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PART ONE: INTERPRETATIONS

• 1 The Making of Global Sociology
• 2 Thinking Globally
• 3 Modernity and the Evolution of World Society
• 4 The Changing World of Work
• 5 Nationhood and Nation-States

PART TWO: DIVISIONS

• 6 Social Inequalities: Gender, Race and Class
• 7 Corporate Power and Social Responsibility
• 8 Uneven Development: The Victims
• 9 Crime, Drugs and Terrorism: Failures of Global Control
• 10 Population and Migration
• 11 Health; Lifestyle and the Body

PART THREE: EXPERIENCES

• 12 Tourism: Social and Cultural Effects
• 13 Consuming Culture
• 14 Media and the Information Age
• 15 Sport in a Global Age
• 16 Global Religion

PART FOUR: DYNAMICS AND CHALLENGES

• 17 Urban Life
• 18 Global Civil Society
• 19 Challenging a Gendered World
• 20 Towards a Sustainable Future: The Green Movement
• 21 Identities and Belonging
• 22 Contested Futur

 

Chapter 1-Group work

• Divide students into three groups. Group A will revise what Auguste Comte meant by positivist sociology. Group B will find a work on social stratification in the Comtean positivist tradition. Group C will similarly find a work on patterns of crime in the Comtean mode. Nominate spokespersons and report to the class.

• Each of the three groups will take one of three pioneer sociologists – Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim – to read. What were their principal contributions to the sociological study of non-European societies?

• Divide students into two groups, one concerned with ‘the subordination of women in a chosen society’, the other with ‘world poverty’. Both groups will plan an intervention in public sociology. Without actually doing the research, each group will report to the class on (a) how they would research the topic, (b) how they would diffuse their results and (c) how they would seek to move people to action to ameliorate the conditions they describe.

• Divide students into two groups to look at Wallerstein’s ‘world system theory’ and its influence on Global sociology. One group to consider the strengths of this theory and other group to consider its weaknesses. Nominate spokesperson and report an outline of discussion to the class.

 

Chapter 2-Group work

• Working in small groups and drawing on your own pooled experiences, consider all those ways in which globalization has already affected your personal life. Organize this list around some key themes, such as holidays, leisure, preferences in cuisine, changing loyalties to sporting teams and future career prospects.

• List the key threads that make up the warp and weft of globalization. Do you think that one or more of these have greater significance? If so, why? Have we left out any important components in our account? Prepare a comment on the key components of globalization for your class tutor/instructor.

• Among your close friends and family who have not studied sociology, how many would (a) readily understand what is meant by globality if it were explained to them and (b) would feel a close affinity towards its ideas? Can you explain these different propensities in terms of the particular biographies of the individuals involved?

• Working in small group using the global thinkers’ outline of Roland Robertson’s theoretical work on globalization, find practical examples which to illustrate each of the five trends identified by Robertson. Each group to feedback to the class to compile a list of examples.

 

Chapter3-Group work

• Working in small groups list and briefly outline the early historical phases of the emergence of world society that we have discussed. What might be added to this list that we have omitted or neglected, and why?

• Pair off. Each pair will look up the history of the European occupation of one non-European country ( Kenya, India, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, for example). How would you characterize the racial attitudes of the colonizing force?

• Working in small groups draw up a list of all the ‘economics words and phrases’ we have used in this chapter. Start with ‘devaluation’, ‘exchange rates’, ‘protectionism’ and mercantilism’. Can you spot any others? Find their meanings in a dictionary and write them down.

• Working in small groups and using the Global thinkers’ outline of Weber’s thought, assess how far you think Weber’s main worries about the consequences of modernity were justified in the context of today’s global order.

 

Chapter 4-Group work

• The class will divide into two groups. Using the text and Box 4.1, one group will draw up a list showing the advantages and disadvantages of (a) being a worker and (b) a consumer during the Fordist era. The second group will follow the same procedure for the current era of post-Fordism. After hearing the two accounts, each student will briefly give reasons why they might prefer to live under Fordism rather than post-Fordism or vice versa.

• Working in small groups, students will study the section ‘The crisis of Fordism as a production regime’. Now draw up a list of possible explanations for the decline of Fordism in their order of relative importance. Write down the reasons for your prioritization. Once every group has given their report the class as a whole might consider two issues: (a) the degree of consensus, if any, concerning the weighting given to global as against other explanations; and (b) the problems involved in engaging in exercises of this kind.

• Arrange a class discussion/debate around the following topic; ‘The world has become too complex for us ever to return to the postwar golden years. What can or should the world’s leading figures and organizations (states, IGOs, companies, political leaders and so on) do to construct a global mode of regulation capable of supporting a more stable and prosperous world capitalism?’

• Divide class into two groups and using the global thinkers box for this chapter, one group to consider the ways in which Marxism is still relevant to the contemporary global order whilst another group considers how Marxist thought is not/less relevant today’s context. Both groups to feedback to each other-this can be used as a start up activity for a wider debate/discussion.

 

Chapter 5-Group work

• Students will consider how they feel about their own sense of national identity. How strong is it and why? Do globalization or regionalization threaten national identities? Do students have other, stronger, loyalties? Everyone will report to the class. How far do individual positions differ and how can this be explained?
• Working in small groups, students will collect cuttings from quality newspapers/magazines over several weeks demonstrating: (a) what is happening at the UN; (b) how globalizing forces – for example, Western TV programmes – are undermining some government’s domestic policies; (c) the tensions arising between states during this period and why. Groups will compile a brief report on their issue to be presented to the class.
• Working in three groups, students will collect material ranging from media resources, academic literature, statistics and public policy which address the issues of a) how women are constructed by state power b) the relationship between women’s reproductive capacities and nationalism and c) women’s changing roles in nationhood conflicts. Groups will give a brief presentation of their findings to the class.
• Working in small group and using the Global thinkers box as a guide, discuss your own personal experience of what Giddens has identified as the core characteristics of late modern globality. How far do you think these apply to social life generally and how can this be explained?

 

Chapter 6-Group work

• Assigning the work in advance, students will work in small groups to collect material on how women are represented in the various media. Different newspapers and magazines could be compared along with an agreed selection of TV programmes and films. How different are these representations and to what extent do they reflect or challenge the main body of feminist theory?
• Undertake some historical and biographical research on the following figures, all of whom insisted on the importance of ‘race’: (a) Marcus Garvey; (b) Hendrik F. Verwoerd and (c) Adolf Hitler. An encyclopaedia will give you a good start on all three, while E. Cashmore’s Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations (1994) has useful entries on the first two. Present the outline of their ideas to the group and suggest a critique.
• Examine the class schema listed in this chapter. Group A will put into the rows in any of the three columns the following occupations: computer operator, university professor, nursery school teacher, homeworker sewing garments, an operator in a calling centre, a travel agent, an actor and a self-employed plumber. Provide reasons for your choice and let Group B comment.
• In small groups, using global thinkers 6 as a guide, assess how far Sheila Rowbotham’s work has contributed to understanding women’s oppression in a global context.

 

Chapter 7-Group work

• For the purposes of debate, one group will adopt the view that TNCs are a force for global economic integration, another that they have not fundamentally moved beyond international trade patterns that have existed for a long time.
• For the purposes of debate, one group will adopt the view that the TNCs are a force for social good, another that they generate malign social effects.
• Write to the public affairs office of a large corporation requesting its annual report. (Search the web or look at adverts in the Financial Times or the Economist for addresses.) What claims, if any, does the company make to having social responsibility? Are you convinced?
• Without looking at Table 7.2, list all the TNCs you know of in the following categories – oil companies, motor car companies, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Compare this list with those of your class mates. Why are these companies familiar to you?
• Why would you like to work/not work for a TNC?
• Using Global Thinkers 7 on David Harvey as a guide, evaluate how far you think theorising time and space help us understand the condition of postmodernity and globalisation better.

 

Chapter 8-Group work

• Access the UNHCR’s site at http://www.unhcr.ch/. Summarize the main statistical changes to the data on refugees and displacees that have occurred since the data published in this chapter were recorded.
• Divide into four groups. Each group will advocate the merits of one of the strategies for social action on the part of the urban poor described in this chapter.
• Various ratios describing the income distribution between poor and rich people have been mentioned in this chapter. There are technical ways of measuring these distributions more precisely. (They are called, just for your information, the Lorenz curve and the Gini index of inequality.) Discuss how you would set about measuring inequalities from first principles.
• Divide the group into three. Group A will research the basic facts about poverty in the USA, Group B will research Bangladesh, while Group C will look at post-communist Russia. Each group will report its findings to the class as a whole.
• In small groups using Global Thinkers 8 on Walden Bello as a guide, discuss how far you think how far Bello’s suggested reforms would help equalise the significant differences between the global winners and global losers.

 

Chapter 9-Group Work

• Study Box 9.2 on the advance fee fraud scam. What does this tell you about (a) the respective regulatory capacities of the governments of Nigeria and the advanced countries and (b) the expectations and prejudices of those falling for the scam?
• You and a number of your friends have possibly used illegal drugs. Without talking about yourself (you may make yourself liable to criminal prosecution!) recount a story about how ‘a friend’ was first supplied with an illegal drug. Did your friend know of its origins?
• Get a large piece of paper (the back of some old wallpaper will do). Half the class will draw a sketch of the habitat of a planned community of 5000 people to be made ‘safe’ from violent property crime. Indicate the points of entry and exit, the defence and alarm systems and the shared public spaces. The other half of the class will concentrate on showing how the defence systems can be penetrated. Discuss later whether you would like to live in such a safe community.
• Divide into three groups. Using the material in this chapter and extending it by reading and web research each group will provide five examples of state-directed terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism and non-governmental terrorism. Discuss the differences and similarities.
• In small group using Howard’s Becker’s work on outsiders and the example of the Afghan poppy farmer, discuss what point of view you think should be used to study ‘deviance’ sociologically.

 

Chapter 10 - Group work

• Using a week’s supply of a quality newspaper (a broadsheet not a tabloid) clip all the articles relating to population and migration. Summarize the principal themes.
• Talk to your family and friends about ‘overpopulation’. How would you characterize their views?
• List the ethical problems in (a) controlling population and (b) restricting emigration or immigration.
• Would you like to migrate internationally? (Perhaps you have already done so.) Draw up a list of the reasons why you wish to move and why you wish to stay.
• Using Global Thinkers 10 as a guide, assess what insights Ulf Hannerz’s work gives us on population flows and migration, specifically with regard to centre and periphery.

 

Chapter 11-Group Work

• Arrange several groups to regularly check various websites such as the WHO’s and assign each a topic relating to health problems caused mostly by space–time compression, for example, the spread of malaria. After two months each group will report the ongoing situation.
• Drawing on students’ experiences and interpersonal knowledge, set up a class debate on the topic: ‘medicalization processes and the biomedical model of health continue to be much more important than the sociology of health has suggested.’
• Split the class into three groups. Each will prepare a report from newspapers, books and websites to defend one of the following arguments concerning the main causes of chronic diseases: (a) moral/personal weakness; (b) consumer lifestyles or (c) the stresses of modern life. Whose case wins the most converts?
• Arrange in advance for small groups to draw on Global Thinkers 11, academic literature and media/popular culture resources in order to prepare a Foucauldian reading of obesity as a global ‘disease’. You might wish to draw on the concepts of self-regulation and bio-power here.

 

Chapter 12-Group work

• International tourist promotion: One class group will investigate special interest tourism and cultural/ethnic/nature holidays while the other will investigate mass charter tourism. Using brochures collected from travel agents and brief interviews with managers each team will report on the following:
  How far does the presentation of the two types of holiday differ (in terms of images and styles)?
  How far is it apparent that quite different kinds of client are being attracted?
  Is there any evidence that the distinction between the two types of holiday is breaking down?

• A survey of personal holiday experiences abroad. Each class member will interview five people who have taken at least two holidays abroad during the last five years and will collate their answers. You should elicit the following information:
  Where did they go and why?
  What holiday package or arrangements were involved?
  Do they think that their foreign holiday preferences have changed over time and why?
  Did they think that the locals gained or lost from tourism and in what ways?
  What overall conclusions are suggested by these findings?

• John Urry suggests that Social life is increasingly inconceivable without our dependence on technologies like the Internet, mobile phones, i-pods, satellite TV, cars and aircraft. Keep a detailed diary of your use of these technologies for seven days and bring to the class. Discuss your findings in class: which networks and flows (if any) emerge from your uses of technology?

 

Chapter 13-Group work

• Arrange a visit to two department stores and two supermarkets. By examining the labels and talking to the managers construct a list of all the goods on sale that originate abroad and categorize them by type. In class consider these questions. How many countries are involved? What kinds of goods come from which countries? In which areas do national goods tend to dominate over foreign ones? How can this be explained? What are your overall impressions?

• Working in groups and pooling you knowledge, construct a rough chronology of rock and pop music since the 1960s. Establish the main types of musical genre and the lines of descent between them. Then consider two questions: Which kinds of young people mainly preferred which genres or fashions? To what extent, when and in what areas have foreign musical influences shaped your own country’s tastes?

• Arrange a class debate in advance on the proposition that: ‘the globalization of consumer culture is destroying local traditions everywhere.’ After the main speakers have given their prepared talks, each member of the class will give two reasons why they agree or disagree with the proposition.

• Using Global Thinkers 12 on Pierre Bourdieu as a guide , discuss in small groups your own and other students’ ‘cultural capital’: for example you could start by listing the practices through which you accrued it and what the consequences of it are in terms of reproducing structures of inequalities.

 

 

Chapter 14-Group work

• Two groups will watch the main news broadcast tonight. One group will look at the issue of bias – ‘how is the news slanted’? The other group will speculate – ‘what has been left out of the news, and why’?
• Draw up a list of the ten most memorable movies you have seen. Why did they appeal to you?
• List the soaps you watch? Which characters relate to your personal experience?
• Clip some advertisements from magazines and newspapers that, in your view, misrepresent gender, class and race. Discuss these with your group.
• Do some simple research in your library into viewing figures for the TV channels and the number of copies sold of the major newspapers in your region/country. Does this information give you any indication of the political and social views of the majority of people?
• Using Manuel Castells’ theory of the Network Society as a guide, give practical examples of the three layers of information flows he identifies as organising the Network Society. How many of those have you experienced yourself?

 

Chapter 15-Group work

• Several students will examine a selection of tabloid and broadsheet newspapers over a certain period. Each will note examples of the following: (a) the role of migrant sports personnel in any sport and the evaluations of their performance and demeanour on and off the field; and (b) the ways in which national sport achievement becomes an indicator of wider national success or failure. How important does a global frame of reference appear to be in the enjoyment and evaluation of national sport?
• Drawing on the personal experiences of family and friends, develop a discussion on how local identities and affiliations are being reinforced, altered or undermined by changes in sport.
• Think about the concept of ‘corporatization’ in sport and what it involves and why. Are its consequences positive or negative for our experiences of local, national and global sport?
• As a whole class discuss whether you agree with Norbert Elias’ claim that today’s competitive genteel, disciplined sports have their origins in the rough pastimes of the British aristocracy? Supply evidence to back up your argument.

 

Chapter 16-Group work

• Split into two groups. Both groups will provide one-paragraph definitions of ritual, totem and taboo using reference sources other than this book. Each group will list three examples under each category and describe the context.
• Split into four groups. Using the Internet and reference books, each group will try to explain the history and distinctive doctrines of a different strand of Islam, reporting their findings to the class.
• Arrange a debate between a team designated to take a secular viewpoint and another team asked to take a religious viewpoint about the function of religion in society.
• Split into three groups. Each group will undertake an imaginary pilgrimage to a major site. Describe why you went, who you were housed with and what your experiences were.
• Split into two groups, one group to give a definition and examples of the concept of ‘the sacred’ according to Durkheim whilst the other group does the same for ‘the profane’.

 

Chapter 17-Group work

• Using the ‘ecological’ method of the Chicago School and a large photocopy of a map of a nearby city, describe and demarcate its different zones.
• Split into three groups. Each group will draw up a list of ‘global cities’ in Europe, Asia or the Americas. Why did you include some and exclude others?
• Draw up a list of which occupations women (a) dominate or (b) might dominate in the future. Why do you suppose this is the case?
• What images do you have of Los Angeles? Studying one of the key chapter references on the city (or any recent book you can find in your library) list the ways in which your image differs from the account consulted.
• Split into three groups to engage in the ‘black underclass debate’. Group A will look at cultural explanations; Group B will look at the views of William J. Wilson; Group C will advance a ‘mismatch theory’.
• Working in small groups discuss how George Simmel’s conceptualization of the exchange of goods in the metropolis might inform our understanding of 21 st century global cities? You might want to focus on specific examples of anonymous exchange.

 

Chapter 18-Group work

• Arranged in advance, the students in each of three groups will assume responsibility for contacting and building up a file either on Oxfam, Amnesty International or Jubilee 2000 and its more recent organizations (or similar INGOs). Each group will report on the following: their INGO’s current membership, recent objectives and campaigns, affiliated sister groups abroad and forms of transnational collaboration.
• Students will read this chapter before the class. They will then divide into three groups and each will prepare a brief report on the proposition that ‘opportunities for effective transnational action by global social movements and INGOs are now much greater than the obstacles they face’.
• Students will collect information from websites and newspapers on the activities of the global justice movement since 1999. This task can be shared out in advance by year of issue. They will then form small class groups and pool their information to construct a list showing (a) the strengths and achievements and (b) the weaknesses of the movement.
• Ins mall groups discuss three contemporary examples of states experiencing, what Jurgen Habermas has called a legitimation crisis. In these instances, what resulted from this for civil society?

 

Chapter 19-Group work

• Students will read this chapter before the seminar. Working in two groups and drawing on the text, one group will compose a list showing all the feminist directions and priorities pursued by women in the North since the 1960s and the other will conduct a similar exercise for Southern women. After hearing each group’s arguments the class will try to explain the differences.
• Adopt the same procedure as in 1. While one group compiles a list of the women’s organizations and networks that have been mentioned – then tries to categorize them under different headings – the other will assemble a picture of all the different ways in which various IGOs have played a role in facilitating global feminism since 1945.
• Four students will agree to prepare a debate on the topic of ‘ Why Northern women have more to learn from their sisters in the South than vice versa’. After hearing both sides each class member will give two reasons why they agree or disagree with this proposition.
• Working in small groups, discuss and make detailed notes on this question: What insights does Enloe’s discussion of Carmen Miranda offer in terms of understanding the complex relations between gender politics and globalization? Feedback to the class.

 

Chapter 20-Group work

• Refer to your library’s copy of the journal, The Ecologist, published six times each year. Most issues run a feature called Campaigns. A group of students could agree in advance to check the back issues of Campaigns, listing the various types of green protests discussed and following through how they developed. To what extent did these protests become transnational? What kinds of global connections were established?
• Arrange a debate on the proposition that ‘The global nature and claims of the environmental movement have been greatly exaggerated’. After the speakers have been heard, each remaining class member will give two reasons why they either agree or disagree.
• Access two or more of the following web sites and, using them as a resource, construct a debate around the following theme: ‘Achieving real gains on green house gas emissions worldwide will only be possible if the issues of climate injustice and North–South inequalities are closely linked’: www.risingtide.org.uk; www.ejcc.org; www.indiaresource.org; www.ejrc.cau.edu.
• Arrange for three groups to look at global environmental movements Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace International and World Wide Fund For Nature on the internet and look for signs of whether and how far they have integrated Ulrich Beck’s ‘Risk Society’ thesis in their campaigns, manifestos and projects.

 

Chapter 21-Group work

• Using conventional reference books, plot out the diverse elements and sects within Islam.
• Divide into two debating teams, the one addressing the proposition that the USA is in the process of ‘disuniting’, the other that ‘assimilation’ is still working to integrate that country.
• What indices would you use to establish who is a cosmopolitan? (‘Someone who reads a magazine of that name’ will be regarded as an inadequate answer!)
• Divide into two groups. One will consider a) what it is about global cities that attracts and supports transnational migrants and b) enables them to cope with the consequences of containing so many diverse groups. The other group will explore the way in which diasporas express transnationalism.
• Working in small groups and using Bauman’s assertion that under postmodernity the problem is to ‘avoid fixation and keep the options open’ (Bauman 1995: 81), discuss whether this reflects your own sense of identity, and to what extent you think this can be attributed to postmodern globality.

 

Chapter 22 Group work

• Divide into two groups – those who are statistically-minded and those whose eyes swim when they see a number larger than ten. Group A, comprising the non-statistically minded, will visit the Warwick world globalization index at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/csgr/index/. Look at the social globalization indicators. How good are they? Can you think of others? The statistically-minded group B, will respond to a presentation by Group A.
• The class will divide into groups of five who will either recall visiting large shopping malls or will set out on a fresh expedition to unfamiliar palaces of consumption. Report on the fusion between shopping and entertainment and shopping and well-being. How successful were the malls you visited in joining these activities?
• Some critics of globalization express anxiety at the disquieting sense of lost local or national identity that many individuals may feel. Drawing on your own personal experiences, what are the perceptions of the class members themselves on this question and how can you account for them?
• Working on your own and using Albrow’s concepts of sociospheres, socioscapes and disconnected contiguity, map out a detailed analysis of your self as a social actor embedded in communication flows. How does this help you understand everyday global life?