Final Critical Response Paper

CGS 1022G Introduction to Globalization

Dr. Wendy Russell
Due April 23, 2021
Submit via OWL
General Instructions:
Welcome to your final project. For each of Topic 1 and Topic 2, please prepare a 3-4 page (750-
1000 words) essay-style answer. Use quotations or page references, or for films, simply describe
the element of the case and cite the film by title. Please present this in 12 pt font, double spaced,
and no need for a bibliography unless you use material I did not assign. But, don’t do that,
because this is a critical response to our course materials. These are two essay exam answers that
you get to write at home.
I will be grading this for your apparent grasp of the key features of the process that is at the core
of each question.
Topic 1: Modernization vs Neoliberalism
One of the dominant explanations of globalization used to be that it was simply the gradual
integration of every place in the world into a single order. I say ‘used to be’ because, as you have
seen throughout our course, the value of this explanation has been eclipsed by, well, reality. It is
the ‘eclipsing’ of this explanation that is the topic of this first critical response essay.
The question to answer is how the enthusiasm to produce a globally interconnected capitalism
has not lived up to its promises. The course materials that are especially important to this
question are from Weeks 2-6. Your answer should cover the following:
 In reference to course materials, describe how globalization is explained as
modernization. What is the presumed outcome of this process? Course materials from
Week 2, 3 and 6 are especially helpful here, including lectures, films, and readings.
 How the explanation that globalization is simply globe-spanning modernization as you
described above explain the problems that are emerging with globalization. (Some of
those problems are evident in Njehu’s paper in Week 2, in the parts of Wise’s book we
read in Week 3 and in the material we examined in Week 4)
 How the idea of “neoliberal optimism” (Fridell and Konings 2013, 7-11from Week 3)
that feeds modernization theory (see Baban’s article from Week 2) introduces the idea
that these problems are in fact not temporary and that as Bauman and Bordoni argue in
our reading from Week 5, neoliberalism has led to a global crisis. (150 words)
Continue on to next page to Topic 2
Topic 2: Globalization as Crisis and Opportunity
The explanation of globalization that we took up in Weeks 7, 8, 9 and 11 characterizes
globalization as a crisis that has been facilitated by a fundamentally new form of capitalism. Two
features of this new form of capitalism are its ability to shed entanglements with people and
places, and the transformation of everyday life into crisis for people everywhere. And it is that
‘common crisis’ that we read about in Wise, Hardt and Negri, Applebaum and Lichtenstein and
Bauman and Bordoni. And that we saw in the cases of occupied factories in Argentina and in the
local and national resistance in Honduras. It is the ‘newness’ of the response to this crisis that is
the topic of this second critical response essay.
As a way to begin, consider what Bauman is saying in this from Week 8:
Ultimately, cities all over the world are turned into local laboratories in which ways to
resolve … globally generated problems are improvised or purposefully designed and then
put to the test and either rejected or incorporated into daily practice. They are also, again
due to an externally created and imposed necessity rather than by a deliberate choice on
the part of their residents, cast in the role of research establishments and schools for civic
responsibility and the difficult art of human cohabitation under novel conditions of
irreducible cultural diversity and persistent existential uncertainty. (Bauman and Bordoni
2014, 125).
The fuller context for that quotation reveals Bauman is confident that the space of day to day life
and the concerns of living in localized networks holds out a different kind of promise for
addressing the crisis. Even under crisis, people solve problems, in new ways. We find similar
confidence in selections we read from Wise, especially Chapters 7 and 8, though less obvious
there. That is, we can think of this kind of optimism as both urban and rural.
The question to answer is how the crisis that that has spun out under neoliberal globalization has
created new forms of organizing in place and in people’s own localities and in their localized
networks. Your answer should cover the following:
 How Bauman and Bordoni characterize the crisis (Week 8 readings and lecture are
helpful here).
 How Hardt and Negri argue the crisis is also a kairos and an opportunity to demand a
paradigm shift (Weeks 9 and 11).
 Give examples from course materials (see weeks 7, 8, 9, 11) of how people organize new
ways of consolidating their own local power that allow them to escape the crisis.