Understanding the Global Experience Becoming a Responsible World Citizen

by Arcaro, Thomas; Haskell, Rosemary; Eke, Chinedu; Anderson, Robert; Braye, Stephen; Cahill, Ann; Digre, Brian; Bolin, Anne; Gendle, Mathew; McClearn, Duane; Pugh, Jeffrey; Roselle, Laura; Schwind, Jean; Sorensen, Kerstin; Weston, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780205707416
• ISBN10: 0205707416
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This cross-disciplinary anthology of contemporary global issues explores a number of topics and methodologies critical to developing responsible world citizenship.Globalism, Globalization, Culture, Environmentalism, Western Imperialism, Global Media and News; Global Media and News.For anyone wishing to better understand globalization and its impact.

Author Biography

The authors are all faculty members in the liberal arts and sciences at Elon University in North Carolina. They share teaching responsibilities for a course called Undertstanding the Global Experience that is required of all first-year students.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xv
Editors' Note	p. xix
Approaches to Studying the World Today	p. 1
Beyond the Pledge of Allegiance: Becoming a Responsible World Citizen	p. 3
Prelude to What May Be a Surprising Chapter	p. 3
Some Preliminary Thoughts on Being and Becoming a Global Citizen	p. 4
An Inconvenient Truth: We May Be More Racist and Xenophobic than Is Pleasant to Admit	p. 6
Patriotism, Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Racism: All Points on the Same Spectrum?	p. 8
One Good Thing about Sputnik: The Unlikely Catalyst Creating a Global Community	p. 11
Crushed Chickpeas, Academic Freedom, and the Blind Machine	p. 14
Does Fire Purge Us of Our Racism? Some Thoughts from Evolutionary Psychology	p. 16
A Model for How To Proceed as a Global Citizen	p. 18
How Will the Rest of This Book Help You Embrace Your Role as a "Global Citizen?"	p. 20
Approaches to Studying the World Today	p. 20
Topics in Global Studies	p. 21
The Joy of Culture: A Beginner's Guide to Understanding and Appreciating Cultural Diversity	p. 26
What is Culture?: Perspectives and Practices of Daily Life	p. 26
The Importance of Understanding and Appreciating Other Cultures	p. 28
Culture Change and Global Impacts	p. 28
An Increase in Cultural Diversity: The United States and the World	p. 30
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism	p. 31
Ethnocentrism	p. 31
Cultural Relativism: A Means of Overcoming Ethnocentrism	p. 33
Further Explorations of Culture: The Disciplines of Anthropology and Sociology	p. 34
Culture Defined in More Detail: The History of a Definition	p. 35
The Characteristics of Culture	p. 36
The Elements of Culture	p. 38
Institutions: Culture and Everyday Life	p. 41
Putting It All Together: The Web of Culture	p. 43
Reading, Writing, and Researching the Global Experience	p. 49
Reading for a Global Perspective	p. 50
Photo Analysis: The Way You Were	p. 50
Comparative News Reading	p. 52
Reading: Listen and Respond	p. 54
"Overstanding" a Nonfiction Text: Reflective Questioning	p. 58
Using Tagmemics: Atomizing and Contextualizing	p. 59
Rabbi Arthur Waskow: "Can America Learn from Shabbat?"	p. 59
Generating Questions in Responsive Reading	p. 63
E. Benjamin Skinner: "A World Enslaved"	p. 63
Researching and Writing for a Global Perspective	p. 68
Preliminary Research: Finding Books and Articles	p. 69
Reference Books	p. 69
Catalogues and Databases	p. 69
Fieldwork and Visual Evidence	p. 71
Conducting Interviews	p. 71
Recording Observations	p. 71
Administering Questionnaires or Surveys	p. 72
Forming and Arguing a Thesis	p. 72
Family Immigration Research Project	p. 73
Numbers and the World	p. 75
Mistakes Were Made	p. 75
The Real World	p. 76
Ignoring Number	p. 78
Applications: Using Numerical Information to Help Understand the World	p. 79
Numerical Information: A Limitation	p. 80
Basics: Understanding the Fundamentals of Nations via Numbers	p. 81
The Land	p. 81
The People	p. 82
The Faithful	p. 84
Power	p. 84
Mighty Economies	p. 84
Military Muscle	p. 86
Quality of Life	p. 89
Money	p. 89
Long Life	p. 92
Increased Complexity	p. 93
Good Government	p. 94
Putting It All Together	p. 96
The Environment	p. 96
The Condition of the Planet	p. 96
A Primary Offender	p. 98
The Disappearance of Species	p. 100
People and More People	p. 100
Environmental Responsibility	p. 101
Observations	p. 101
Return to Borat	p. 104
Problems	p. 104
Concluding Remarks	p. 106
Reading World Literature to Read the World: Literature and the Global Student	p. 109
World Literature and World Affairs: Looking for Parallels	p. 109
Globalization: Not Just about Free Trade, Tariffs and Cotton Subsidies	p. 111
Navigating the Map of World Literature: Not Continents and Countries, but Genres and Modes	p. 113
Interpreting Individual Works: The Historical and Cultural Critic's Broad Perspective on Finding Meaning	p. 115
One Example: The Tempest	p. 115
Other Familiar Examples of Literature as Purveyors of "History" or "Culture": Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness, A Modest Proposal	p. 116
The Interpreter's Choice: Being an Intelligent Critic of World Literature	p. 117
Classifying and Theorizing the Various Relationships between Literature and the World	p. 118
Literature as Mirror	p. 118
Literature as Commentator	p. 118
Literature as Participant and Shaper	p. 119
Literature as Alternative or Subversive History	p. 120
Global Studies Topics in a Novel, a Poem, and a Short Story: The Global Experience through Literature	p. 122
Novel: Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner	p. 122
Poetry: Steve Chimombo's "Developments From the Grave"	p. 124
Short Story: Kojo Laing's "Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ"	p. 127
Nonfiction: The Essay, Nature Writing, the Blog	p. 130
Conclusion	p. 131
Global Media and Global News: A Guide to Decoding and Analyzing Information	p. 138
Introduction: Information Everywhere, but Not a Drop to Drink?	p. 138
Defining Mass Communication and the Mass Media: The Great Global News System	p. 139
Mass Media: World-Wide Roles and Responsibilities, and the Limits of Freedom	p. 139
Ownership and Ownership Patterns	p. 140
Ownership, Culture, and Ideological Shaping	p. 141
Gatekeeping in Mass Media	p. 142
The Individual and the System: i-media and u-report	p. 147
The Product Itself: News or Infotainment?	p. 148
What Is News?	p. 148
Elements of News	p. 149
Don't Be Fooled: Reading the Mass Media Intelligently	p. 149
Steps to Analyzing and Understanding News: Critical Thinking-A Strategy for All Seasons	p. 149
Applying Critical Thinking	p. 151
Conclusion	p. 156
Topics in Global Studies	p. 161
Environmentalism Gone Wild: The Great Green Mobilization and Beyond	p. 163
Environmentalism Evolves	p. 164
The Mobilization	p. 165
Debating the Mobilization	p. 166
What Would Thoreau Do?	p. 168
Trapped in a System	p. 169
Whole-Systems Design	p. 170
Earth in Flow	p. 172
Yes, We Can!	p. 174
Religion Gone Wild	p. 176
Western Imperialism and Its Legacies	p. 180
Chapter Overview	p. 181
The Old Colonial System from the Late Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries	p. 182
Motives for the New Imperialism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries	p. 184
Africa Partitioned	p. 186
Colonial Policies and Their Legacies	p. 188
Imperialism in Asia	p. 189
India	p. 190
Southeast Asia	p. 191
China	p. 192
Japan	p. 194
Neocolonialism in the Caribbean and Central America	p. 194
The Middle East and the League of Nations Mandates	p. 196
Revolution in Asia and Africa: Dismantling Empires after 1945	p. 198
Asia	p. 199
Africa	p. 200
Looking at the World Through a Gendered Lens: Feminism and Global Studies	p. 205
Defining Feminism	p. 205
The Conceptual Tools of Feminism and Global Studies	p. 208
The Social Construction of Gender	p. 209
Gender and Other Social Factors	p. 210
The Male Generic	p. 211
The Devaluing of the Feminine	p. 212
Deploying Feminism's Conceptual Tools Around the World: Some Examples	p. 213
Female Genital Cutting	p. 213
Agriculture	p. 217
HIV/AIDS	p. 219
Fill in the Blank	p. 222
Conclusion	p. 223
Use and Abuse: Drugs and Drug Commerce in a Global Context	p. 229
Drugs around the World: The Challenge of Cultural Relativism	p. 229
Drugs Have Shaped Culture, Just as Culture Has Shaped Drug Use	p. 233
Peyote and the Native American Church	p. 233
Caffeine and the Eight-to-Five Workday	p. 234
Drug Prohibition in the United States	p. 235
Race, Social Class, and Drug Legislation	p. 237
Drugs and Relationships Between Cultures	p. 239
Europeans Discover Coca and Tobacco	p. 240
China, Great Britain, and Opium	p. 242
U.S. Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century	p. 243
Drug Proxy Armies and Foreign Policy	p. 248
Conclusion	p. 249
Navigating Religion in the Global Context	p. 252
Introduction	p. 252
The Disappearing God: Is Religion Relevant in the Western World?	p. 253
Shaping Our Inner and Outer Worlds	p. 255
The intersection of religion and culture	p. 255
Religion's special power: transcendent command and the realm of the absolute	p. 256
When Worlds Come Undone	p. 258
Worlds Colliding: When Religions Conflict	p. 259
The Ottoman Empire and the European Powers	p. 260
Iran and Islam	p. 261
Iraq and Islam	p. 262
Resistance Is No Respecter of Religions	p. 263
Israel: Judaism, Christianity & Islam	p. 263
Latin America and Liberation Theology	p. 264
In the African Context: Nigeria and Darfur	p. 265
Is There a Way Forward?	p. 267
World Religious and secular forces still at odds	p. 268
The need for negotiation and the example of Northern Ireland	p. 268
Using the model of the Good Friday Agreement in other parts of the world	p. 269
Global Politics and Global Issues: Where Do You Fit?	p. 273
States as Political Actors	p. 274
Rules and Organizations for the Engagement of States	p. 276
Non-state Political Actors	p. 277
Organizations for Non-state Actors	p. 277
Key Concepts Related to Cooperation and Conflict: Interests, Ideas, Perceptions, and Power	p. 279
International Law-Its Range and Limitations	p. 281
State Dominance in International Law	p. 282
International Law and Non-state Actors	p. 282
The Role of Theory in International Relations	p. 285
Realism and Liberalism	p. 285
Constructivism and Feminism	p. 286
The United States in the World Today	p. 287
The Politics of Addressing Pressing Global Problems and Pursuing Global Opportunities	p. 289
Communication and Making Connections	p. 290
Your Place in Global Politics-or the "Who Cares?" Question	p. 291
"Jihad vs. McWorld": Benjamin R. Barber Revisited	p. 294
Introduction: Finding Frameworks for the World's Multeity and Unity, Change and Stasis	p. 294
Barber's "Jihad vs. McWorld"	p. 294
The Presocratics	p. 295
Friedman, Sachs, Stiglitz, Soros, Ritzer	p. 295
Hegel	p. 296
"McDonaldization" and "Flattening"	p. 297
Locating "Jihad" and "McWorld"	p. 299
The Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq	p. 301
China and the Olympics: Beijing, Summer 2008	p. 303
Zambia: A Personal Experience	p. 304
Zimbabwe: Tribalism Dial Set at "Self-Destruct"?	p. 306
Namibia Since Independence: Beyond Jihad and McWorld?	p. 306
Talking Points	p. 307
Exporting Democracy	p. 307
The Successes and Failures of McWorld	p. 308
The Successes and Failures of Jihad	p. 308
Can We Do As Well As Barber, Friedman, et al.? Some Student Voices	p. 310
Last Thoughts about Our Need for Other People's Interpretive Perspectives in the Field of Global Studies	p. 312
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