ESSAYS: Critical responses to the readings. Specifically: Each critical response should cover two or more theorists and readings.- readings are naturally in dialogue with each other- should discuss (across a range of) theorists, comparing and contrasting their work around a common theme( globalization). You should only draw on the assigned readings.
Maximum word count per essay is 1600 words.
A critical essay is one that advances an argument around a single question or theme. It is not a summary of the texts, but an active engagement with them. Each essay should bring the selected texts into dialogue with each other, and should also include assessment of the significance, tensions, flaws, or merits found in them.
Globalization
In answer to the questions posed in topic 3 (modernity/late modernity/post modernity) many theorists since the 1980s have turned to the concept of globalization as a means of explaining contemporary institutions, societies, and our collective and individual experience of them. The nature and meaning of globalization and whether indeed it represents a qualitative difference from industrial society has spurred important theoretical debates. Have our lives and our experience and understanding changed so much in the past 50 years? Is global capitalism today so very different from what it was in the 19th century or is the underlying logic the same? What does it mean to say we are living in a globalized world and does that apply to everyone everywhere equally? How useful are globalization theories in making sense of complex contemporary society?
[In :Seidman, Steven & Alexander, Jeffrey C. The New Social Theory Reader. 2nd Edition. (London: Routledge), 2008.]
Castells, Manuel. “A New Society”, [1998] pp. 315-324.(from Information Age/ The End of the Millenium)
Beck, Ulrich. “The Cosmopolitan Perspective”, [2000] pp. 325-335.
Kaldor, Mary. “Global Civil Society: An Answer to War”, [2003] pp. 252-260
[In: Calhoun, Craig et al. (ed.) Contemporary Sociological Theory.3rd Edition. (Malden, MA ; Oxford: Blackwell), 2012.]
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Modern World-System in Crisis” [2004].