Global Studies 2 C. Chase-Dunn Winter 2007
Twenty-five percent of your grade in Global Studies2 is based on a short (less than 10 pp. typed, double-spaced) research paper that studies one of the transnational social movements participating in the World Social Forum and how it is related to the other participating transnational social movements. Transnational social movements are groups of people who share a similar discourse and who are trying to remedy certain problems by mobilizing support. Transnational movements mobilize people in different countries, and in this they are different from social movements that operate primarily within a single country.
Describe the main historical, ideological, institutional, organizational and cultural aspects of a single transnational social movement from the following list (below). Talk about the history of the movement. When and where did the discourse emerge? Discuss the ways in which the issues, ideas and organizational activities of your movement intersect with those of other movements. Especially discuss those other movements with which there are great complementarities and similarities, and also focus on those other movements with which there are big differences and possible areas of competition, disagreement or even conflict. Transnational social movements often involve people from both the global north and the global south and this usually leads to disagreements. Discuss these differences and efforts to overcome them. There are also well-known disagreements between different movements over goals, tactics and strategies. For example, the labor movement wants jobs but the environmental movement wants to protect the biosphere. Examine issues of this sort and efforts to overcome them to allow the movements to engage in cooperative action and to become effective in world politics.
Each student should prepare a short written statement that briefly specifies the chosen transnational social movement along with bibliographical information on three sources that you will use for your paper. This should be turned in on February 8. At least one of the sources should be from the Rivera Library. And you should not include items from the bibliography below. The final paper should be no longer than 10 typed, double-spaced pages (not including the bibliography, maps and other graphics). Your paper is due on March 15. Please include a bibliography.
Works that are relevant to this assignment:
Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1989. Antisystemic
Boswell, Terry and
Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2000. The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism: Toward
Fisher, William F. and
Thomas Ponniah, 2003 Another World Is
Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum ,
Moghadam, Valentine 2005
Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks.
Petit, Christine 2004. “Social Movement Networks in Internet Discourse” Presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco. IROWS Working Paper #25.http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows25/irows25.htm
Petit, Christine, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Ellen Reese and Richard Niemeyer “Transnational solidarity and divisions among global activists” IROWS Working Paper #26
Reese, Ellen, Mark Herkenrath, Chris Chase-Dunn, Rebecca Giem, Erika Guttierrez, Linda Kim, and Christine Petit, “Alliances and Divisions with the ‘movement of movements: survey findings from the 2005 World Social Forum” IROWS Working Paper #29
Sidney 2005 The New Transnational
UCR Research Working Group on Transnational Social Movements http://www.irows.ucr.edu/research/tsmstudy.htm