Write a 8 – 10 page paper This is a chance for you to provide information obtained from your selected and recommended readings to supplement the required texts.
In this Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman writes:
“Globalization is creating a single marketplace – with huge economies of scale that reward doing the same business or selling the same product all over the world at once – it can homogenize consumption simultaneously all over the world. And because globalization as a culturally homogenizing and environment-devouring force is coming on so fast, there is a real danger that in just a few decades it could wipe of the ecological and cultural diversity that took millions of years of human and biological evolution to produce….. Countries need to develop sufficiently strong cultural and environmental filters so that they can interact with the [electronic] herd without being so overwhelmed by it that it turns their culture into a global mush and their environment into a global mash. If countries cannot do that, particularly developing ones, we will all be poorer. Everywhere will start to look like everywhere else, with the same Taco Bells, KFC’s, and Marriotts, with the same malls, MTV and Disney characters, with the same movies, music, and Muzak, with the same naked forests and concrete valleys.” (278)
What you think of this apparent phenomenon? Do you agree with Friedman, or do you think he’s overreacting? Are we losing our Main Streets, our villages and hamlets, and our Mom-n-Pop shops to the globalization of commerce and the growth of global urban centers? Is globalization in danger of “Wal-Marting” the planet?
Your research papers should rely on both class readings as well as “supplementary” and if you like “recommended” material listed in the syllabus (and provided online).
Your essay should also attempt to integrate more than one topic section from class. Topics IV – V are relevant here.
For a full description of essay format, layout, structure, and other requirements, please see the Essay Policy Guide
The Primary Source:
Tom Friedman, Lexus and the Olive Tree
List of Sources:
Recommended
Tamotsu Aoki, “Aspects of Globalization in Contemporary Japan
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”, Many Globalizations, ed. Peter Berger, and Samuel Huntington, pp. 68 – 88
Tulasi Srinivas, “A Tryst with Destiny: The Indian Case of Cultural Globalization
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”, Many Globalizations, ed. Peter Berger, and Samuel Huntington, pp. 89 – 116
Loretta Lees, “Super-Gentrification: The Case of Brooklyn Heights, New York City
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”, Urban Studies, vol. 40, no. 12 (November 2003), pp. 2487 – 2509
Henry A. Giroux, Youth in a Suspect Society, 4: “In the Shadow of the Gilded Age: Biopolitics in the Age of Disposability
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”, pp. 145 – 188
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, ch. 10: “Global Realization
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”, pp. 225 – 252
Epilogue: “Have It Your Way
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”, pp. 255 – 270
Joseph Berger, “The Germans Came, Now They Are Us
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”, New York Times, Oct 25, 2003
Amy Waldman, “Indians Go Home, but Don’t Leave U.S. Behind
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”, New York Times, July 24, 2004
Enrique Zaldua, “In Spain, No Olé For Bullfighters
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”, Time, August 6, 2007
Steven Eke, “Russia’s Cossacks Rise Again
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”, BBC News, August 9, 2007
Simon Hancock, “’Our Pub’s About to Shut ?!?’
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”, BBC News, March 4, 2009
Alexander Smith, “Keep Your Hands off our Haggis
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”, New York Times, August 7, 2009
Belen Fernandez, “Facebook and the Disintegration of the Human
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”. Al Jazeera, March 28, 2013
Didem Tali, “Hijabs and High Heels
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”, Financial Times, April 1, 2016
Rex Murphy, “The Sterile, Vapid, Chauvinistic Alley of Identity Politics
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”, The National Post, June 10, 2016
Andrew Kramer, “Kalashnikov, Maker of AK-47, Looks to Rebrand
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”, The New York Times, June 6, 2016
David Harvey, “Neoliberalism is a Political Project
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”, Jacobin Magazine, July 23, 2016
Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007),
ch 5 – Conclusion
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, pp. 161– 256
Tom Friedman, Lexus and the Olive Tree,
8: “DOScapital 6.0”,
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pp. 145 – 166
15: “The Backlash”
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, pp. 327 – 347
Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld,
10: “Jihad vs. McWorld or Jihad via McWorld?”
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, pp. 155 – 168
15, “Jihad and McWorld in the New World Disorder”
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. pp. 219 – 235
Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism Part III: Countervailing Power
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, pp. 153 – 202
