CULT 320: Globalization and Culture

CULT 320-007: Globalization and Culture
(Spring 2025)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M

David J. King Hall 2053

Section Information for Spring 2025

CULT 320 - 007: Globalization and Culture

This course is about globalization and culture. We are told that we live in an age of globalization and that the world is becoming a global village. We will cast backward glances at colonial histories because they set the stage for our present-day realities. But in this course our main focus is on contemporary forms of what we call globalization, which result from a specific conjuncture of technologies, treaties, and cheap transport. Emphasizing the post-1970s dispensation of neoliberal capitalism, we will pay special attention to the roles that media and new media technologies play in shaping the cultural spaces in which people live today. We will try to understand how globalization is lived in everyday life and is experienced differentially across the globe. We also will critically examine globalization’s planners’ claim that everyone gets rich off free trade, inspecting the effects of globalization on subsistence, inequality, and fairness in various locations, and examining the intersections of class dynamics with gendering, racialization and other processes of hierarchical differentiation in global systems of capitalism.[1] And this course will consider limits to globalization. We will survey questions about resources and climate change; we will consider “globalization from below” (movements that resist or attempt to construct alternatives to neoliberal globalization); and we will discuss persistent flash points and countertrends (events such as Brexit and the rise of neo-nationalist movements across the North Atlantic) that take aim at the nexus of treaties, laws, and conventions that have undergirded modern globalization.


 
[1]Adapted from Learning University of Minnesota Syllabus, “Experiencing Globalization: Society, Space and Everyday Life in London,” https://umabroad.umn.edu/sites/umabroad.umn.edu/files/documents/LNDN3249-syllabus-experiencing-globalisation.pdf. 

 

View 3 Other Sections of this Course in this Semester »

Tags:

Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Examines cultures in globalization, with special attention to the role of technologies and new media. Provides historical and contemporary contexts for understanding the relationships among circuits of production and consumption; population flows; social inequalities and collective identities; globalizations from "above" and "below;" built and natural environments.Offered by Cultural Studies. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Mason Core, Global Contexts, Global Understanding, Just Societies
Registration Restrictions:

Students with a class of Freshman may not enroll.

Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.