Chapter Resources

1) Chapter abstract

How do we begin to think about the world? The chapter opens up the possibility that thinking may have both political and ethical implications. It challenges the idea that thinking is just something that goes on in our heads privately. Instead, it suggests that how we think about the world affects how we live in it with others. Using the Syrian refugee ‘crisis’ as an example, the chapter examines and challenges three different ways of thinking about the situation and traces how they impact people’s lives.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. On the original position and the veil of ignorance: A short and accessible explanation of John Rawls’ thought experiment can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8GDEaJtbq4

2. Wittgenstein’s beetle in a box: A very short and provocative analogy from Wittgenstein. This presents the case for why language is public (and not private) and why words need not name objects in order to make sense. In other words, it provokes the idea that thinking is not just ‘something’ (like a beetle in a box) that goes on inside our heads but is public instead. If language is public then it implies it is political. Click here and see what you make of it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x86hLtOkou8

3. Escape from Syria: Rania’s odyssey. Rania Mustafa Ali filmed her journey from the ruins of Kobane in Syria to Austria. The film was produced and directed by Anders Hammer and edited by Mat Heywood for The Guardian and commissioned and executive produced by Michael Tait. You can view it here: www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/aug/02/escape-from-syria-ranias-odyssey-video

3) Global Politics Film Club

Elysium (2013), dir. Neill Blomkamp

A science fiction film which engages with some of the thinking that underlies lifeboat ethics. Set in the year 2154, Elysium is a space habitat that orbits Earth on which only the rich and powerful can live. Meanwhile, Earth is polluted, over-populated and almost everyone lives in poverty. What happens when residents from Earth try to access some of the goods, such as health care, on Elysium?

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: In pairs (or small groups) pick one thought experiment that you have come across. It can be from any form of media, your studies, fiction or ‘common sense’ for example. It doesn’t matter. Any thought experiment that you think is interesting will do. It will contain a number of implicit assumptions. Working together, answer the following questions.

1. What is the thought experiment about?
2. Precisely what has it identified as its ‘core feature’?
3. What sorts of ‘things’ must be the case (be true) for the thought experiment to represent the ‘core feature’? See if you can find at least two. In identifying these, you are identifying the assumptions made by the thought experiment.
4. In what ways, if any, might these assumptions be challenged and/or supported?

5) Assessment questions

1. ‘Thinking is political.’ Discuss.

2. Should states have open borders?

3. Critically assess Hardin’s lifeboat ethics using the Syrian refugee crisis as an example.

1) Chapter abstract

What happens if we don’t take nature for granted? New science on the earth system challenges modern assumptions of an external environment separate from human life. Nature is now being changed dramatically by industrial activity. Carboniferous capitalism, based on the huge use of fossil fuels is remaking the planetary system in many ways, only most obviously by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere which are causing the climate to change. This requires us to ask questions about how we might live together without burning so much fuel. How might global politics change if the global economy wasn’t so dependent on petroleum, and if it took the insights from indigenous peoples’ cultures seriously? Global politics is now about how to promote different ways of living in complex urban societies if we no longer can take an external environment for granted as the given context for human life.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Future Earth: This network profiles scholars dealing with contemporary environmental change around the world: https://network.futureearth.org/home

2. Global Environmental Outlook: Compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme, these reports monitor environmental change: www.unep.org/geo/

3. Real Climate: A commentary site where scientists keep the general public up to date with the science of climate change: www.realclimate.org

4. Anthropocene Primer: A ‘primer’ on Anthropocene themes and the contemporary transformation of the earth system is now online: http://anthropoceneprimer.org/index.php/introduction/

5. The Center for Climate and Security: This institute’s resource hub is a repository for numerous official US documents and statements about climate change and security: https://climateandsecurity.org/

6. 350.org: The key campaigning website for the divestment movement, one of the most important components of the climate change discussion: https://350.org/

3) Global Politics Film Club

The Age of Consequences (2016), dir. Jared P. Scott

Many discussions of climate change suggest that it will cause conflict in various ways, a theme that has focused the attention of the American military in particular on how to prepare to deal with the disasters that climate change will aggravate in coming years.

Available at: https://vimeo.com/189104269

An Inconvenient Truth (2006), dir. Davis Guggenheim

One time American presidential hopeful Al Gore made this key documentary on climate change which won an Oscar and influenced the American discussion of climate politics in particular.

Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZUoYGAI5i0

The Island President (2011), dir. Jon Shenk

Low-lying island states are especially vulnerable to climate change because one of its effects is rising sea levels. Some states are faced with eradication as sea levels rise, and this is a key theme in the global politics of the Anthropocene.

Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryhr_T7cRnY

Before the Flood (2016), dir. Fisher Stevens

A National Geographic production on climate change narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio with lots of dramatic footage of environmental change.

Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UGsRcxaSAI

The Anthropocene (2017), dir. Alexander Oey

A documentary that focuses on the Anthropocene perspective on current environmental and social transformations, explaining the science of the earth system and the politics of remaking the world.

Available at:www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW138ZTKioM

Beyond Crisis (2017), dir. Kai Reimer-Watts

Kai Reimer-Watts’ documentary movie focuses on activists taking part in various protests and political campaigns aimed to move the discussion of alternatives to fossil fuels forward. By raising questions about how people in various places are intermeshed with fossil fuel consumption, and how we might change economic activities so that using renewable energy and making more liveable communities together tackle the climate crisis, the movie raises questions about what students might do to reflect on their own roles in shaping the next phase of the Anthropocene.

Available at: www.beyondcrisisfilm.com

Do the Math (2013), dir. Jared P. Scott and Kelly Nyks

A key activist movie about the divestment movement that focuses on the science of climate change and the investments in fossil fuel industries. Bill McKibben and 350.org are key to the campaign to focus money on useful economic activities rather than further fossil fuel exploitation. Many Universities have dealt with divestment campaigns, so this film encourages us to reflect upon how our personal politics and locale is connected to larger global transformations and the politics of climate change. Reflecting upon this allows us to understand the politics of organizing around and issue and the intersection of institutions, organizations, regulating states and personal identity.

Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsIfokifwSo

4) Seminar room activities

Activity 1: Students should chart their activities in the previous day, thinking through where they used fossil fuels directly, heating, transport, etc. and indirectly through their consumption of various things, and their use of commodities, including textbooks, pens, laptops etc. Then a discussion of which corporations provided these materials and supplies of energy, and who should regulate them can follow. Simply looking at where things are manufactured helps see the global interconnections that are key to the Anthropocene.

Activity 2: Has the student’s university divested from fossil fuels? Focussing on divestment campaigns also works, as suggested in the film club Do the Math. Understanding their political situation allows for reflection on the larger politics of climate change and connects the personal politics to the larger global transformations. This allows students to understand the politics of organizing around an issue and the intersection of institutions, organizations, regulating states and personal identity.

5) Assessment questions

1. What can we learn from indigenous peoples that might help tackle the climate crisis?

2. How does the notion of the Anthropocene change our assumptions about nature and environment, and hence politics?

3. What is the relationship between capitalism and climate change?

4. Who has the responsibility to take the initiative to tackle climate change?

1) Chapter abstract

Can we save the planet? A range of different movements and organisations have campaigned to protest against environmental harms and injustices, and sometimes these have been framed as ‘saving the planet’. This chapter reviews the history of some of these movements and asks what they can change and what political risks they might pose. Taking the example of the fossil fuel divestment movement as a case study, the chapter argues that environmental movements almost always change the people involved with them, sometimes change political policies and institutions, and, from a broader perspective, have changed many of the most important structures in global history. Yet, conceiving of political change in terms of individual acts of protest can be misleading.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. Divestment campaign groups: The key campaigning websites for the divestment movement are https://350.org/ and https://gofossilfree.org/

2. ‘Why divest from fossil fuels?’ Made by activists from 350.org, this video makes the case for divestment: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7xk9vRSQYA

3. Divestment debate: Watch a debate at MIT on fossil fuel divestment in 2015, between prominent advocates and critics of divestment in a University setting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBC4fdMvwVU

4. TED-Ed ‘How to turn protest into powerful change’: This animated TED-Ed talk by Eric Liu in 2016 has a number of practical tips for the would-be activist: www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_g1BMVFcuw

5. Inside Story ‘The uprising that changed South Africa’: Marking the 40th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto protests – the uprising that changed South Africa – this Al Jazeera documentary has archive footage and leading activists talking about the anti-apartheid movement and its contemporary echoes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFdtVX5ON5s

6. On Governmentality: Professor Iver Neumann talks about Foucault’s concept of governmentality for the Open University at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBpI7PxwjzU

3) Global Politics Film Club

This Changes Everything (2015), dir. Avi Lewis

Naomi Klein’s powerful documentary (and book) shows how communities around the world are struggling with the impacts of climate change, but importantly she also argues that such struggles can help us transform our world into something better.

Additional information available at: https://thischangeseverything.org/the-documentary/

The Yes Men (2003), dir. Sarah Price, Dan Ollman and Chris Smith

The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), dir. Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos

The Yes Men Are Revolting (2015), dir. Jacques Servin, Igor Vamos and Laura Nix

The three films made by The Yes Men offer an entertaining activist perspective on the corporatisation of society, with a particular focus on environmental issues, trade, and culture-jamming.

Additional information available at: http://theyesmen.org/movies

4) Seminar room activities

Activity 1: Has your university divested from climate change? Has it been discussed, debated or campaigned for? The class could either debate the topic, structured into pro- and anti-divestment perspectives, or a more analytical activity could be set-up in which students are asked to try to explain why some divestment movements succeed and others fail, or what divestment itself can achieve and what it can’t achieve.

Activity 2: How important are social movements and protests in world politics? Ask students (in small groups?) to each try to come up with examples of important changes in world politics and history (revolutions, wars, elections, economic shifts, etc.) that have not been driven by social movements and protests. The task for the rest of the group is to think of ways in which popular movements and protests have shaped those events. After reflecting on these cases, how important do people think social movements are in explaining political change?

5) Assessment questions

1. How have environmental movements shaped (or not) contemporary capitalism?

2. What role might fossil fuel divestment play in tackling climate change?

3. How important was popular protest in bringing down South African apartheid?

4. How important are social movements in explaining political change?

5. How can the Foucauldian concept of governmentality help us to view political protest critically?

6. Is the call to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ a form of empowerment or a technique of governmentality?

1) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. American Anthropological Association, RACE: Are We So Different?, www.understanding race.org/home.html. An extensive website (and exhibition) that examines race through multiple lenses.

2. Black Lives Matter, https://blacklivesmatter.com/. The official website of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

3. Global Social Theory, www.globalsocialtheory.org. A resource for students, teachers, academics, and others interested in social theory and wishing to understand it in global perspective.

4. Heyes, Crissida (2002) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ‘Identity Politics’, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/. Part of the extensive online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, this entry on identity politics explores many of the issues raised in this chapter from a philosophical perspective (in reference to many different markers of identity) and provides additional links.

5. Human Rights Watch (1999) Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/. A detailed report on the genocide in Rwanda, with an update on the tenth anniversary in 2004.

6. SSRC, Is Race ‘Real’?, http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/. This forum, organized by the Social Science Research Council, discusses recent controversies surrounding race after recent advances in genetics.

7. The World Wide Web Virtual Library, History: Yugoslavia (1918–1995), http://vlib.iue.it/history/europe/yugoslavia.html. An extensive website useful for further research on historical information (also has some maps).

2) Additional reading

Campbell, David (1998) National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).

A detailed analysis of the identity politics at play during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. In 1999, the book received a prize for being the best English-language publication on the topic.

Collins, Patricia Hill (2000 [1990]) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman).

For students who want to learn more about the intersections of gender and race (but also other forms of oppression), this is a ‘must read’. It also provides some of the best ideas out there for moving beyond identity politics and toward justice.

Gourevitch, Phillip (1998) We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (London: Picador).

Probably the best account of the Rwandan genocide, based on a series of interviews with Rwandans between 1995 and 1998. Not for the faint-hearted.

Ryan, Barbara (ed.) (2001) Identity Politics in the Women’s Movement (New York: New York University Press).

This collection has most classic and recent statements on feminist identity politics (in the US) and offers a great overview for students interested in the subject.

1) Chapter abstract

How do religious beliefs affect politics? So many issues in global politics today seem to have some connection to religion even in a world assumed to be becoming increasingly secular. This chapter considers the relationship between religion and politics and our assumptions about the nature of these two domains of human life. It examines and provides an overview of political groups and movements claiming inspiration from one particular religious tradition, Islam, in order to better understand the global political context of many of today’s world events. Finally the chapter asks how power operates in the ways we think about and produce knowledge about culture in order to produce specific images and associations with religion.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. Should Religion Stay out of Politics? – The People Speak: Young people of varied background share their views with VICE News on the relationship between religion and politics: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7QlUH6kLeI

2. The Future of World Religion: What do we learn about the future of world religion when we study it through demographic data? These videos from the Pew Research Centre include demographic data and a panel of experts discussing likely world trends in religion going forward.

1. Panel discussion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF23JLZWDH0;
2. Demographic projections: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJn6vMjHhCA

3. The Future of Political Islam – Trends and Prospects: Leading experts on political Islam talk about the future of Islam and politics after the Arab Spring of 2011 at the Brookings Institute: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvGnjJNVXeU

4. Edward Said on Orientalism: Edward Said reflects on the legacy of his classic work on the relationship between power, knowledge, and the representation of culture: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVC8EYd_Z_g

3) Global Politics Film Club

Four Days in July (1984), dir. Mike Leigh

Four Days in July, a documentary movie by Mike Leigh that looks at the religious divide and political conflict in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the mid-1980s. While often described as a dispute between Catholics and Protestants, where and how does religion actually play a role in this conflict?

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: On your smart phone, tablet, or laptop type the names of several major world religions into a major search engine such as Google and select the ‘image’ results. Compare and contrast the types of imagery that appear for each religious tradition. What kinds of images seem to relate to global politics? Spend some time discussing how what you found might help us to understand how representations and discourses about particular religions are produced.

5) Assessment questions

1. How did ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ emerge as categories and domains of human life and what forces have shaped our assumptions about the appropriate relationship between them?

2. To what extent is political Islam a function of religious idea or ideology, and to what extent is it produced by social, political, and economic circumstances in different countries?

3. What are some of the different ways that secularism as a principle or idea is expressed in laws and norms, and how can we account for this variation across different countries and cultures?

4. Provide an overview and assessment of Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism. What do you view as the legacy of his ideas?

1) Chapter abstract

Why do we obey? Is it because we have to, or do we just do what is expected because that is easiest? What happens if we disagree with the way things are organised? How do those in authority make us obey if we don’t want to? Usually, they persuade us that we should. But if persuasion doesn’t work, ‘they’, the agents of the government, are entitled to use force, in the form of the armed forces or the police, to guarantee obedience. To understand more about authority and obedience, we look at instances where a political order was challenged, people were disobedient, and authority, at least temporarily, collapsed.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Milgram Experiment: This video contains actual footage from the infamous experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdUu3u9Web4

2. The Milgram Experiment Explained: This short animated video attempts to situate the Milgram experiment within its historical context, as well as offering different explanatory accounts of its findings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXXbIF5Okjc

3. What is evil? This very short animated video introduces the work of Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil and its relationship to obedience and bureaucracy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLUHlVLyRxA

4. Foucault on Bachelard [in French]: A rare gem of a clip in which Foucault reflects upon the problem of obediently following prescribed reading lists or sticking to canonical texts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAwWwQZ_3FQ

3) Global Politics Film Club

The Tank Man (2006), dir. Anthony Thomas

A documentary film about the man who stood in front of the tank, and the surrounding events during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and since.

Available at: www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/tankman/

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: [For the students] Ask the students to think about why they obey you, the seminar tutor, and what would happen if they didn’t. Suggest various scenarios, or ask them to come up with some. Then ask them to think about instances in their everyday life where they have felt uncomfortable about something they were supposed to do: did they do anything about it? What? Finally, ask them to think about what happened when they were supposed to be in control, and encountered disobedience or resistance. Ask them to reflect on their own social position (race, gender, class, sexuality) and how that impacts on the possibilities of (dis)obedience.

Activity: [For the convenors] Ask yourself how you feel about being asked to teach this chapter, and given suggestions here about how to do it. Do you feel inclined to obey? Or do you plan to subvert what you see as the intentions of the chapter? Think about pedagogy in general in relation to the questions raised in the chapter. Is a critical pedagogy possible or a contradiction in terms?

5) Assessment questions

1. When, why and where do we obey in global politics?

2. What is the relationship between power, authority and legitimacy?

3. When, why and where do we disobey in global politics?

4. Should you answer this question?

1) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. Reporters Without Borders ‘World Press Freedom Index’ https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index is a useful annual study of global levels of press freedom; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org/index.php is a media watch group that is committed to ‘challenging bias’.

1. The War and Media Network, www.warandmedia.org; and the journal Media, War and Conflict, http://journals.sagepub.com/home/mwcare both useful websites that showcase interdisciplinary research on the role of the media during war.

1. David Campbell’s website www.davidcampbell.org offers excellent in-depth analysis and reflection on the role of visual documents in the media, with specific reference to global politics.

2) Additional reading

James Watson (2016) Media Communication: An Introduction to Theory and Process (4th edn, London: Palgrave), is a comprehensive and useful introduction to the basic ideas of media communication, and provides a good account of the power relations that develop between the media and society.

Des Freedman’s (2014) article ‘Paradigms of Media Power’, Communication, Culture & Critique, 8, 2: 273–89 considers the established debate between Pluralism and Marxism in a more contemporary context.

Susan Carruthers (2011) The Media at War (2nd edn, London: Palgrave) and Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin (2010) War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War (Cambridge: Polity), provide good introductions to the complex relationships between the media and war. There are numerous books recently published about the media’s role in specific conflicts, especially the ‘war on terror’; see for example Francois Debrix (2007) Tabloid Terror: War, Culture and Geopolitics, London: Routledge; and Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin (2009) Television and Terror: Conflicting Times and the Crisis of News Discourse (Basingstoke: Palgrave). The role of traditional media, social media and citizen journalism in Syria is still being researched and debated, but as Shawn Powers and Ben O’Loughlin (2015) argue in ‘The Syrian data glut: Rethinking the role of information in conflict’, Media, War and Conflict, 8, 2: 172–80, this particular conflict poses challenging questions to those of us trying to develop a critical approach to the media and war.

1) Additional web content

Human Rights and the Internet series on openDemocracy, at www.opendemocracy.net/hri: features analyses and commentaries on emerging issues.

2) Global Politics Film Club

Citizen Four (2014), dir. Laura Poitras

Snowden (2016), dir. Oliver Stone

The Academy award-winning documentary film Citizen Four and biopic Snowden provide live footage and re-enactments of the events around Snowden’s whistleblowing in 2013.

A Good American (2015), dir. Friedrich Moser

This documentary film focuses on earlier attempts by cybersecurity experts at the NSA – William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Diana Roark and Thomas Drake, to address the civil liberties implications of online surveillance tools.

3) Additional reading

Dahlberg, Lincoln and Siapera, Eugenia (Eds.) (2007), Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Provide analyses from critical cultural studies and social theory that inspired Haraway,

Donna, J. (1990), ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, in Linda Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (New York and London: Routledge).

Franklin, M. I. (2013), Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet (New York/London: Oxford University Press).

Franklin, M. I. (2014), ‘Sex, Gender, and Cyberspace’, in Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations (2nd edn, edited by Laura J. Shepherd, London/New York: Routledge: 375–88).

Freedman, Des, Martens, Cheryl, McChesney Robert, and Obar, Jonathan (Eds.), (2016), Strategies for Media Reform: Communication Research in Action (New York: Fordham University Press).

Covers the intersection of political activism, media reform, and internet policymaking.

Holmes, Brian (2007), ‘Future Map or How the Cyborgs Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Surveillance’, http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/future-map/

Jørgensen, Rikke F. (Ed.) (2006), Human Rights in the Global Information Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Look at cases at the intersection of human rights, gender, and internet politics.

Lessig, Lawrence (2006), Code Version 2.0 (New York: Basic Books).

Mueller, Milton (2002), Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Landmark texts dealing with techno-legal and regulatory issues deep in the system, and behind the screen.

Mandiberg, Michael (2012), The Social Media Reader (New York and London: New York University Press).

Brings us into the Web 2.0 business era.

Spiller, Neil (2002), Cyber_Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era (London and New York: Phaidon Press).

Provides access to landmark texts.

1) Chapter abstract

 Why is people’s movement restricted? Globalisation has been accompanied by increasing numbers of people moving across borders for various reasons. Many forms of border crossing are wholeheartedly welcomed by governments. Other forms of movement across borders such as international business travel, overseas employment, and some types of immigration are also welcomed and facilitated by governments. However, not all movement is welcomed and often encounters strong and at times ugly opposition. This is most obviously the case when it comes to the movement of peoples who, for various reasons, do not have the proper authorization. Those who do make it often encounter intense, passionate, and sometimes violent opposition in most of the Western industrialised countries. Almost all Western industrialised countries have enacted increasingly restrictive immigration policies over the past decade. In the twenty-first century, advances in transportation and communication have facilitated the relatively easy movement of some peoples across the globe. Some movements, however, entail unspeakable tragedy. Why is this the case? Why is it that some can move relatively freely across borders, but many others face often insurmountable hurdles? Why are people free to move within national borders, but not across them?

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

 1. The Way We Think About Immigration is Flawed: This TEDx talk documents the story of Yoseph Ayele, who was forced to leave the US. In response to this, Yoseph has worked to design and implement the Global Impact Visa, which purports to be a new way of approaching immigration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vqethhad_k

2. The Public Philosopher – Immigration: Released in the context of the 2009 US Presidential Election, this episode of the Public Philosopher features prominent political philosopher Michael Sandel reflecting upon the ethics of immigration and citizenship: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbRDYtMRPTc

3. Migrant Crisis in Calais – Britain’s Border War: Produced by VICE News, this short film documents the everyday practices through which contemporary state borders are constituted. The video features a series of interviews with individuals who draw upon their experiences of living in and moving through such sites: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4APllZaY4y4

3) Global Politics Film Club

 Each of these films reflects upon the ways in which practices of bordering and citizenship produce violence and precarity in contemporary global politics.

El Norte (1984), dir. Gregory Nava
Dirty Pretty Things (2002), dir. Stephen Frears
Maria Full of Grace (2004), dir. Joshua Marston

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: Students should search a major news outlet for coverage of the European ‘migrant crisis’. They should be encouraged to interrogate the ways in which the ‘crisis’ is framed within these outlets. What worldviews, assumptions and values underpin this reporting? Students should be urged to reflect upon the politics of the language and imagery that is used to represent the ‘crisis’. How are particular understandings of responsibility and hospitality being produced through these articles?

5) Assessment questions

 1. Is the restriction of people’s movement defensible?

2. Where is the border and how is it produced in contemporary global politics?

3. Critically interrogate the role of identity in contemporary bordering and citizenship practices.

1) Chapter abstract

Why is the world divided territorially? While territorial disputes are one of the crucial issues in global politics, we less often ask about how we reached this point. This chapter discusses how the modern system of dividing the world into bounded areas under the control of a state came about. Political maps of today bear little relation to ones of a few hundred years ago, but this chapter is interested not so much in where the boundaries are, but why and how there are boundaries. It surveys debates about the concept and practice of territory, looking at economic, strategic and technical issues. It concludes with raising questions about the challenges to territory today, from intervention, globalisation, climate change and the reactions of populism.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. Both Sides of the Barrier: This short video by sociologist Christine Leuenberger reflects upon the social, political, cultural and emotional politics of barriers within Israel–Palestine. This video offers a series of interesting insights into the relationship between the international and the everyday politics of boundary-making: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDRQuvd1MOs

2. Sykes-Picot – Carving up the Middle East: Produced by The Economist, this video provides a brief overview of the 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement, which radically redrew the boundaries of the Middle East. Highlighting the ways in which this agreement continues to inform contemporary practices of division and violence, this video provides an important platform for a discussion about the relationship between history, territory and violence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HggqlmsiHjA

3. 1000 Years of European Borders: This timelapse map of the ebb and flow of European territorial boundaries provides a useful challenge to the idea of European nation-states as fixed and stable entities: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iha3OS8ShYs

4. Why China is Building Islands in the South China Sea: Produced by Vox, this video reflects upon new frontiers in the ongoing history of territorial politics. With Chinese island building efforts providing new challenges to international institutions, norms and legal frameworks, this video also encourages us to reflect upon the complex mix of economic, military, cultural and historical dynamics that motivate such practices: www.youtube.com/watch?v=luTPMHC7zHY

3) Global Politics Film Club

También la Lluvia [Even the Rain] (2010), dir. Icíar Bollaín

This movie is about a film shoot in Bolivia, looking at the conquest of the new world by Christopher Columbus. The cast and crew find themselves entangled in a contemporary dispute about water rights between the indigenous people, the government and a large corporation. Yet the film shoot is also complicated by its use of local people as actors, extras and untrained crew. The film therefore links historical and present-day struggles over land.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: The geography of contemporary European states has changed over the past couple of centuries, while states elsewhere in the world have experienced even more radical changes. Students should explore how the boundaries and internal spaces of these different states have changed over the past couple of centuries. In doing so, students will challenge the idea that territories are fixed containers within which politics happens. Through this exercise students will be encouraged to reflect upon how territorial boundaries are themselves the product of political struggle. This could take the example of boundary changes as a result of wars or treaties, or through climate change transforming a coastline or glaciers, or infrastructure projects such as land reclamation, canals, bridges and tunnels, or damning rivers.

5) Assessment questions

1. Colonialism was an act of ‘geographical violence’ (Edward Said). Discuss, with examples.

2. Critically assess the relation between sovereignty and territory.

3. Why is map-making political?

4. ‘National identity is so inherently problematic that it cannot plausibly be used for a claim to territory.’ Critically assess this suggestion, drawing upon particular examples.

1) Chapter abstract

How do people come to identify with nations? This chapter discusses the politics of national identity and examines the question of why and how we resort to the national forms of identification. Ethnic and national differences, and particularly their mobilisation for political ends, have been at the core of many violent conflicts, nation-building projects, and political campaigns in distant and recent history. What is it that prompts us to associate with a particular national community? What factors drive and influence this identification process? What is at stake in this process? The chapter engages with these questions through the discussion of the role of marginal groups in the construction of Chinese national project.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. China’s Century of Humiliation: This documentary film by Mitch Anderson (2011) explores Chinese experiences of nation-building: www.youtube.com/watch?v=boPkMCJSYSs

2. Policing the Contour Lines – China’s Cartographic Obsession: Episode 19 of the Little Red Podcast series reflects upon the politics of map-making in China: www.chinoiresie.info/little-red-podcast/

3. Why Being an African in China is Difficult?: This video features a series of short interviews with long-term African residents in Guangzhou about their lives in China: www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Ew4GliVUY

4. Life Inside China’s Re-Education Camps: A Wall Street Journal video investigation into a growing network of internment camps, where hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs are believed to have been detained: www.youtube.com/watch?v=swCf6Z5REwI

5. Overseas Chinese: Stories of Struggle and Success: A three-part documentary film about Chinese diaspora developed by a Chinese production company. It is representative of the official state narratives about Chinese emigration and Chinese communities abroad: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjErQil8g4TvW0jJxwi0fTuuJxWge22TM

3) Global Politics Film Club

Wolf Totem (2015), dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Chinese novelist Jiang Rong, this feature film looks into the relationship between China’s majority Han group and the nomadic Mongolianpeople through the eyes of a Han student sent to the Inner Mongolia region during Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The film interrogates the conflicted nature of China’s modernisation project and the cultural and ecological costs of its economic transformations.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: Ask students to reflect on the moments, situations and contexts when they take on a particular national or ethnic identity. What language is used? What factors play a determining role in how they present themselves? What other categories and forms of identification are available to them in those instances? Ask students to study carefully details included in their identification documents and compare them to those contained in documents issued by other countries. For example, Chinese ID cards have information on the ethnic group of the document holder. What is the significance of it? Do other countries include this detail in their documents? Discuss the underlying factors and implications of this for political rule and experiences of ethnic identity.

5) Assessment questions

1. What political tensions does the question of how we come to identify with nations highlight?

2. How can the limitations of the main approaches to the study of national identities be addressed?

3. Are alternative ways to national forms of identification needed? How viable are they?

4. How can analyses of marginal places and people help in the study of national identities?

1) Additional reading

Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein (1991), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso).

This collection provides a critical approach to racism, which, influenced by the writings of the philosopher Louis Althusser and the historian Fernand Braudel, locates the phenomenon not merely in attitudes but in social relations and structures.

Bhabha, Homi (ed.) (1990), Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge).

This collection on nations and nationalism applies literary tropes in order to show how nations generate paradoxical allegiances through the narratives within which they locate themselves.

Campbell, David (1998), National Deconstruction (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).

This study of the violence in Bosnia refigures and extends Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction, turning literary tropes into political and ethical critique.

Corrigan, Philip and Derek Sayer (1985), The Great Arch (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).

This investigation of English state formation locates the emergence of national allegiance within a long historical trajectory.

Edkins, Jenny, Véronique Pin-Fat and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.) (2004), Sovereign Lives (New York: Routledge).

This collection treats the geo- and biopolitical aspects of sovereignty at the level of the lives impacted by sovereign prerogatives and practices.

Giddens, Anthony (1983), The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell).

This is a sociological treatment of the articulation between the development of the nation-state and the violence of its self-creation.

Lloyd, David and Paul Thomas (1998), Culture and the State (New York: Routledge).

This is a neglected but excellent treatment of the cultural governance perspectives and practices that have accompanied state formation.

Shapiro, Michael J. (1994), Methods and Nations: Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject (New York: Routledge).

This investigation of cultural governance and the neglect of the indigenous subject in the discourses of the social sciences on nation-building applies aesthetic theory, as it is articulated in film, music and landscape painting.

Tilly, Charles (1990), Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell).

Tilly provides a historical narrative of the role of coercion in state formation.

Walker, R. B. J. and Saul H. Mendlovitz (eds.) (1990), Contending Sovereignties (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).

This collection provides critical, interdisciplinary approaches to sovereignty.

1) Chapter abstract

Is democracy a good idea? Which countries can tell us the most about democracy? How is democracy linked to society and emotions? Who are democracy’s champions? And how can we make sense of populism? These are the key questions addressed in this thought-provoking chapter which invites the reader to think about democracy from a case study where democracy has been uncertain and fragile yet fiercely fought for: Argentina. It particularly examines two political phenomena – populism and social movements – which are usually considered as an afterthought in conventional textbooks. It compares Argentine Peronism to Trump’s USA and reveals the centrality of social movements in promoting, defending and deepening democracy, arguing that US democracy needs human rights movements just as much as Argentina. Overall, it argues that the study of democracy is highly political and we need to democratize our understanding of democracy.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Madres plead for help from the world.

This short clip was broadcast on Dutch TV during the 1978 football World Cup when the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo told the world’s media about their missing children. It is in Spanish with subtitles, and conveys the grief, anxiety, love and desperation which drove the Madres to defy their fears and denounce the disappearances. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=60gClGKSnX8

2. Evita speaks to a huge mobilization of ‘The People’, plus Evita’s funeral (1955).

This is newsreel footage (subtitled) of Eva Peron speaking to a packed crowd of Peronist supporters filling a six-lane highway in downtown Buenos Aires. She is declining the candidacy for the vice-presidency (in part because she was ill). It is a bit fuzzy but you get a real sense of the emotional bond. Look for the relationship between leader and masses and ask yourself: is participation the same as citizenship? Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNrwJIgJqfg

3. Final speech from The Great Dictator(1940), dir. Charlie Chaplin.

In this clip taken from the end of this famous film, the humble (Jewish) tailor (Chaplin) stands in for the (Nazi-style) dictator and calls on the people to embrace peace and harmony. Ask yourself: is he adopting the role of a populist? What is it that makes him different from a dictator? Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20

4. Escrache – ‘outing’ a torturer in the neighbourhood.

This video was taken by HIJOS supporters of the escrache against General Videla, the main leader of Argentina’s military Junta which ruled between 1976 and 1983. It is a long video, so skip through to get a sense of the politicised, carnival atmosphere which accompanies this trial and punishment by society. Ask yourself: is this an expression of justice meted out by society – or a kind of lynching? Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGFOZWRxK1g

5. Statistics and useful information about the state of LGBT+ rights in LA and the Caribbean from the economist. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ZDVz1_r1s

6. Where is Santiago Maldonado (2017)?

Thousands of protesters descended upon Plaza de Mayo, in Buenos Aires, as part of a mass protest mobilised to pressure the government into releasing the whereabouts of missing human rights activist Santiago Maldonado. This young man disappeared while helping an indigenous Mapuche community to defend their homes against an eviction process which included members of the armed forces. His body was later found in a nearby river. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDcOCz-x3Nk

3) Global Politics Film Club

Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza De Mayo (1985), dir. Susana Blaustein and Lourdes Portillo

This Academy award-nominated documentary about the Argentinian mothers’ movement to demand to know the fate of 30,000 ‘disappeared’ sons and daughters remains as extraordinarily powerful as when it was first released. As well as giving an understanding of Argentinian history in the 1970s and 1980s, Las Madres shows the empowerment of women in a society where women are expected to be silent.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: Politicians, the media and indeed most people tend take democracy for granted in places where it seems well established, such as the UK, France or the USA. But could this confidence actually be complacency? This exercise is designed to help students think afresh about established democracies not as durable and completed, but as fragile and requiring constant work.

Working in groups, ask students to draw up two lists – one for ‘fragile’ democracies and one for ‘solid’ democracies. Compile the two lists and ask them to think about what the common factors might be (e.g. prosperity, colonial heritage). Does everyone agree with the classifications?

Then, ask students to identify what makes democracy ‘fragile’ in the first group – what social, economic, political and cultural phenomena condition fragility. Compile these responses and put them on the board. Encourage students to think about levels of poverty, the role of the military, the role of business (including multi-nationals) and social hierarchies such as race, ethnicity or religion.

Finally, ask students to consider whether the elements they have identified in the ‘fragile’ group might also pertain to the ‘solid’ group. Encourage the students to look for similarities, not differences, and ask them what the impact on democratic solidity might be, for example, of a sustained fall in living standards, terrorist campaigns, the rise of a charismatic leader or a natural disaster.

This might then lead on to a discussion about how to defend democratic values, considering the role of institutions, political elites, social movements, business, religious leaders, artists, etc.

5) Assessment questions

1. Is democracy morally good?

2. Can populism enhance democracy?

3. What binds the populist and the people together?

4. What is the role of social movements in a democracy?

5. ‘Human rights are the moral soul of democracy.’ Do you agree?

1) Chapter abstract

Do colonialism and slavery belong to the past? In his 1999 book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy,Kevin Bales notes that ‘slavery has not, as most of us have been led to believe, ended’ (Bales 1999: 5). Two years later, the British media widely reported on the discovery of 250 ‘slave children’ aboard a Nigerian-registered ship called the Etireno. More recently, the British government passed the Modern Slavery Act 2015. These are but some of many indications that slavery persists despite its official demise and that it entails to some extent the trafficking and exploitation of children. To understand why, this chapter examines the wider relationship between capitalism and slavery; the uneven and unequal consequences of development in theory and practice; and the prospects of meaningful change. Although the geographic focus is West Africa, the issues raised are clearly global in scope and broader in character, hence the importance of this inquiry.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. Journey through Slavery: This four-part documentary provides very useful background information on slavery in general. Available at: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIAHio7X18uEjadx-UoH4EqXhT17EXG_x

2. Slavery: A Global Investigation: In spite of a global ban on slavery, Kate Blewett and Brian Woods’ documentary film provides a devastating insight into the persistence of these practices in the twenty-first century. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfdibtC4RYg

3. The Dark Side of Chocolate: Produced by Danish journalist Miki Mistrati, this documentary film investigates the less than sweet side of confectionary by highlighting the widespread use of child labour and trafficked children in the production of chocolate. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeJy3dA4Ahk

4. Investigations ‘Britain’s Modern Slave Trade’: This Al Jazeera investigative report explores the extent of modern slavery within contemporary British society, with testimony from those who have lived under these conditions. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKoeUxvijRA

Additional information available at: https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2016/uk-slavery-sex-slave-smuggling-investigation/index.html

3) Global Politics Film Club

Freedom: Indifference is Not an Option (2012)

‘Ignorance is not an excuse. Indifference is not an option.’ Produced by the END IT movement, a global coalition campaigning against slavery, this documentary film tells the true stories of three people who were held captive and exploited as modern-day slaves.

Additional information available at: https://enditmovement.com/

The Price of Sugar (2007), dir. Bill Haney

Modern-day slaves are mostly found in the farming field. This film describes the journey of Father Christopher Hartley, a Spanish priest, throughout the Dominican Republic and the inhumane conditions in which thousands of Haitian men are forced to work to harvest sugar cane.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity 1: Ask students to Google ‘modern slavery’ and then click on Images. They should then pick one image they feel best encapsulates the key issues and themes related to the phenomenon. This isn’t about finding a perfect image but rather about getting students to reflect on what they think the key themes and issues are. Students should be encouraged to think in terms of: defining features (what exactly is modern slavery and how do we know it when we see it?); scale and geography (where is modern slavery and how widespread is it?); continuity and change (connections between older and modern forms of slavery); variations (e.g. children on Ivorian farms vs. women sex workers in the UK) and political economy (the role of international forces in both producing and challenging the problem).

Activity 2: Ask students to think critically about contemporary abolitionist initiatives. They might start with an overview of the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015, available here. Rather than trying to digest details, students should be encouraged to think critically about the role of national legislation in tackling a global problem. They might also consider broader agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Most pertinent is Goal 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth – as one of its targets is the eradication of modern slavery.

5) Assessment questions

1. With reference to a case study, discuss the relationship between global capitalism and forced labour.

2. Which anti-slavery initiatives are likely to be most effective, and why?

3. To what extent is modern slavery the product of a global capitalist mode of production?

4. Why does slavery persist despite its official demise?

1) Chapter abstract

How does colonialism work? Why is the world so unequal today? Why do we think certain races and regions are superior and others inferior? The discovery of the ‘new world’ in 1492 and of a sea-route to the East Indies in 1498 by the Europeans inaugurated the trans-Atlantic slave trade and soon thereafter the colonization of much of Africa, Asia and Oceania. The wealth from these regions accrued overwhelmingly to European colonial powers and catalysed the emergence of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution there while deepening the underdevelopment and poverty of the third world. The legacy of colonialism is ongoing, powerful and very much evident in today’s world.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Scramble for Africa: A short video that demonstrates how the colonization and underdevelopment of Africa has left lasting consequences for its contemporary economic, political and social problems: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw12KGSj53k

2. Edward Said on ‘Orientalism’: Edward Said’s work has been highly influential on the role of colonialism and racism in our understandings of both the history of non-western peoples and their contemporary representations in film and media. An excellent interview with Said and his concept of ‘Orientalism’ can be found here in this interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVC8EYd_Z_g

3) Global Politics Film Club

Gandhi (1982), dir. Richard Attenborough

This highly acclaimed biography of the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is still worth watching to understand British colonialism and Indian nationalism.

Battle for Algiers (1966), dir. Gillo Pontecorvo

This film remains a timeless classic on French colonialism and Algerian resistance.

Lumumba (2000), dir. Raoul Peck

Focusing on the story of Patrice Emery Lumumba, this film depicts the role of the Cold War and western greed for Africa’s mineral wealth in fomenting unrest and violence in that continent.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity 1: Distribute an outline political map of the world and have students fill in the map with different colours representing the colonies of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are brief time-lapse videos available on the internet that show the extent of colonisation over the centuries. Students should be encouraged to not only reflect upon the significance of the global reach of colonialism, but also how their maps reflect contemporary global orderings (e.g. institutions such as the Commonwealth of Nations or distinctions between developed and less-developed countries).

Activity 2: Students should draw upon recent mainstream movies and television programmes they have encountered in order to reflect upon the ways in which non-western peoples and places are depicted in them: what sorts of values, attributes and qualities are ascribed to them and how do these contrast with those of the (white) protagonists? Students should be encouraged to reflect upon the relationship between popular culture and colonialism. Students may want to reflect upon popular culture artefacts that challenge the dominant representational logics that they have already identified.

Activity 3: Students should produce a list of non-democratic or authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia. They should then list the main foreign aid provider and political supporter of each of these countries. If a democratic country, such as the United States, supports authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, for example, should we still call it a democracy? What wider implications for the character and function of global order do such relationships suggest?

5) Assessment questions

1. Is colonialism over and done with today?

2. In what ways do contemporary global institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations reflect colonial legacies and influences?

1) Chapter abstract

How is the world organized economically? We know that ‘economic realities’ shape our personal consumer options and employment opportunities, as well as who gets elected and how governments spend money and participate in global politics. Underpinning these decisions and priorities are what we – as individuals, communities, businesses, nations, ‘humanity’ – value (what we want and will ‘pay for’) and believe (what we assume to be true and expect to happen). But how do we come to value some goods, jobs, people and outcomes over others? And do we understand how power shapes what we believe to be true about economics? This chapter explores historical changes in ‘economics’ as activity and theory, how formal (regulated, paid) work is related to the less visible but vast informal work done worldwide, and how today’s predominantly neoliberal economic policies promote values and beliefs that warrant close, and arguably, critical attention.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Rules: This short video suggests what is problematic about our ‘common sense’ rules and introduces a global network of researchers and activists analysing inequality, poverty and climate change: https://therules.org/#/about

2. Global Wealth Inequality: Using effective graphics and brief explanations, this video provides an overview of global wealth inequality, including the effects of tax avoidance, debt servicing and trade policies: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSxzjyMNpU

3. Global Inequality and ‘the 1%’: Presenting data on the 1% and 99%, this video offers a balanced depiction of those who favour and those who criticize current global economic arrangements: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaIUGm9_ag0

4. Crash Course World History – Capitalism and Socialism: A very fast-paced, effective ‘crash course’ that races through a world history of trade, the industrial revolution, capitalism and a bit of socialism. Entertaining and also informative: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3u4EFTwprM

5. Culture in Decline – Consumerism and Advertising: This excerpt from Peter Joseph’s series Culture in Decline documents how consumerism and advertising began in the 1920s and offers an in-your-face ‘reality perspective’ on what it is we are buying into: www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ofI3Zz8hM [Note: includes swearing and penis references]

6. The UC Atlas of Global Inequality: Designed by researchers at UC Santa Cruz, the Atlas of Global Inequality explores the interaction between global integration (globalisation) and inequality, providing maps, graphics and data: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/index.php

3) Global Politics Film Club

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), dir. Michael Moore

Michael Moore’s documentary examines the events leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis. Includes rarely covered topics and unsavoury practices of profit-seeking individuals and companies.

Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (2012), dir. Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher

A US-focused film with wider implications. It covers in detail the implementation of the 1971 ‘Powell Manifesto’, considered by many a blueprint for the demise of US democracy through expanding ‘corporate control of the media, academia, the pulpit, arts and sciences and destruction of organized labour and consumer groups’.

Additional information available at: www.heist-themovie.com/index.html

War by Other Means (1992), dir. John Pilger and David Munro

John Pilger’s film examines how First World banks urged loans on Third World countries and the effects of this indebtedness, revealing who wins and loses, how and with what enduring effects on global inequalities.

Life and Debt (2001), dir. Stephanie Black

Stephanie Black’s film foregrounds the stories of individual Jamaicans ‘whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas’. The documentary includes how IMF lending and World Bank policies affect the everyday of people living in poor, ‘indebted’ countries.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: In small groups (or as a take-home project) students are asked to share information regarding:

1. where the clothes they are wearing and items they are carrying (electronic devices, purses, water bottles, etc.) were made;

2. what consumer goods they are most focused on and where they most often shop;

3. how/where they get info about what consumer items are desirable (express their identity; are trendy, healthy, and/or ‘make a statement’) and ‘what looks good’ (to/for them personally). Ask them to assess how much their purchases reflect ‘real needs’ or ‘constructed wants,’ and how this effects their personal budgets.

Becoming aware of where so much of what we buy, use and wear is produced internationally also raises questions regarding which countries export what products and how labour relations operate at these sites: are workers in safe, healthy environments, earning decent wages, provided benefits (including childcare, parental leave), able to unionise? How do consumption patterns in rich countries affect what is produced, and under what labour conditions, in poor countries?

In the context of the family/household in which you grew up, identify how, where and what informal work occurred (include emotional care-taking, planning and shopping for family needs, transporting family members) and who did this work (include yourself) and how it affected their own and the lives (including work and payments expectations) of others in the household. Who benefits most, and how, from this labour? If possible, students who are employed in informal work should share why they do this work, how they feel about doing it, and whether they would continue doing it if someone else did it for them or if they had a formal work alternative.

5) Assessment questions

1. ‘Economics is only a system of values.’ Discuss.

2. How do popular culture and ‘mass media’ (including print, television, and digital) shape what we value and believe? How does this in turn shape national and global economics?

3. Critically engage with the comparison between neo/liberal capitalism and (democratic) socialism.

4. Who are the primary winners and losers in our current global economic system?

1) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. ‘The Giant Pool of Money’ (This American Life podcast), www.thisamericanlife.org/radioarchives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money. An excellent explanation of the financial forces behind the sub-prime crisis appeared on National Public Radio’s and WBEZ’s radio programme, This American Life.

1. Debtocracy, http://youtu.be/qKpxPo-lInk. A documentary film about the crisis in Greece.

1. The Watson Institute at Brown University presents Mark Blyth on Austerity,http://youtu.be/FmsjGys-VqA. Mark Blyth, a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, on what’s wrong with austerity.

1. www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/oct/18/occupymovement-protest. The UK newspaper the Guardian published a series of photos of the ‘occupy everywhere’ events of 18 October 2011.

1. Quantitative easing, www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetarypolicy/Pages/qe/default.aspx.

1. Debtwatch, www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/. Steve Keen’s blog was an excellent source of heterodox economic analysis, but it is updated less frequently now. Other good sources of heterodox economic thought can be found at: Prime Economics, www.primeeconomics.org; Progress in Political Economy, http://ppesydney.net; and Nouriel Roubini’s blog www.themaven.net/economonitor.

2) Additional reading

Pettifor, Ann (2006), The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

One of the myths surrounding the 2007 crisis is that no one saw it coming but this myth is not correct; one of the important warnings was Ann Pettifor’s (2006) book, The Coming First World Debt Crisis.

Taibbi, Matt (2010), Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (New York: Random House).

One of the best, and angriest, introductions to the contemporary financial crisis is Matt Taibbi’s 2010 book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America. Taibbi is a political journalist and contributor to Rolling Stone magazine. Griftopia not only provides a good description of the events and characters behind the crisis but also provides clear and lucid explanations of the obscure and technical terms, such as credit default swaps, that have kept the discourse about finance technical and obscure, and not everyday.

Strange, Susan (1997/1986), Casino Capitalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

Susan Strange was one of the earliest figures in international political economy to draw attention to the particular way the finance exercises power in the global system. See, for example, Susan Strange (1997/1986) Casino Capitalism.

Epstein, Gerald (ed.) (2005), Financialization and the World Economy (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar).

Gerald Epstein (2005) collected a series of important essays that tried to conceptualize financialisation in his book Financialization and the World Economy.

There is a range of international political economy literature that has pursued the diagnosis of the crisis in interesting directions. For four very different examples, see the following.

Nesvatilova, Anastasia (2010), Financial Alchemy in Crisis: The Great Liquidity Illusion (New York: Pluto).

Eichengreen, Barry (2015), Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses and Misuses of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Varoufakis, Yanis (2015), The Global Minotaur: America, Europe, and the Future of the Global Economy (London: Zed Books).

Langley, Paul (2014), Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Harmes, Adam (2001), Unseen Power: How Mutual Funds Threaten the Political and Economic Wealth of Nations (Toronto: Stoddart).

Shows how financial instruments regulate policy and political options.

de Goede, Marieke (2005), Virtue, Fortune, and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).

A groundbreaking theoretical and historical critique of finance and the forms of power/knowledge that underpin it.

Knafo, Samuel (2013), The Making of Modern Finance: Liberal Governance and the Gold Standard (London and New York: Routledge).

Examines the historical origins of the power of finance as a political instrument.

Cooper, Melinda and Martijn Konings (eds.) (2015), Rethinking Money, Debt, and Finance after the Crisis (Durham and London: Duke University Press).

Revisits fundamental conceptualisations across diverse sectors of social, cultural, economic, and international life.

Lapavitsas, Costas (2003), Social Foundations of Markets, Money, and Credit (London: Routledge).

A good introduction to money and finance in social context. I have elaborated some of the themes in this chapter in an article titled, ‘The Aesthetics of the Financial Crisis: Work, Culture, and Politics’ (2012).

Langley, Paul (2009), The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo-America (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

The most systematic and penetrating analysis of finance, international political economy, and everyday life.

Ho, Karen (2009), Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham and London: Duke University Press).

Karen Ho is an anthropologist who worked in Wall Street and wrote this fascinating ethnographic study of the culture of working in financial services.

LiPuma, Edward (2017), The Social Life of Financial Derivatives: Markets, Risk, and Time (Durham and London: Duke University Press).

Edward LiPuma is a cultural anthropologist who has updated his study of financial derivatives (2017), The Social Life of Financial Derivatives: Markets, Risk, and Time. Of course, each of these books approaches the issues from different theoretical perspectives and reading them will give you as much a sense of how deep the arguments go as of how things are supposed to work.

The analytical framework used in this chapter draws on the contributions of two of the most important figures in contemporary social and political theory.

Lefebvre, Henri (1984 [1968]), Everyday Life in the Modern World (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers).

––––(1991 [1958]), Critique of Everyday Life vol. 1 (London: Verso).

––––(2006 [1962]), Critique of Everyday Life, vol. 2 (London: Verso).

––––(2008 [1981]), Critique of Everyday Life, vol. 3 (London: Verso).

Henri Lefebvre’s career spanned the twentieth century and he wrote over 60 books. His Critique of Everyday Life appeared in three volumes, published first in 1947 (revised in 1958 and appearing in English in 1991), second in 1962 (2006 in English), and the third volume appeared in 1981 (2008 in English). An overview of his theoretical work can be found in the collection edited by Stuart Elden, Elizabeth Lebas and Eleanore Kofman (2003) Henri Lefebvre: Key Writings.

Rancière, Jacques (1999), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).

––––(2009), Aesthetics and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Jacques Rancière has also been extremely prolific. His political philosophy is presented succinctly in Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. A good introduction to his approach to aesthetics is Aesthetics and its Discontents.

1) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

Inequality.org: https://inequality.org. Current research on poverty and inequality in the US.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation: www.jrf.org.uk. Current research on poverty and inequality in the UK.

OECD: Inequality: www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm. A wide range of resources and interactive database.

United Nations Population Fund: Gender Inequality: www.unfpa.org/gender-equality

What’s Worth Reading: https://whatsworthreading.weebly.com. Author’s (Paul Cammack) own website, on which he reviews books relevant to this and related topics.

2) Additional reading

Cammack, Paul (2012), ‘The G20, the Crisis, and the Rise of Global Developmental Liberalism’, Third World Quarterly 33, 1: 1–16.

Carroll, Toby and Darryl Jarvis (2017), Asia after the Developmental State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Hewison, Kevin, and Arne L. Kalleberg (eds.) (2013), ‘Precarious Work in South and Southeast Asia’, Special Issue, American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 4, April.

Hozić, Aida​ and Jacqui True (eds.) (2017), Scandalous Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1973 [1848]), ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848, edited by David Fernbach (London: Pelican/New Left Review).

OECD (2012), Economic Policy Reforms 2012: Going for Growth (OECD: Paris).

Padios, Jan M. (2017), ‘Mining the Mind: Emotional Extraction, Productivity, and Predictability in the Twenty-first Century’, Cultural Studies, 31, 2–3, 205–31.

Wade, Robert H. (2014), ‘Growth, Inequality, and Poverty: Evidence, Arguments, and Economists’, in John Ravenhill (ed.) Global Political Economy, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 305–43).

World Bank (2012), World Development Report 2013: Jobs (Washington, DC): World Bank.

This chapter has argued that inequality is on a rising trend within practically every country in the world, and that there is nothing either accidental or inevitable about it. On the contrary, it is a consequence of the widespread adoption of neoliberal policies in what has become a genuinely global capitalist economy. Although it was written in 1847–8, the Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels 1973) remains an essential starting point. New sources of contemporary data and debate are appearing all the time. Wade (2014) is an excellent review of approaches to measuring poverty and inequality, and an eloquent defence of a liberal reformist or global developmental perspective. Recent concern about inequality on the part of international institutions is reflected in OECD (2012) and World Bank (2012), along with their predilection for market-friendly solutions. Important aspects of the politics of austerity and its gendered impact are considered in Hozić​ and True (2017), while Padios (2017) and Santos (2017) raise issues of vital importance in relation to the making of neoliberal subjects. Hewison and Kalleberg (2013) chart the changing character of the new global work force through the rise of ‘precarious labour’ in South and Southeast Asia, while Carroll and Jarvis (2017) reflects from a number of perspectives on the character and demise of the ‘developmental state’. My own perspective is developed in Cammack (2012). Along with the websites listed earlier, you should search regularly (on Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar for example) for more recent work by the various contributors identified here.

1) Additional reading

Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Esther Duflo (2011), Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs).

Winner of several awards, this book offers a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty through numerous empirical examples, including hundreds of randomized control trials to establish why the poor live different lives despite similar abilities and desires enjoyed by those who are not poor.

Davies, Matt and Magnus Ryner (eds.) (2006), Poverty and the Production of World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave).

An exciting collection relocating poverty within structures of global political economy.

Davis, Mike (2006), Planet of Slums (London: Verso).

A breathtaking account of new forms of poverty produced by runaway urbanisation.

Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen (1989), Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press). One of the major statements by two leading economists on the need for rethinking public policy to eliminate hunger.

Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen (1991), The Political Economy of Hunger, vols I–III (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Perhaps the most important studies of hunger and the complexity of understanding it.

Edkins, Jenny (2000), Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).

A highly original book on the limits of received conceptions of eradicating famine.

Escobar, Arturo (1994), Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

One of the most important post-structuralist critiques of modernisation and development.

George, Susan (1976), How the Other Half Dies (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

A classic statement on global inequality and its effects.

Goulet, Denis (1971), The Cruel Choice: A New Concept in the Theory of Development (New York: Atheneum).

A key ethical critique of conventional theories of development.

Levine, David P. and S. Abu Turab Rizvi (2005), Poverty, Work, and Freedom: Political Economy and the Moral Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

One of the most compelling challenges to mainstream wisdom on poverty.

Haqy, Mahbub ul (1976), The Poverty Curtain: Choices for the Third World (New York: Columbia University Press).

One of the classics in the field of development economics and global inequality.

Schumacher, E. F. (1973), Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London: Blond and Briggs).

One of the first books on environmentalism and sustainable development.

South Commission (1990), The Challenge to the South: The Report of the South Commission (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

An important report on Third World development from its perspective.

Yunus, Muhammad and Alan Jolis (2010), Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty (US: ReadHowYouWant.com).

This autobiographical account of the founder of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, presents an incisive window into the genealogy of micro-finance and its socio-historical context.

UNDP (2003), Human Development Report 2003: Millennium Development Goals: A Compact Among Nations to End Human Poverty:

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2003/.

A very useful report on recent thinking on eliminating global poverty.

1) Chapter abstract

Why do some people think they know what is good for others? Giving and receiving are mundane elements in everyday life and in global politics. However, a deeper look shows that these acts are entwined with the assumption that some people can know what is best for others. This assumption leads easily to colonising and imperialising postures. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, this chapter explores the tension between a donor’s sense of duty in helping others and a receiver’s sense of feeling colonised. While the chapter proposes a solution to this problem its primary concern is to show the problem’s complexity and its historical intractability. Nevertheless, clarifying the problem can change our daily lives and alter global politics.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

Case study 1: KONY 2012

The KONY 2012 campaign offers a prominent case in the politics of knowing and helping others. Established in 2004, Invisible Children is an advocacy group that aims to draw international attention to the conflict in Uganda. The group came to prominence with their viral campaign KONY 2012 which focused on the actions of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The video drew criticism from a number of commentators who raised a series of questions about the limits of digital activism and an apparent underlying ‘white saviour complex’. The videos below orbit the issue of helping others, offering different insights into the politics of such practices.

1. KONY 2012 by Invisible Children

This video is the original attempt by Invisible People to sway people to help Africans in needs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

2. Kony 2012 Remix: A Critical Look at the White Savior Complex

This video is a direct critique of the original video and its world-view: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTi5GIYQcXE

3. Yes We KONY by Juice Rap News

This video is also a critique but through the mediums of comedy and satire: www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8&feature=g-all-u&context=G2264933FAAAAAAAAAAA

Case study 2: The Case of Afghan Women

The videos below provide an overview of Nancy Hatch Dupree’s relationship to Afghanistan. A prominent historian, campaigner and philanthropist, Dupree worked on a series of projects, including an effort to create a library on Afghan history and culture. Passing away in 2017, Dupree’s obituaries often made a point of referring to her as the ‘Grandmother of Afghanistan’. These three videos place the viewer in the position of asking if she has gone beyond the colonial posture in her relationship to Afghan women.

1. Dupree’s Commitment to Afghan Women

In this video Nancy Dupree is asked why she wishes to help Afghan women.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFjzSLFSzo

2. Nancy Hatch Dupree’s Work on Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University

This video describes Dupree’s decades-long endeavour to establish the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDaEBFkQL9w

3. More on Nancy Hatch Dupree’s Project

In this video Dupree is interviewed about her experiences of, activities within, and hopes for Afghanistan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-4USqAcFYE

3) Global Politics Film Club

Star Trek: The Next Generation, various episodes

These are all episodes in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, each of which offers productive insights into the politics of cultural encounters.

1. Season 4, Episode 15: ‘First Contact’

This episode has members of the star ship helping aliens to enter the world of travel beyond the speed of light.

2. Season 5, Episode 2: ‘Darmok’

This episode is about the linguistic problems faced in alien contact.

3. Season 3, Episode 20: ‘Tin Man’

This episode shows the reciprocity that emerges in encounters.

4. Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Where Silence Has Lease’

This episode is about the dangers of encounter.

Arrival (2016), dir. Denis Villeneuve

This is a recent film about the ‘first contact’ encounter with alien life and focuses on the many ways an encounter might unfold.

Waterland (1992), dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal

This film is about how to overcome the colonial element in the pedagogical relationship. It focuses on a teacher who starts telling stories instead of following lesson plans as a means to work out his own ghosts.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity: There is a certain irony about providing guidance on a topic that calls into questions the foundations of uneven knowledge exchanges. The two case studies outlined earlier, however, provide the basis for insightful interactions with students about the politics of knowledge within the context of contemporary humanitarianism. These case studies raise important questions about the representation of others, the limits of inclusion and exclusion that define how particular issues are framed, the uneven distribution of voices that are heard within particular debates, and the modes of political action that are subsequently mobilised.

Contrasting these case study contexts with the history of beneficent colonial and imperial interventions may provide interesting insights into the colonial legacy of such knowledge encounters.

5) Assessment questions

Again, there is a clear and interesting tension in providing this kind of material which touches upon the intimate relationship between power and knowledge in pedagogical practice.

1. Critically interrogate the ways of knowing that underpin contemporary humanitarianism.

2. Who speaks in global politics?

3. Is contemporary global politics defined by ‘exclusive knowledge’ exchanges?

1) Additional reading

Bartov, Omer (1996), Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Bartov reflects on the holocaust and modernity.

Bourke, Joanna (1999), An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth Century History (London: Granta).

The book gives an overview of the ways in which British, American, and Australian soldiers experienced combat.

Bourke, Joanna (2016), Wounding the World: How the Military and War Games Invade Our Lives (London: Virago).

Reflections on the militarization of British and American societies, and what can be done to prevent it.

Braudy, Leo (2003), From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Beginning in the Middle Ages and ending with twenty-first-century global terrorism, this book explores the ways in which European and American cultures have established the military ethos. Masculinity is at the heart of his explanations.

Dower, John W. (1986), War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Faber and Faber).

This is the best book comparing the experiences of American and Japanese servicemen in combat.

Fussell, Paul (1990), Wartime. Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

This is an analysis of war psychology in the Second World War.

Hughes, Matthew and William J. Philpott (eds.) (2006), Modern Military History (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

This is the clearest textbook-introduction to modern military history.

Keegan, John (2004 [1978]), The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (London: Pimlico).

This is the classic study in battle psychology and the changing experience of combat over time.

King, Anthony (2013), The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

King details the changes in the ‘new military’ of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Merridale, Catherine (2000), Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (London: Granta Books).

This is an indispensable study of Russia experiences of war.

Overy, Richard (1999), The Road to War (London: Penguin Books).

This book provides a clear summary of the main arguments about the political and diplomatic origins of modern war.

1) Chapter abstract

What makes the world dangerous? Global politics is awash with danger but certain people and places seem much more dangerous than others. This chapter will examine what makes the world dangerous but it will also focus specific attention on how certain things come to be seen as more dangerous than others, what we might refer to as the social construction of dangerousness. To illustrate this point, it will examine the arguments in favour of using of remotely piloted drones to target and kill suspected militants, along with the concerns raised by human rights groups about the effects they are having on the populations living below. The chapter will make three broad points. Firstly, it will suggest that dangerous is not an objective condition but something that is produced. Secondly, our perception of what is dangerous is always situated – that is, it is contingent upon our own place and position in the world. And finally, it will suggest that these dangers are rarely distributed evenly and that certain populations are often more vulnerable than others.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. Interviews with former drone pilots: This short NBC News segment features interviews with a number of former drone pilots who denounce the United States’ ‘morally outrageous’ programme of targeted killings. A challenging insight into the ethical and emotional stresses of drone warfare: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ1BC0g_PbQ

2. Afghan Drone Attack Report: This CBS news report on the drone strike in Daykundi/Uruzgan follows the AR15-6 investigation into how civilians were killed: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2dCNo0a-kU

3. What It’s Like to Be a Drone Pilot: In this short video, produced by National Geographic, actor Morgan Freeman interviews Brandon Bryant about what it’s like to be a drone pilot. The video provides an interesting insight into the psychological and visual regimes of drone warfare: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg30r0tJ1KE

4. Sweet Target, Sweet Child: A lecture by Professor Derek Gregory dissecting the drone strike in Daykundi/Uruzgan, featuring a close analysis of the transcript: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqMvgrInEts

5. AR 15-6 Investigation Report: Declassified version of the AR15-6 investigation into the drone strike in Daykundi/Uruzgan. Note the use of ‘CIVCAS’ in the document title to denote ‘civilian casualties’. It is worthwhile considering the emotional-political implications of using such language to describe the loss of life: https://archive.org/details/centcom-10-0218-01 [Note: there are images in this document that some may find disturbing]

3) Global Politics Film Club

Eye in the Sky (2015), dir. Gavin Hood.

British thriller starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman and Barkhad Abdi about the morality of drone warfare. The film was well-received by critics and presents a thrilling account of the targeting process, which culminates in a carefully orchestrated moral conundrum about whether or not a specific individual should be killed. Although realistic, the film takes some dramatic license in terms of the technology that is available and the hoops that have to be jumped through. Moreover, the way in which the moral conundrum is constructed works to marginalise some of the bigger questions about the ethics of targeted killing. For an interesting (and very concise) critique, see here.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity 1 The social construction of danger: Students should begin by listing some of the things that they consider to be dangerous, including things that are particularly dangerous to them as individuals, things that they consider to be dangerous to the country or their broader community, and things that pose a particular threat to humanity or the planet as a whole. As a class, students should discuss why they consider these things and not others to be dangerous.

To help students think critically about this question, the convenor could provide some examples of other things that make the world dangerous but are often overlooked. There are some humorous articles, such as ‘Why you should be more scared of your oven than of terrorists sneaking into America’, which could be a good ice-breaker.

As part of this exercise, students should be encouraged to think about why they might have neglected these dangers. Students should also think about situations that might be more dangerous for certain populations compared to others because of their race, gender or class (e.g. stop and searches by police).

Activity 2 The dangers of drone warfare: On the question of drones, students should be shown these two clips from Eye in the Sky, which outline the moral conundrum facing the drone crew:

Clip 1 – Collateral Damage Estimates: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMgZW9zwqx0

Clip 2 – Legal Arguments: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YzqzoNKwdA

Students should begin by discussing the dilemma as it is presented in the film: would they risk injury to innocent civilians to kill a dangerous individual? Afterwards, students should be encouraged to deconstruct the scene, focusing on how the problem has been presented and how this might preclude certain avenues of debate.

To address the broader questions about how certain individuals come to be seen as dangerous and how this may leave certain populations vulnerable to death and destruction, the class should examine the transcript of drone strike in Daykundi/Uruzgan, which is available here.

The class should be broken into four or five groups, each given a snippet of the transcript. Going in chronological order, each group should provide a short summary of what the drone pilots are ‘seeing’. This gives them an opportunity to see how the drone crew came to see these individuals as dangerous despite evidence to the contrary. The class can then discuss the role of gender and race in this determination of who or what is dangerous, as well as the role of concepts like ‘military age male’ in the decision to kill.

5) Assessment questions

1. What makes the world dangerous and how should we respond to these dangers?

2. Using an example, explain how certain things come to be seen as dangerous and the kinds of responses this enables?

3. Using an example, explain how someone’s perception of what is dangerous might be shaped by their position in the world.

4. Do drones make the world more or less dangerous?

1) Chapter Abstract

Can we move beyond conflict? This chapter examines one of the oldest and most difficult political problems: how to deal with conflicts that are so deeply entrenched that they seem virtually inevitable. Prospects for peace are particularly slim in societies that have experienced a major trauma, such as genocide or a war. How can societies that have been torn apart by war and trauma ever become peaceful again? Why can some conflicts be solved or at least managed while others generate ever more hatred and violence? Expressed in other words: what is the key to moving beyond conflict? This chapter examines the issues at stake based on the example of the deeply entrenched conflict on the divided Korean peninsula, where hatred and constant tension continue to dominate politics even more than half a century after the Korean War.

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Korean War (1950–53): Produced by Simple History, this animated video provides a short introduction to the Korean War. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxaegqvl4aE

2. TED Talk – To solve mass violence, look to locals: In this video, Séverine Autesserre talks about the advantages of a local-based approach to conflict resolution based on the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Instead of focusing on the national level, Autesserre finds that a focus on, for instance, the individual, the family or the community is a better way to help solve conflicts. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHdYaMyR5-8

3. The historic Koreas summit, in three minutes: This video produced by the Washington post shows the highlights of the 2018 meeting of South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. It was the third inter-Korean summit after 2000 and 2007. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oECuyIWb2K4

4. When Trump met Kim: What happened at the Singapore summit: A summary produced by the Guardian of the first-ever summit between the leaders of the United States and North Korea. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD-XESk-ZTM

5. ‘Take On Me’ by a-ha, North Korean Style: A video of North Korean accordion players, who perform the song ‘Take On Me’ from the Norwegian pop band a-ha. Challenging generic assumptions about North Koreans as dull and rigid, the video went viral when it was uploaded 2012. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBgMeunuviE

3) Global Politics Film Club

Joint Security Area (2000), dir. Park Chan-wook

One of South Korea’s most popular films about North–South relations and important in terms of challenging stereotypical representations of cold and vicious North Koreans. Coinciding at a time when North and South Korea’s rapprochement reached a (momentary) peak after the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, Joint Security Area tells a story of amity among soldiers from both sides. The film shows how the soldiers must navigate between choosing their own country or their friendship.

4) Seminar room activities

Activity – How do images shape what we know of conflicts? It is common to say that we live in an age of images. Film, photographs, social media and television, among others, influence what we know of and how we respond to political phenomena including war and conflict. The purpose of the exercise is to help students develop an awareness of how images are deeply involved in shaping our understanding of conflicts and at the same time how the relative lack of images reflect a lack of knowledge.

Students should be asked to search during class for images of one particular conflict (e.g. the civil war in Syria) and to reflect on how different perspectives from war party A and B (or even C, etc.) construct different kinds of knowledges about the conflict (e.g. war of resistance vs. war against terror).

In addition, ask group of students to search and compare images of ‘visible’ (e.g. the wars in Afghanistan or Syria) and ‘invisible’ (e.g. the civil war in Somalia or the insurgency in the Mindanao region of the Philippines) conflicts. Relative in/visibility relates to the level of photojournalistic coverage of these conflicts by global new agencies such as Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. Ask students to reflect on how the abundance or lack of images of particular conflicts contributes to our political and ethical responses to these conflicts.

Let the seminar jointly reflect on this exercise to address the politics of images.

5) Assessment questions

1. How can conflicts be resolved?

2. What are the opportunities and challenges of confrontation and engagement as strategies of conflict resolution?

3. How can existing approaches to conflict resolution be improved?

4. Do you think that the conflicts of today resemble or differ from conflicts of the past?

5. To what extent can conflicts, past or present, be compared? What can be learned from them?

1) Chapter abstract

Who has rights? This chapter looks at the question: Who has rights? In order to answer this question, this chapter focuses on the ban on the display of external religious symbols in public places in France before examining general responses to the ban. The ban is understood in the context of the wider ‘securitisation’ of Muslims on the grounds of religion in many parts of the world, including Europe and the US in particular. Muslims are frequently racialised – that is, treated as a homogenous racial group instead of followers of a religion and frequently denied the same rights as their fellow citizens. The ‘racialisation’ of Muslim identity is illustrated with reference to the responses to attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the dilemmas it poses for a fundamental human right: free speech. This raises broader issues relating to the purported universality of human rights. Are human rights ‘universal’ or rooted in a particular cultural tradition?

2) Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. What is a Human Right? An introduction to the concept of human rights, and the United Nations framework to promote and protect human rights produced by the United Nations Office for Human Rights: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpY9s1Agbsw

2. TED-Ed What are the Universal Human Rights? This animated TED-Ed talk by Benedetta Berti, an expert on armed conflict and international security, provides an interesting overview of the idea of human rights, including some of the dominant philosophical and political tensions and debates regarding this doctrine: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDgIVseTkuE

3. TEDx Culture and Human Rights: A TEDx talk by Neha Reddy, a student of anthropology and global health, who provides interesting insights into her research on female genital mutilation/female circumcision practices in Ethiopia. The presentation urges us to consider the complex relationship between culture and human rights, and how this unfolds within the everyday lives of ordinary people. Students should be asked to consider at the same time what questions are raised by Neha speaking for women in Ethiopia from her privileged position: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdUf2eJMtSE

4. Who Has Rights? A lecture delivered by this chapter’s author (Professor Giorgio Shani) on the question of whether human rights are universal: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvMSkODbM78&feature=youtu.be

3) Global Politics Film Club

La Haine (1995), dir. Matthieu Kassovitz

A film about three friends from different cultural backgrounds from a housing project in the banlieue, La Haine examines questions of belonging and alienation in multiethnic France and foreshadows the riots of 2005. However, would the camaraderie between the three friends exist today?

4) Seminar room activities

Activity 1 What does it mean to be human? Students should be presented with different case study materials that demonstrate the historic evolution of understandings of what it means to be human. From theological accounts which focus upon a ‘divine spark’ or soul, to more contemporary accounts which focus upon qualities such as rationality, this exercise encourages students to reflect upon the varied social construction of notions of the human. From this point interesting and provocative questions can be raised about the foundations upon which we can make claims about a common humanity, with implications for our understandings of rights.

Activity 2 Are human rights universal? This exercise asks students to consider the merits of the debate between ‘universalist’ and ‘relativist’ approaches to human rights. This debate should be situated within the context of contentious ongoing debates, such as the rights-based case for humanitarian intervention, female genital mutilation, the Straight-18 ban on child soldiers, or the chapter’s case study of the ban on the display of external religious symbols in public places. Students should be encouraged to reflect upon the knowledge claims that are implicit to such positions. More generally, it may be interesting to explore the narratives and/or visual politics of advocacy campaigns on these issues, as well as the wider politics of who is able to speak on behalf of the human, and to what ends.

5) Assessment questions

1. Are human rights ‘universal’?

2. Are some rights more important than others?

3. Can rights exist without the state?

4. What is the relationship between religion and rights?

1) Chapter abstract

What can we do to change the world? The questions we have about global politics are often generated by a sense of dissatisfaction: we would like things to be otherwise. This concluding chapter draws on the other chapters in the volume to explore the question of what we can do to change the world. It discusses the dilemma of not having a right way forward, using the example of the Iraq War and drawing on the thought of Jacques Derrida. Returning to the discussion of critical versus problem-solving theory in Chapter 1, the chapter opens up wider questions about the possibility of change and about our complicity in global politics.

2) Seminar room activities

Activity: Put the students in small groups. Get each group to think of a particular concern about global politics and to identify what it therefore is that they would like to change. Ask them to make a plan. Swap the plans between groups and ask the second group to identify what assumptions the first group made in identifying their problem and attempting to address it.

3) Assessment questions

1. Why is it difficult to change global politics?

2. How is thinking about global politics related to how we act?

3. Is complicity a problem?