Week 14 – Nov. 25

Hip hop:

• What is the relationship between globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and the development of hip-hop music and culture?
• How did hip-hop spread globally? Has hip-hop become a global form of resistance music, and if so, why?
• Has hip-hop become appropriated and/or commodified? Do we see examples of commodification and appropriation in the Chang and Aidi articles? Given this, can hip hop still be a form of resistance (to capitalism, oppression, inequality, etc.)?
• What forms of resistance have we encountered in previous course readings, and what happened in these situations? Resistance to what and how? What actually needs to be resisted – neoliberal capitalism, globlalization, etc. or something more specific? And how has/should resistance actually occur?

Week 13 – Nov. 18 & 20

Goldfarming (Dibbell, Nakamura):

• What is gold farming? What can this practice tell us about virtual economies?
• What are the conditions of labor for gold farmers? Are these conditions similar or different to spaces like sweat shops in the “real world”?
• Why are “leisure” players so opposed to “working” players such as gold farmers? How do these oppositions become racialized in games such as World of Warcraft?
• Do virtual worlds offer spaces to transcend inequalities and divisions along lines of race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, ability, etc.? Or do they reinforce and reinvent existing inequalities and stereotypes?

“For the Win”:

• What are the conditions of labor for the gold farmers in the book? How are these similar/different to what was described in the articles? Why do you think people work these jobs?
• What kinds of power do people have to challenge and change their labor conditions? How does the book draw on US labor history? Is organizing labor movements easier or harder in virtual worlds? Why or why not?
• How does the virtual economy in the book operate? Who benefits from the way this economy is structured? And how is it brought down by the “Wobblies”? Is this similar or different than “real world” capitalist economic systems?
• What is the connection between globalization, culture, and online multi-player games? Are these games creating their own global social networks and in-game cultures? Is there a real space of “globalized culture” and “global citizenship” in these games?

Week 12 – Nov. 11 & 13

Super rich (Featherstone, Freeland):

• What defines the culture of the global super-rich?
• How are the super-rich different today than the wealthy of previous era? How are these differences related to globalization and neoliberalism?
• What is the relationship between the super-rich, philanthropy, and democracy? How should decisions about social and humanitarian programs be made ideally?
• What re some of the images and representations that circulate in popular culture about the super-rich? What is appealing about these representations? What do people get out of consuming them?

Edmunds; Nadeem:

• Are personal appearance and beauty a kind of symbolic capital? Where do we see examples of this in both the articles?
• What is the relationship between racial/ethnic histories and standards of attractiveness? Do these play out differently in India and Brazil?
• What is the relationship between bodily transformations (such as lighter skin, plastic surgery) and ideas of self-esteem, self-worth, and personal empowerment?
• Do “the poor have the right to be beautiful’? What is the connection between access to plastic surgery, self-esteem, and egalitarianism in Brazil?
• What do it mean that we are critiquing of these practices from a privileged Western perspective?

Week 11 – Nov. 4 & 6

Zirin (Introduction, Chs. 1-4):

• What have been some of the negative effects of the World Cup in Brazil? What specifically is Zirin critical of? Who does he see the World Cup as benefiting and why?
• Zirin discusses mentions three specific spaces in Ch. 1 – The Museum of the Slaves, the Maracana stadium, and the Indigenous Cultural Center. What is his main point about each of these three spaces? Why do you think he chose these three in discussing the impact of the World Cup on Brazil?
• What are some examples of police militarization in Brazil in preparation for the World Cup? And how does this fit into the arguments from the Graham reading “Ubiquitous Borders”?
• Why do you think Zirin ended his book title with the phrase “the fight for democracy”? What are some examples from the reading that connect to the idea of “the fight for democracy”?

Zirin (Chs. 5-7, Conclusion):

• Who/what are FIFA and the IOC? Why do they have so much power?
• Why do governments want to host sports mega-events like the World Cup and Olympics? What do they get out of it?
• What is Zirin’s main argument about sports mega-events as “neo-liberal Trojan horse” and the “sports shock doctrine”?
• What was the impact of the World Cup on the favelas in Brazil. How does these connect to Harvey’s idea about “accumulation by dispossession”?

Week 10 – Oct. 28 & 30

Higher Education readings (Giroux, Taibbi, and Hoeller):

• What are some of the recent trends in higher education in the U.S. discussed in the readings (for example, tuition costs, student loans, faculty jobs, administrative costs, role of corporations, etc.)? How do these trends impact you?
• How do changes in universities and colleges discussed in the readings relate to neoliberalism? What is meant by the “neoliberalization” and “WalMart-ization” of the university?
• What does Giroux believe is this purpose of higher education? Why should people get college degrees according to him? Why are you getting a college degree?

Tourism readings (Steinbrink, Hartnell):

• Steinbrink:
  • Steinbrink argues that “… new trends in tourism are never created out of nothing. They draw upon more or less known images and ideas about unfamiliar and distant regions and their inhabitants” (Steinbrink, 214). What do tourists expect to see in the slum? How do they imagine and define the “others” found in slums in contrast to themselves?
  • How did slum tourism and poverty tourism (i.e. “slumming”) develop historically? What were the similarities and differences between how slums were viewed in Victorian London versus the United States in the late 1800s/early 1900s?
  • What are some of the reasons tourists visit slums in the current era of “global slumming”? How are ideas of the “local” and the “global” connected to this?

• Hartnell:
  • How do we imagine the city of New Orleans? What does New Orleans represent in our cultural imagination? How does the tourist experience in New Orleans allow for the “safe” consumption of African-American culture?
  • Why did people go on “disaster tours” in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? Are they similar or different than the reasons people go on slum tours?
  • Hartnell argues that Katrina tourism works to conceal and exacerbate existing social and racial inequalities in New Orleans? Do you agree or disagree with her, and why?

Week 9 – Oct. 21 & 23

Camacho:

• What are the different ways in which narratives about border crossings are told in the Camacho article? What are some common themes in these accounts? Why do people tell these stories and why should we listen to them?
• What is “migrant melancholia” according to Camacho? How it is connected to the migration experience across the U.S./Mexico border?
• Camacho speaks of “… the contradiction between market demands for mobile labor and consumable goods and the immobility of rights beyond the bounds of the nation-state” (302). What are these contradictions? How are processes of neoliberal globalization related issues of consumption, labor, and citizenship?

Gardner:

• According to Gardner, what are some of the reasons that South Asian migrant laborers in Qatar tell the stories they do?

“Sleep Dealer” film:

Week 8 – Midterm break

Week 7 – Oct. 7 & 9

Davis:

• How has the globalization of capitalism affected urban spaces? What is similar and different about these affects historically and in current times?
• What various “push” and “pull” factors contribute to urbanization?
• What is “urbanization without growth” according to Davis? How does it connect to the globalization of neoliberalism?

Engels:

• How does Engels’ description of the slums of the “great towns” of England during the industrial revolution compare to Davis’ description of modern slums? What are similarities and differences between the two?

Graham:

• How can we reconcile our globalizing world, where we perceive that people and things are becoming increasingly more mobile and borders more fluid, with a parallel rise in spaces of “closure, entrapment, and containment”?
• What is Graham’s main arguments about the rise of “securocratic wars”? What examples does his use to back up his argument

Schrader, Nopper & Kaba:

• How have globalizing processes affected the militarization of the police in the U.S.?
• Can the events in Ferguson, Missouri be seen as part of larger global processes? Why or why not?

Week 6 – Sept. 30 & Oct. 2

City of God Film:

• Story/narrative in the film itself  – What do you think are the central themes of the film? What larger issues associated with globalization, capitalism, and industrialization are affecting the events that go on in the “City of God” favela?
• Global cinema industry – How/why did this film find distribution beyond Brazil? Why would the Cannes Film Festival choose to screen this film? Why did Hollywood (i.e. the Academy Awards) pick this film for awards?
• Global audiences – Why do you think this movie was so popular outside of Brazil? Why did it win so many awards? What do audiences get out of watching it? What is fun and pleasurable about viewing the movie? Does the film bring attention to the horrible conditions of favela life or glamourize the violence and life of a “hood” (or both)?

Favelization website:

• Why do you think the favelas have come to be used to represent “Brazil” in global culture products?
• What are the ethical issues associated with using favelas in film, fashion, design, etc. (especially luxury products)?

Week 5 – Sept. 23 & 25

Smith:

• What is the place of “global cities” is the current global capitalist system?
• What are some of the similarities and differences between the “rapidly growing metropolitan economies of Asia, Latin America, and … Africa” and “the command centers of Europe, North America and Japan”? How does the Smith want to re-define the concept of “global cities”?
• How have neoliberal policies affected global cities according to Smith?
• How is gentrification specifically a tool of neoliberalism in global cities worldwide?
• How can we connect Smith’s arguments to Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession”?

Week 4 – Sept. 16 & 18

Young:

• What is post-colonialism? Whose perspective does it privilege?
• Why do you think Young uses a number of scenes and montages throughout the book? Do you think it’s effective?
• What is the relationship between post-colonialism and globalization? How would globalizing processes be viewed from a post-colonial perspective?

Steger & Roy:

• What is neoliberalism? Is neoliberalism a set of specific policies, an ideology, or both?
• How does neoliberalism contrast with managed capitalism?
• How have neoliberal ideas spread globally?

Harvey:

• What is the central force behind the emergence and spread of neoliberalism in Harvey’s view?
• What are some ways that neoliberal philosophy and actual practices diverge?
• How are neoliberal policies spread and maintained through coercive measures according to Harvey?
• What is accumulation by dispossession?

Week 3 – Sept. 9 & 11

Marks (Chs. 4-5):

• How does Marks tell a polycentric history of the Industrial Revolution, its global impact, and the development of “the gap”?
• What role did the state play in the development of industrial capitalism in countries in the 19th century?
• What was the role that colonialism and imperialism played in the development of “the gap”?
• Do you see any parallels between the social consequences of industrialization that Marks discusses and the effects of globalization today?

Marx and Engels:

• What defines all epochs of history for Marx and Engels?
• Why do you think Marx and Engels see the mid-19th century world as defined by struggled between the bourgeoisie and proletariat?
• When describing the rise of the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels seems to describe many globalizing processes. What are these, and how are they similar and different to globalization today?

Week 2 – Sept 2 & 4

Marks (Introduction, Chs. 1-3):

• What is the main argument Marks makes in The Origins of the Modern World? How does he use the concepts of contingency, accidents, and conjunctures to develop that argument?

Linebaugh and Reddiker:

• What is “hydrarchy from below”? How did it offer resistance to the developing global capitalist system?
• Why do you think that popular culture representations of pirates and piracy are so appealing in contemporary times?

Week 1 – Aug. 28

Featherstone:

• What are some of the standard ways globalization and globalizing processes have been viewed and defined? What critiques does Featherstone offer of these views?
• What alternative ways of conceiving of globalization does Featherstone offer?
• Who is his audience? For whom is he writing for? How does this shape his argument?

Bauman:

• Who are the tourists, who are the vagabonds, and what defines their differences? How does the “consumer society” and globalization connect to these differences? Put another way, how does choice and mobility define and divide the tourists and vagabonds?
• Why can’t the tourist exist with the vagabond (and vice versa) according to Bauman?