2014-2015 Academic Catalog

Sep 27, 2024

2014-2015 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ID 253 - Social Movements, Globalization, and the State

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a variety of protests–by workers, peasants, students, ethnic groups, women, gays and lesbians–against the state and/or forces of global capitalism, and for development. These social movements have had mixed results in terms of expanding democracy, forming transnational alliances, and obtaining socio-economic and cultural rights. Some have become institutionalized as “civil society,” the state, or NGOs. Others have been violently repressed. Whatever their success, they have captured the popular and scholarly imaginations. This course will draw on resources across disciplines to explore current social movements (such as Occupy Wall Street, Left and indigenous movements in Latin America, Arab Spring, Climate Justice, among others), and examine to what extent they are the legacies of past ones (such as anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, feminist, developmental, and environmental struggles). What can social movements teach us about existing arrangements of power and politics, and about imagining a more just world?