Debating Globalization
Read the following:
1. Chapter 2 Debating Globalization from from "Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds" Third Edition by Eitzen and Zinn.
2. Friedman “The World Is Flat”
3. Pankaj Ghemawat “Why the World Isn’t Flat”
Critical Questions:
1. Are the arguments presented more persuasive for the position that globalization is good or that it is bad? Why?
2. What additional evidence can you provide for Freidman’s "flat world" thesis, especially in the non-Western world?
3. Ghemawat disagrees with Friedman’s view of information technology in the global age as profoundly liberating. What do you think the reasons and evidence he gives to make the argument that the world’s playing field is not leveling?
2. The Life of Love
1. Book to be used: Morrison, Toni. Love. (p. 1-67)
2.Reflective writings are intended to help you hone your skills in both critical thinking and close reading. They are decidedly not for personal responses. In other words, they should not consist of personal commentary (likes and dislikes), reminiscences, or other matter external to textual engagement and analysis. Instead, these writings should serve as a vehicle for documenting the intellectual process and experience of reading; they should be grounded in demonstrable, concrete observations and queries concerning the works we encounter over the course of the semester. In this way, the journal provides you with the foundations needed to generate and articulate legitimate analytical readings of texts, and they will serve as partial foundation for class discussion.
Each reflective writing should consist of five discrete observations, questions, or hypotheses concerning the readings in question, and no fewer than two questions. These can be formatted as desired, but they should generally be concerned with substantive matters related to content, form, style, and comparative thinking. Possible topics might include points of confusion, how or why a particular text operates as it does (structurally, stylistically, thematically, etc.), or how a given piece relates to (supports, contradicts, complicates) others we have read.
