameliorates issues of global inequality and social injustice in the present day.