Global Forces

Global Forces in Culture Change - Anthropology 316

The course will focus on how global forces in culture change have an impact on groups of people within the United States and non-western cultures, such as European colonialism (including the slave trade), minority and indigenous people activism, and a redefinition of male and female roles with migration. The course considers such global forces as modernization, development, trade and finance, tourism, migration and refugees, transnationalism, ethnicity and diasporas, technology and digital media, and tribal cultures. Culture change will be illustrated through various ethnographic examples and includes issues such as women's issues, AIDS/HIV, underemployment, famine, terrorism, the digital divide, and overpopulation.

In this class students will write papers about their own global ecological footprint, uses of technology, and a paper that details how the global and local intersect in their lives. We will also stress the importance of cultural geography literacy with map quizzes. This class offers students the tools to understand how globalization influences their lives and culture around them - to both become more active in promoting a better world and to lessen the sense of ignorance many of us have about the world.

Possible Readings and Films

Readings

George Spindler and Janice E. Stockard (2007). Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures. Thomson Wadsworth. [ISBN: 978-0534636487]

Lewellen, Ted. (2002) The Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st Century. Praeger. [ISBN: 0897897404]

Jonathan Inda and Renato Rosaldo (2007). The Anthropology of Globalization: a Reader (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. [ISBN: 1405136138]

Bruner, EM. (2001) The Maasai and the Lion King: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Globalization in African Tourism. American Ethnologist. Vol. 28, No. 4, Nov., 2001

Knudson, Tom (2003) State of Denial: A special report on the environment. Sacramento Bee Special Report.

Films

That Paradise Will be Mine

Death by Myth

Lost Tribes of New Guinea

New World Border

Working Women of the World

The Toured: The Other Side of Tourism in Barbados

The Talking Pictures