FLOVODOH ONLY!!!! Due 06/07 09:30 Los Angeles

FIVE (5) Page essay.  for this paper you have to READ Umair Muhammadad, Confronting Injustice

 Where you will Be integrating into it a 3 page (or more if you like) discussion of the Confronting Injustice book. The questions you want to explore in discussing this book are:  How reading this book helps bring together everything we saw in the course and how it helps us in the matters of, "where do we go from here?", "how do we engage with the world's peoples in their manifold struggles of resistance and emancipation"?

Report on Website:  This assignment out of class will be to explore the websites for various Global Justice Movement organizations.  You should explore at least five global justice movement websites from the list below:

“50 Years is Enough! Campaign,  http://www.50years.org/

The Global Exchange, http://www.globalexchange.org/

The Maquila Solidarity Network,http://www.maquilasolidarity.org/

International Forum on Globalization,  http://www.ifg.org/, 

Focus on the Global South:  http://www.focusweb.org/

MADRE: http://www.madre.org/

Center for Research on Globalization: http://globalresearch.ca/

Transnational Institute: http://www.tni.org/

Institute for Policy Studies: http://www.ips-dc.org/

Rainforest Action Network: http://www.ran.org/

Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development (A SEED), http://www.aseed.net/

Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/about

Food First (Institute for Food and Development Policy), http://www.foodfirst.org/

Friends of the Earth International, http://www.foei.org/

World War 4 Report, http://ww4report.com/dailyreportor http://countervortex.org/about

Human Rights Campaign (LGBTQ rights worldwide): http://www.hrc.org/

Fightback!News, http://www.fightbacknews.org/

Information Clearning House, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Toward Freedom: http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/

Global Women’s Strike: http://www.globalwomenstrike.net

Los Despojados (most entries are in English): http://losdespojados.tumblr.com/

http://avispa.org/

CorpWatch, http://www.corpwatch.org/

For this assignment you will need to spend a number of hours on the web exploring these websites, reading some of the articles and commentaries, and gaining an understanding of some of the popular literature and features on the web that have to do with the theme of globalization and resistance.  Then you will write up a report, between 5-8 pages approximately, on your experience and your analysis of the exercise.  This report will be due the last day of class.  It should be a wide-ranging analytical discussion.  You should draw on course readings, lectures, and other materials to analyze the content of these web sites, relating that content to the course and what you have learned.  Demonstrate your analytical prowess and ability to apply what you have learned in the course.  Please be prepared as well to discuss in class your experience.

This assignment will also need to integrate Muhammadad’s Confronting Injustice into your analysis. Details to be further discussed in class.

What the class was about? 

Globalization, it is widely recognized, is profoundly remaking social structure and transforming the lives of people in every corner of the planet.  Our personal biographies are linked to increasingly dense networks of global interrelations, as the integration of societies, economies, and cultures fundamentally transforms human life.  The concept of globalization is contested, meaning that there are different and competing understandings of what the term means and how to assess the process.  Here are three distinct approaches: 

Globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole…both concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole in the twentieth century

-- Roland Robertson, Globalization

[Under Globalization] we participate in a more radical and profound commonality than has ever been experienced in the history of capitalism.  The fact is that we participate in a productive world made up of communication and social networks, interactive services, and common languages.  

-- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire

In theoretical terms, globalization can essentially be seen as the near-culmination of a centuries-long process of the spread of capitalist production around the world and its displacement of all precapitalist relations, bring about a new form of connection between all human beings around the world.

-- William I. Robinson, A Theory of Globalization Capitalism

While the summits of power in global society applaud the process, it has generated rising opposition and often militant fight-backs around the world, in part because, as the empirical evidence demonstrates, it is resulting in a concentration of wealth among elites and high consumption sectors, escalating inequalities, new hardships, the disempowerment and even destruction of whole communities and peoples, alienation, ecological destruction, and all sorts of social conflicts, including wars.  It is impossible to understand the numerous political and military conflicts and cultural clashes around the world in the early 21st century without understanding globalization and its consequences.

With this in mind, this course has a dual focus.  One is to examine the process of globalization from a social scientific point of view, with special emphasis on the rise of a global economy.  The other is to explore some of the diverse forms of resistance that globalization has generated among the outcast, exploited and marginalized communities, working classes, indigenous, women, and others who suffer the effects of increasing hardships, inequalities, and insecurities.

This course will require hard work, and will also be an eye-opener for those willing to work hard and to think critically.  The course attempts to help students develop the critical thinking analytical skills, and the historical perspective necessary, to examine your own deeply held assumptions regarding the social world and to apply sociological inquiry in an attempt to provide explanations for these phenomena.