APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2015/2016 Norwegian version

ELE 3749 Globalization

Responsible for the course
Steffen Johannessen, Eli Moen

Department
Department of Communication and Culture

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
7,5

Language of instruction
Norwegian

Introduction
The development and distribution of new and affordable communication technologies have important impacts on contemporary societies as well as human experiences and understandings of the world they live in. Changes in the economy, information technologies, and goods- and passenger transport have significant consequences for world trade, transnational migration, social networks, the environment, culture and identity of our time. Organizatins and businesses are being managed and organized in new ways, and production and employment conditions are changing. This also affect current globalisation discourses about risk and political, social, cultural, and economic integration. In many ways the world has become more integrated and standardized, and the importance of place and physical distance has become less important. In other areas, however, the local and particular have acquired greater importance. This course is centred on a collection of fundamental themes and key concepts that contribute to an increased understanding of globalization processes in today's world. In this way, the course can help to put other fields of study in a broader global perspective. The course aims to sensitize students about central preconditions for, and important consequences of, globalization.

Learning outcome
Acquired knowledge
On completion of the course the students shall have:

• Developed insights into important technological, economic, political discourses that concern globalization.
• Become familiar with central historical preconditions for globalisation.
• An overview and knowledge of essential concepts that will enable them to understand both subjective and objective dimensions of globalization.
• Learned how to understand the relationship between local and global processes through concepts such as 'glocalization' and 'grobalization'.
• Become acquainted with important social, political and economic aspects of transnational migration and diasporas
• An overview of important financial markets and also understand what not being part of globalization means.
• Knowledge about the transition to a network-society, its political and social implications, as well as its importance for how international corporations and organizations are managed and organized.
• Knowledge about the neo-liberal turn and its effects on production, commodities and services within different sectors.
• Knowledge about the development of a global labor market and new atypical employment conditions
• Understood changes in culture and the importance of identity in a globalised world, and be familiar with the contemporary resurgence of politicized national, ethnic and religious groups.

• Identify historical and contemporary development trends in globalization
• make use of key concepts that will enable them to discuss and understand both subjective and objective dimensions of globalization
• Identify and discuss transnational political, economic, social and cultural changes
• Identify and discuss relations between social, political and economic aspects of globalization
• Discuss various global problem areas, such as climate change, trade, migration, terrorism, law and politics, and be able to account for the changing role of the nation state with regard to this

• Globalization in historical perspective
• Disembedding and abstraction: imagined communities, expert systems, deterritorialized communication and social relations, and development of common international standards, signs and symbols that make global integration possible
• New technologies and vertical disintegration
• Speed and acceleration: time-space compression, and the emergence of global simultaneinty through international media and ICT
• Standardization of places and various cultural, humanistic, political and moral norms; for example the proliferation of human rights and the globalization of consumer culture
• Cultural imperialism, Disneyfication, McDonaldization, cultural flows and out-dating
• Connectedness: the emergence of the network-society, and consequences of transnational connectedness in respect to power and powerlessness, politics, political influence and social and economic integration
• The neo-liberal turn
• New ways of organizing businesses and organizations, and important changes with regard to production and employment conditions in a globalised economy
• Mobility: international migration, tourists and refugees, transnational micro-economies, transnational groups' position in the national order of things
• Mixing and social complexity: diasporas and super-diversity, differences between multi-cultural and multi-ethnic societies, creolization and hybridization
• Risk and vulnerability in an interconnected world: terrorism, tsunamis and other disasters, climate change, vulnerability in transport and digital networks, fear, decreasing confidence in expert-systems and the revitalization of politicized religion
• Reactions and identity politics. How processes of standardization and homogenization relate to new forms of self-understanding, politics of identification, and the construction of social boundaries through differences in a globalized time

The course consists of 36 hours, divided into classroom teaching, project work and supervising. The content of the course is theory-based.