Washington & Lee University, Global Stewardship Spring Institute, 2003

INTER 131/132 Global Issues and Human Culture: Re-imagining the 21st Century World

S Y L L A B U S

Class Time: MTuThF 9-12
Class Location: Parmly 302
Office Hours: by appointment
Phone:
Office:
Email:

Course Objectives
The course focuses on selected global issues facing humankind in the 21st century. The purpose is to develop skills in analyzing complex and controversial global issues, using traditional geographical and anthropological analytical tools while incorporating new technologies-especially the World Wide Web and geographical information systems (GIS). We will learn to gather, evaluate and present the issues so as to inform democratic decision-making and innovative future responses to global human problems. The course time is evenly divided between lectures, readings and discussions of key issues, and learning hands-on practical skills of data analysis and mapping.

Course Requirements
Students will be required to have completed reading assignments before the class for which they are due, participate in class activities and discussions. Each student will develop a personal course Webpage in which he or she will identify key global issues, organize and present relevant data, synthesize insights and present proposals for alternative futures. There will be a required book review that will count as a mid-term exam. Each student will be expected to devote significant time beyond the classroom to their web page topics

Course Materials

Required Texts:

Agnew, John A.
1998 Geopolitics: Re-visioning world politics. London & New York: Routledge

Klare, Michael T.
2001 Resource Wars: The landscape of global conflict. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Dyer-Witherford, Nick
1999 Cyber-Marx: Cycles and circuits of struggle in high-technology capitalism. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Weblog
For each week's readings and lectures you will be required to enter at least 250 words in your Weblog reflecting on the material. You may also wish to include links to relevant material you have found on the web, references to other reading or images, maps or other material you feel appropriate.

Book Review
You will also choose one of the books from the list below for review. This should be around 2000 words (plus bibliography) and should, describe the author and his intended audience, summarize the main points of the book, analyze the major strengths and weaknesses of the argument presented and critically evaluate the work as a contribution to understanding environmental and social issues, with reference to other relevant literature on the subject, where appropriate. The review is due on April ? and should be posted on your web page..

Brenner, Robert
2002 The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the world economy. Verso Books (on order)

Castells, Manuel
1996 The Rise of the Information Society. Vol 1. of The Information Age. Blackwell Publishers.( HC79.I55 C373 2000) (optionally, you may wish to consider selected chapters of Vols. 2 & 3)

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri
2000 Empire. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.( JC359 .H279 2000)

Harvey, David
2000 Spaces of Hope. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.( HX550.G45 H37 2000)

Keck, Margaret E. and Katherine Sikkink
1998 Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Cornell University Press. (JF529 .K43 1998)

Korten, David
2001 When Corporations Rule the World. Kumarian Press (HD2326 .K647 1995)

Polanyi, Karl
2001 (1944(The Great Transformation: The political and economic origin of our time. (HC53 .P6) 2nd Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.(on order)

Sen, Amartya
2000 Development as Freedom. Anchor Books. (HD75 .S455 1999)

Stiglitz, Joseph.
2003 Globalization and its Discontents. W.W. Norton & Co.( HF1418.5 .S75 2002)

(n.b. that others from Annie search LCSH 'globalization' could be added)

Course Outline 0.a Explicating 'Stewardship'

I.a Visualizing Global Space
The purpose of this unit will be to question our received vision of the world as consisting of sovereign nation states as the principal 'actors'. We look at globalization as a process by selecting a few phenomena that require a global rather than a national or even regional perspective to understand. In particular we will characterize geographical differences on a global scale, following Harvey´s lead of seeing globalization as a process of production of scales and uneven development. Where is the human population, where is most energy consumed, what is the relationship between these two variables, how is socio-economic inequality distributed spatially? Where are the key natural resources? We will carry out a series of mapping exercises to answer these questions and hone our data analysis and mapping skills.

In class we could have exercises comparing distributions of variable, like population, water, energy (night sky) etc. Exercises relevant to a discussion of Empire and geopolitics that would serve to introduce students to ArcGIS and spatial data on the Internet.

Required reading:

Agnew: Geopolitics.

Reference material:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/

(Query: Here is a slick web.page with lots of material presenting the unipolar argument-you found it. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the whole crowd. A letter from 1998 urging "regime change " in Iraq and recent articles justifying the current administration's policies. How are we to ask students to approach this material? Maybe we should work up a review format, something they could include on their blogs? I don't think its enough just to say o, go look at this. Ask questions: Who are the people? What does "global American leadership" mean? What is the agenda here? What are other relevant links-also with comments and review?, etc. )

[Answer: how we proceed here will be fundamentally changed as Events unfold in Iraq and elsewhere. We DO need to address issues of global agenda, as implied by the "Bush Doctrine" of the preemptive strike and the claim of unilateral responsibility, and as managed by IMF and other supranational entities. I have no doubt that we'll have plenty to work with in the way of hot-off-the-press texts of various sorts.]

e.g.: The Pentagon's New Map (THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE)

Ib. Mapping global space
Simultaneously with Ia we will begin to introduce students to the technology and tools we want them to explore in the course. Basic ArcGIS. Finding data on the internet. Problems of making data compatible. Evaluating data sources.
Among the data sources we will use: Human Development Report, World Water and Climate Atlas, ...others to be filled in shortly...


II. Natural Resources and Global Environmental Issues

Required readings:

Klare, Michael T.: Resource Wars.

De Villiers, Marq
2000 Water in History. Ch. 3 of Water: The fate of our most precious resource. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin & Co. (TD345 .D473 2000)

Video (PBS) Cadillac Desert,

Part I (on water for LA), maybe Part II Colorado River.

(there are also parts 3 & 4, about 5 hours total. Excellent-could we screen it outside class time or ask students to view it on their own? I think it's better than the book, which is also excellent)


Reference material:
Reisner, Marc
1993 Cadillac Desert: The American west and its disappearing water. New York:
Penguin USA. Selected chapters OR:

Roy, Arundhati
1999 "The Greater Common Good" in The Cost of Living, pp. 1-90. Modern Library (on order)

Shiva, Vandana
2002 Water Wars: Privatization, pollution, and profit. South End Press.

International Water Law Project
http://www.internationalwaterlaw.org/

The World's Water (2002-2003). San Francisco: Island Press (http://www.worldwater.org)
Here's another complex site loaded with info. How can we get students to milk it for what it is worth? Maybe a sort of study guide.?

http://www.infoagua.org/ and http://www.atlaslatinoamerica.org/ (Spanish)

Arun P. Elhance
1999 Hydropolitics in the Third World: Conflict and cooperation in international river basins Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Lansing, Steve
1991 Priests and Programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. (GN635.I65 L35 1991 --A fascinating example of traditional local water management on a regional level by temple priests.)

World Commission on Dams
2000 Dams and Development: A new framework for decision-making. London: Earthscan Publishers. (PDF version online: http://www.dams.org/ this site has links to other materials, case studies etc.)
The New Economy of Water: The risks and benefits of globalization and privatization of fresh water (Pacific Institute)

III. Globalization and anti-globalization
What is so-called globalization? Does it refer to something new and significant or is it just a faddish term, a myth about the current form of processes that have always been occurring? A great many people not only believe globalization is something real but consider it to be a threat. Who makes up the anti-globalization movement, where are they located and what is it exactly they are against? What do anti-globalization activists fear and how do they envision a possible alternative future? This unit will use the Internet to explore this issue and answer these questions.
Then what I would like to have students do is an exercise on characterizing and maybe mapping aspects of the world anti-globalization movement. (Events of Feb 15 add a new dimension)

Required reading:

Dyer-Witherford: Cyber-Marx

Appadurai, Arjun
2000 "Grassroots globalization and the research imagination".in A. Appadurai, editor, Globalization. Public Culture Millennial Quartet Vol 2: 1-19.

Reference material:

Slater, David
1998 "Rethinking the spatialities of social movements: Questions of (b)orders, culture and politics in global times." in Alvarez, S., E. Dominga and A. Escobar. Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American social movements, pp. 380-401. (HN110.5.A8 C845 1998)(require? Include in packet?)

Keck, Margaret E. and Katherine Sikkink
1998 Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Cornell University Press. (JF529 .K43 1998)

Starhawk
2002 Webs of Power: Notes from the global uprising. Gabriola Island, BC,Canada: New Society Press.(www.newsociety.com)

July 2003 pub date: Neumann, Rachel
2003 Anti-Capitalism: Field guide to the global justice movement. New Press.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization

ATTAC International
http://attac.org/indexfla.htm (Important anti-globalization activist site).

Third World Network
http://www.twnside.org.sg/ (Developing country NGOs positions on international trade and WTO)


Culture Global and Local