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PART ONE: INTERPRETATIONS
PART TWO: DIVISIONS
PART THREE: EXPERIENCES
PART FOUR: DYNAMICS AND CHALLENGES
Chapter 1
- Is Burawoy’s distinction between professional, critical, policy and public sociology an adequate characterization of the discipline?
- Why did sociology take a ‘national turn’ in the period 1914 - 45 and is the discipline still marked by national preoccupations?
- Provide a sociological account of why Japan has been so successful in the post-1945 period.
- Find through a web search or through following up on the names provided in this chapter, the principal work of an African, Asian, Latin American or Caribbean sociologist. Summarize her or his book with the particular task of finding out what you did not know before and what helps you understand the human condition.
- How can we explain sociologically the emergence of a global sociology?
Chapter 2
- To what extent does the distinction made between globalization as a set of objective processes and globality as subjective awareness hold true?
- What is ‘time - space compression’? What implications arise from this concept?
- Identify the main forms of transnational activity in which non-state organizations, movements and individual engage and evaluate the different ways they may contribute to globalization and globality.
- Why is ‘reflexivity’ necessary to the appreciation of globalization?
- How far is glocalization a reaction to and engagement with globalization?
Chapter 3
- What were the main historical antecedents to the evolution of a world society and why were they limited in their effects?
- Which one or more of the historical causes discussed do you think exercised the strongest influence in intensifying the process of globalization? Give your reasons.
- Outline the main ways in which the USA played a leading role in reshaping the post-war world.
- Why were there such dramatic changes in people’s life styles, at least in the rich countries, in the 1950s and 1960s?
- Outline the main features of European Enlightenment thought and give examples of its influences visible in contemporary society.
Chapter 4
- Summarize the main differences between Fordist and post-Fordist production either (a) as systems for organizing production and dealing with market demand or (b) in terms of their effects on employees’ work experiences and styles of life.
- How did changing global factors contribute to the decline of Fordism?
- Evaluate the contradictions of Fordism as a production regime.
- Is Marxism still relevant to contemporary social theory?
- How and to what extent did Japanization contribute to the rise of post-Fordist casualization?
- Outline the main features of neo-liberal ideology and how this impacts on the workforce in the global order.
Chapter 5
- Explain how and why mainstream sociology paid little attention to states and global relations until relatively recently.
- Critically assess the contribution of the realist perspective to our understanding of the world order.
- Are Marshall’s three kinds of ‘rights’ adequate to an understanding of contemporary forms of citizenship?
- ‘The nation-state is in terminal decline, but there is no alternative structure capable of picking up its former functions’. Discuss.
- What are the chief difficulties involved in considering the debate about globalization and the nation-state?
- Critically assess the contribution of the feminist perspective to the social theory of nationhood.
Chapter 6
- How important are forms of exclusion and inequality that are not specific to ethnicity/race, class or gender?
- How useful are theories of patriarchy in depicting the position of women in different societies and eras?
- What is the difference between ethnicity and race?
- Is class analysis still important to understanding social inequality?
- Provide examples about how gender, class and race inequalities (a) reinforce each other and (b) contradict each other.
- Critically assess the use of the interactionist model in understanding multiple axes of social inequality?
Chapter 7
- What reasons could be given to support the proposition that the world economy is much more internationalized and integrated than it was before the First World War?
- Describe the major characteristics of an EPZ? Why did corporations wish to locate there?
- Evaluate the positive and negative social effects of TNCs in the developing countries.
- Examine the origins of the TNCs, noting national differences.
- Evaluate the power of consumers to change the conduct of TNCs.
- Using quantitative data assess the global economic importance of TNCs.
Chapter 8
- Will the poor always be with us, as a popular saying has it?
- How does famine start and how is it continued, deepened and ameliorated?
- What are the respective merits of world system theory and the theory of the new international division of labour in assessing the nature of global inequality?
- Assess the extent to which workers in the industrialized countries have been victims of economic globalization.
- Why does inequality not necessarily result in political turmoil?
- How have processes of industrialization, urbanization and commercialization disrupted the rural world and its population?
Chapter 9
- How useful are official statistics to the sociological study of crime?
- If there is so great a demand and so limitless a supply, can the trade in cocaine and heroin be stopped?
- Show how the patterns of social control have changed in contemporary societies.
- What are the new features of contemporary terrorism?
- How far can we attribute the rise in cross border crime to globalization?
Chapter 10
- Was Malthus essentially right?
- What reasons would lead you to the view that population growth might stabilize, without famine?
- Are ‘underpopulation’ or ageing populations significant problems?
- Why is international migration so sensitive an issue?
- What are the most important forms of international migration since the Second World War?
- What are the main causes of internal migration to urban areas in Latin America?
Chapter 11
- How far can Foucault’s ideas about the twin operation of internalized discipline and external surveillance/control be usefully applied to today’s consumer–leisure society - for example in the case of dieting?
- What priorities should be set by the WHO and other organizations trying to reduce health problems in underdeveloped countries?
- What exactly is the sociological relationship between lifestyle and health in (a) the rich countries and (b) the poorer developing ones?
- What role does corporate power play in world health problems and can anything be done about it?
- What is the embodied life?
Chapter 12
- What is the nature of the tourist experience and how may it have changed?
- Evaluate the different ways in which tourism acts as a globalizing force.
- How far does tourism destroy host societies?
- ‘We are all objects of a tourist gaze now.’ What does this statement tell us about the relation between the local and the global?
- Critically evaluate the terms ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in light of the interaction between local and global in international tourism?
Chapter 13
- Are we consumer dopes or consumer heroes?
- Evaluate the main arguments for the proposition that the spread of consumerism leads to a homogenous Americanized global culture?
- In what ways does the local respond to the arrival of globalizing cultural forces?
- To what extent have cultural and religious influences from outside Europe and North America affected social life since the 1970s?
- Show how patterns of creolization have emerged in contemporary societies.
Chapter 14
- What are the democratic possibilities of the advances in telecommunications?
- Why is it important for us to know about the patterns of media ownership?
- Is culture going to be ‘dumbed-down’ to the lowest common denominator?
- Compare and contrast the ‘hypodermic needle’ with the ‘semiotic guerrilla’ model.
- What are the effects of the global media on the social construction and reconstruction of identity?
- Can we argue that we live in an ‘informational society’?
- Using examples about one social group from recent coverage assess how far the media can provide a means to assert a minority identity.
Chapter 15
- What are the main reasons why many sports have become globalized?
- List the ways in which sport body-movement culture has changed with modernization. Then consider how and why this has also happened in other areas of social experience such as public comportment in streets and neighbourhoods, at work and on holiday.
- To what extent and why, is the pull of patriotic games gradually weakening?
- In what ways have the mass media transformed sport?
- Critically assess the claim that ‘the American style of sport has become the international benchmark for corporate sport’.
Chapter 16
- Why do many followers of prophetic religions continue to believe, even though the core prophecies of their faith have not come true?
- Using some of the references provided as additional material, how would you explain the tragic events at Jonestown?
- Is the secularization thesis finally discredited?
- How do we learn to live with violent forms of Islam?
- Using relevant academic literature explore the connections between religion and capitalism in contemporary society.
Chapter 17
- What are the main differences between a colonial, industrial and global city (bearing in mind that individual cities might have ‘migrated’ across these categories)?
- Why were cities so important to the pre-1945 sociologists?
- Can global cities become detached from the national states in which they are found?
- Why is employment becoming ‘feminized’ in some cities?
- What accounts for the continuing under-performance of about a third of African Americans?
- Critically assess John Friedman’s ‘World city hypothesis’.
Chapter 18
- In what ways did social movements in advanced societies change from the late 1960s and why?
- What factors explain the tendency over the last 15 or so years for social movements and NGOs to ‘go global’? Assess their relative significance.
- Why is it so important for people who want to elaborate a global sociology to study global social movements?
- Assess the contribution made by the ‘Counter culture’ to contemporary global social movements?
Chapter 19
- What have been the constraints on women’s actions and to what extent has globalization provided opportunities to overcome them?
- Assess the relative significance of the UN and its associated institutions in strengthening the world feminist movement compared with other factors.
- Drawing on case study material, assess the impact of recent worldwide changes in encouraging women to collaborate transnationally.
- Outline the key moments in the growth of a worldwide women’s movements and their effects.
Chapter 20
- Many environmental activists claim that they represent the interests of all humanity. Evaluate the validity of such claims.
- On balance, who gains most from collaboration, environmental groups or elite interests such as states, IGOs and TNCs? Explain your answer.
- Examine the obstacles that made it difficult to implement the principle of sustainable development on a realistic basis worldwide?
- ‘We may all be culpable where global environmental problems are concerned but some are much more responsible than others.’ Discuss.
- Why do green groups need to expand their grassroots support wherever possible ?
Chapter 21
- In what ways is it erroneous to group ethnicity, race and religion all under the category ‘localism’?
- Why does localism arise in the midst of globalization?
- Why were the force of race and ethnicity so systematically undervalued?
- To what extent have the immigrant countries failed in their quest to assimilate people of different cultures?
- Do diasporas ‘solve’ the problem of bridging local sentiments and global imperatives?
- Using case study material, assess in what ways the revival of nationalism is a reaction to global change?
Chapter 22
- ‘The degree to which the world economy has become integrated is no greater than it was before the First World War’. Discuss.
- How can socially marginalized and excluded people improve their situation?
- Is the world likely to become more culturally homogeneous or more creolized?
- Using the material in this chapter and any other sources you like, construct (a) an optimistic scenario for an emergent global society followed by (b) a critique that traces the possible parallel dangers and difficulties.
- Is Anheier’s fourfold division of reactions to globalization an adequate characterisation of moral responses to globalization?