Professor: Friederike Fleischer

Name of the Course: Globalization. Global, local, and all in-between.

Description:

Globalization has been theorized as “time-space compression” and as the “intensification

of the consciousness of the world.” Through the rapid movement of capital, people,
goods, services, and ideas, globalization creates new networks of global connections and
experiences. While some scholars praise the connections offered by globalization, such as
greater human rights and opportunities for many people living in the developing world,
others provide more critical accounts of the homogenizing impacts of globalization on
culture and the exploitative nature of transnational corporations on both people and the
natural environment, and the widening gap between the rich and poor, both in the
industrialized nations and the developing world. However, “the global” is not a given; it is
made through intense and highly unequal exchanges; its local reception has been
contingent and varied. In this course we examine the political, social, and spatial processes
that accompany economic globalization, such as modes of production, governance, and
consumption, as well as their consequences on local communities. What are the
connections between global capital and poverty, environmental degradation and
consumerism for example? How has globalization affected national sovereignties and
human rights? What are the ways in which globalization has increased or flattened
cultural differences and global inequities? To what extent can grass roots social
movements discipline the processes of globalization and make it work toward social
justice? Drawing on theories of globalization, ethnographic studies, and visual texts the
aim is to understand the ways that globalization is producing a world that while diverse, is
changing through increased interconnectedness and new forms of mobilization on the
ground that challenge various forms of inequalities that are often associated with the
process of globalization.

Learning Objectives:
1. Comprehension
Students in this course will learn to critically understand and analyze:
 Theories of globalization;
 The complexity of global forms of capital such as manufacturing, production and
consumption of goods, ideas and services;
 How globalization creates new identities, family structures, and livelihoods;
 The positive and negative aspects of globalization;
 Cross-cultural perspectives on the meanings and manifestations of globalization
across space and how communities cope with globalization.

2. Abilities

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
 Students will learn to:
- Search for, and critically read and evaluate information (e.g. statistics, maps,
publicity)
- Analyze a phenomenon in its historical and local context
- Identify cause and effect of processes.

3. Attitudes
Students will:
- Develop sensitivity, empathy and respect for social, economic, ethnic and other
differences, especially in relation to cities and urban life
- Become aware of their own practices and resulting responsibilities
- Value different forms of knowledge and thinking.

Methodology:
Each week of the semester is dedicated to one topic. Each session is organized around an
introductory lecture that treats the themes and readings for class. The lecture will be
complemented by discussions and questions about the assigned readings and other
material. In addition, selected videos and films will be screened and debated. Students are
expected to actively participate, not only with questions but also sharing their opinions
about the readings and material reviewed. At the end of each topic discussed, we will
jointly summarize the most important points discussed and lessons learnt in self-study and
in class.

Study questions about the assigned texts and exercises related to the topics will aid
students’ comprehension of the issues discussed. During the semester each student will
submit 1 review essay about one of the topics. In SICUA you will find examples for writing
these. In addition, there will be a final take-home exam, which takes the form of a position
paper applying the insights gained during the course to a current issue of globalization
(e.g. climate change and inequality; human rights and national sovereignty; migration,
etc.).

Finally, this is a course “E” designed to help students develop and improve their
communication skills in English. To this end the working language of the course is English.

Duration: 8 weeks (12 hours of weekly dedication)

Time distribution:

8 weeks:

Strategies and Presence (total 4 hours) Individual work (total 8 hours)

activities
Class 4 hours

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
 Readings & 3 hours
exercises/ study
questions
Writing (Exams and 2 hours
summaries)

Schedule:
The course is organized around the following large themes: Economic Processes; Global
Assembly Lines and Inequality; State-power and Rights; Culture and Diversity; Crime and
Illegal Flows; Transnational Migration, Diasporic Identities and Media Flows; Social
Movements or Globalization from Below.

How to do the Readings

Read the materials prior to class. Below are the guidelines for reading the assigned texts.
1. What are the author’s main objectives? What did you not understand or find new
and challenging from the reading? What questions for class discussion did it raise?
2. What are the major findings of the article/book? What did you find most useful in
the reading? What new terms and concepts were contained in the reading?
3. What is the context for the writing of this article/book? For example, try to
understand how the article relates to topics such as ethnicity, inequality, nationalism,
etc.
4. Do you agree with the arguments? Why or why not?

Week 1: Introduction: Defining globalization. Themes, Questions, Prospects

What is globalization? What are the defining features of globalization? What points of
contention are there? How do various disciplines define and approach globalization?

Appadurai, Arjun. 2002. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. In The
Anthropology of Globalization: a reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Pp. 46-64.
Ferguson, James. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa and the World. In Global Shadows: Africa
in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. Pp. 1-25.
Juergensmeyer, Mark, et al. 2014. Thinking Globally. In Thinking Globally: A Global Studies
Reader. Edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 3-
29.
Kearney, M. 1995. The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and
Transnationalism. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 547-65.
Lewellen, T. C. 2002. Introduction: Who Is Alma?, Slouching Toward Globalization. In The
Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st Century.
Westport: Bergin & Garvey. Pp. 1-28.
Trouillot, Michel‐Rolph. 2003. A Fragmented Globality. In Global Transformations.
Anthropology and the Modern World. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pp. 47-78.

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
Week 2: Economic Globalization
Who are some of the main players of globalization? Which forms of production and labor
enable the global economy? What is the role of (transnational) corporation? Which
benefits and risks accompany offshore production and what is the force of auditing?

Friedman, Thomas L. 2006. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.
New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Pp. 1-49.
Harvey, D. 2005. Notes towards a theory of uneven geographic development. In Spaces of
neoliberalization: towards a theory of uneven geographic development. Franz Steiner
Verlag. Pp. 53-89.
Kogut, Bruce Mitchel. 2003. Introduction: The Internet Has Borders. In The Global Internet
Economy. Cambridge, Mass : The MIT Press. Pp. 1-39.
Kopytoff, I. 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai, ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Pp. 64-94.
Mintz, S. W. 1985. Consumption. In Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern
history. New York, NY: Viking. Pp. 74-149.
Tsing, A. L. 2005. Frontiers of Capitalism. In Friction: An ethnography of global connection.
Princeton Univeristy Press. Pp 27-50.

Week 3: The Global Assembly Lines and Inequality

How has globalization contributed to the creation of a “global assembly line”? To what
extend are unequal power relations reproduced through global assembly processing?
What factors contribute to the ways in which the global assembly line has been gendered?
Beyond assembly plants, how does globalization shape the working lives of women and
men?

Biao, Xiang. 2007. Prologue, Introduction, The World System of Body Shopping, Ending
Remarks. In Global “Body Shopping”: An Indian Labor System in the Information
Technology Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp.xiii-xix, 1-12, 100-115.
Fernandez Kelly, Maria Patricia. 1983. Maquiladoras and the International Division of
Labor, Maquiladoras and the International Division of Labor, Maquiladoras: The View
from the Inside. In For We Are Sold, I and My Peope. Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press. Pp. 91-132.
Freeman, Carla. 2002. Designing Women: Corporate Discipline and Barbados’s Off-Shore
Pink-Collar Sector. In The Anthropology of Globalization. Jonathan Inda and Renato
Rosaldo, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Pp. 83-99.
Hondagneu Sotelo, Pierrette. 2001. New World Domestic Order and Maid in L.A. In
Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence.
Berkeley: UC Press. Pp. 3-62.
Ong, Aihwa. 1988. The production of possession: spirits and the multinational corporation
in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 15: 28–42.

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
Sassen, Saskia. 1999. Notes on the Incorporation of Third World Women into Wage Labor
through Immigration and Offshore Production. In Globalization and Its Discontents:
Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money. New York: New Press. Pp. 111-134.
Tsing, Anna L.. 2009. Supply Chains and the Human Condition. Rethinking Marxism 21(2):
148-176.

Week 4: State-power and Rights

What happens to the State? How do national institutions and the rule of law enable the
global? Which forms of governance and ideas of citizenship does globalization facilitate?

Chalfin, Brenda. 2006. Global Customs Regimes and the Traffic in Sovereignty: Enlarging
the Anthropology of the State. In Current Anthropology 47(2): 243-262.
Christen, K. 2005. Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix in the Cultural Commons. International
Journal of Cultural Property 12: 315–345.
Farmer, Paul. 2005. Never Again? Reflections on Human Values and Human Rights. The
Tanner Lecture on Human Values delivered at the University of Utah, May 2005
http://www.pih.org/inforesources/news/Farmer-Tanner-Lecture2005.pdf
Geismar, H. 2005. Copyright in context: Carvings, carvers, and commodities in Vanuatu.
American Ethnologist 32: 437-459.
Meskell, Lynn. 2010. Human Rights and Heritage Ethics. Anthropological Quarterly 83(4):
839-859
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Graduated Sovereignty. In Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in
Citizenship and Sovereignty. Duke University Press. Pp. 75-96.
Petryna, Adriana, Kleinman, Arthur. 2006. The Pharmaceutical Nexus. In Global
Pharmaceuticals. Ethics, Markets, Practices. Petryna, Adriana, Andrew Lakoff, Arthur
Kleinman, eds. Durham: Duke University Press. Pp. 1-32.
Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Denationalizing State Agendas and Privatizing Norm-Making. In
Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton:
Princeton University Press. Pp. 222-276.

Week 5: Culture and Diversity

What happens to the concept of bounded cultures or societies in a globalizing world? How
do individuals and groups articulate identity vis-à-vis global forces and commodities? Is
there such a thing as a global culture? How does the on-the-ground encounter with
globalization reshape people’s identities?

Ferreira, L., Mendonça, M. 2016. The Local and the Global in Popular Music. The Brazilian
Music Industry, Local Culture, and Public Policies. In Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy,
and Globalization. Crane, Diana, Kawashima, Nobuko, Kawasaki, Kenichi, eds.
Routledge. Pp. 105-117.
Geertz, Clifford. 2000. The World in Pieces: Culture and Politics at the End of the Century.
In Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton:
Princeton University Press. Pp. 218-263.

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
Langman, L. 2004. Culture, Identity and Hegemony: The Body in a Global Age. In Global
Forces and Local Life-Worlds: Social Transformations. Ulrike Schuerkens, ed. London
and New York: SAGE. Pp. 27-50.
Lash, S., Lury, C. 2007. Image, Markets and Display in Brazil. In Global Culture Industry: The
Mediation of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pp. 153-180.
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2004. Globalization and Culture: Three Paradigms. In
Globalization and culture: global mélange. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. 41-58.
Schneider, Alexandra. 2005. Jackie Chan is Nobody, and So Am I: Juvenile Fan Culture and
the Construction of Transnational Male Identity in the Tamil Diaspora. In Youthscapes:
The Popular, the National, the Global. Sunaina Maira and Elisabeth Soep, eds.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 137-155.

Week 6: Crime and Illegal Flows - The Dark Side of Globalization

Crime has long been global - how so in the age of globalization? This week we explore the
dark side of globalization from illicit business, to waste and trafficking. How do politics,
markets and criminal economies intersect?

Douny, L. 2007. The Materiality of Domestic Waste The Recycled Cosmology of the Dogon
of Mali. Journal of Material Culture 12: 309-331.
Lafraniere, Sharon. 2008. Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow.
The New York Times, January 14. P. 1A.
Lepawsky, J. Billah, M. 2011. Making chains that (un)make things: waste–value relations
and the Bangladeshi rubbish electronics industry. Geografiska Annaler 93 (2): 121–139.
Juergensmeyer, Mark, et a. 2014. The Hidden Global Economy of Sex and Drugs. In
Thinking Globally: A Global Studies Reader. M. Juergensmeyer, ed. Berkeley: University
of California Press. Pp. 320-334.
Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Diamonds and Fish: Going Global. In Global Outlaws. University
of California Press. Pp. 105-114.
Scheper‐Hughes, N. 2000. The Global Traffic in Human Organs. Current Anthropology 41:
191-224.

Week 7: Transnational Migration, Diasporic Identities and Media Flows

How do migration flows today differ from those of other time periods in history? What
accounts for those differences? To what extend does transnational migration reflect the
shifts in the global restructuring of capital and production? To what extent has
globalization contributed to the forced migration of people? How do we reconcile
between forced migration and “flexibility”?

Gabrys, J. 2011. Silicon Elephants. The transformative materiality of microchips. In Digital

Rubbish: A natural history of electronics. University of Michigan.
(http://www.digitalculture.org/books/digital-rubbish/) online.
Gershorn, I. 2010. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Media Switching and Media Ideologies.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20: 389–405.

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
Lash, S., Lury, C. 2007. Flow: The Practices and Properties of Circulation. In Global Culture
Industry: The Mediation of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pp. 135-152.
Lewellen, T. C. 2002. Migration: People on the Move & Transnationalism: Living Across
Borders. In The Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st
Century. Westport: Bergin & Garvey. Pp 121-158.
Mazzarella, W. 2004. Culture, Globalization, Mediation. Annual Review of Anthropology
33: 345-67.
Yarris, Kristen. 2014. “Quiero ir y no quiero ir” (I Want to Go and I Don’t Want to Go):
Nicaraguan Children’s Ambivalent Experiences of Transnational Family Life,” Journal of
Latin America and Caribbean Anthropology 19(2): 284-309.

Week 8: Social Movements or Globalization from Below: Building a Global

Countermovement
What is globalization from below? What are the various ways in which globalization from
above has been met with globalization from below? What are the alternatives to
globalization? Are these possible?

Graeber, D. 2011. Shock in Victory & Against Kamikaze Capitalism. In Revolutions in

Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination. Minor Compositions. Pp. 11-
30, 107-114.
Kirsch, S. 2007. Social relations and the green critique of capitalism in Melanesia.
American Anthropologist 110(3): 288-298.
Maurer, W. 2000. Alternative Globalizations: Community and Conflict in New Cultures of
Finance. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 23(1): 155 –172.
Postero, N. 2005. Indigenous Responses to Neoliberalism: A Look at the Bolivian Uprising
of 2003. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28(1): 73-92.

Evaluation:
There will be one (1) review essay on a topic of the course, one (1) final position paper, as
well as weekly study questions and exercises to complete in SICUA.

Only certified medical certificates are valid excuses for not taking the exam or missing any
of the other assignments. Failure to submit any assignment on time will be penalized by
lowering the grade by half a grade-point per each day of late submission. The grade for
not presenting or not submitting one of the evaluations during the course is 0.00.

Grade percentages are as follows:

Review essay: 25%

Final position paper: 30%
Weekly study questions, exercises: 25%
Participation: 20%

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.
Not attending more than 25% of the course without valid excuse within the following
eight (8) days of non-assistance results in failing the course.

Fuentes primarias: N/A

Incluya un resumen o un listado de las fuentes primarias principales del curso (si son
textos, inclúyalos en la bibliografía).

Bibliografía: vea arriba

Incluya aquí las referencias bibliográficas usadas en el curso; tenga en cuenta el énfasis
sobre fuentes primarias (dentro de lo posible, no incluya demasiados textos especializados
o fuentes secundarias).

Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada MinEducación - Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.
Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 MinJusticia.