This is a graduate reading-and-discussion seminar on the sociology of some of the largest social institutions we know. 'Globalization' refers to a combination of (1) the consequences of what David Harvey calls the "time-space compression" of our world-the fact that flows of all kinds circle the globe with previously unseen speed-and (2) transformations in the institutional setup that serve to foster, stem, regulate and otherwise influence such flows. Nationhood-the socially constructed community of a population imagined as primordial-and markets-the socially constructed venue of the encounter between profit-seeking sellers and buyers imagined as unconnected except through prices-with their, at times joint, at others contending, claims of control over states, borders and flows, are two of the most powerful such institutions. This course makes modest inroads into, and will aim to provide, at best, a general orientation in, the vast territory of the macrosociology of such institutions.

The purpose of the course is gaining literacy, devising critique and inspiration. You are expected to:

• come to class prepared, with an active interest in macrosociology, an investigative curiosity and a mature intellectual agenda,
• prepare and present a 5-10 minute summary of one week's readings to serve as a stimulus for the class discussion,
• contribute your unique perspective, erudition, and experience to the discussions, and
• write a high-quality research paper on a relevant subject on time.

Grading is a judicious combination of your contribution to the discussions, your presentations, homeworks and your paper.

Paper: Write a 2500-3000 word research paper about a subject of your choice within the macrosociology of globalization. Make some theoretical proposition and some empirical observation to bear on each other in a way that is relevant to some literature in this area of research. Please submit your one-paragraph topic statement by the time of the 8^th class meeting-March 8-the class before Spring Break. Please use my office hours for discussions of possible topics, problems and solutions as soon as they occur to you. Deadline for paper: 4pm, May 1 (a.k.a. International Labor Day).

Schedule
 

week 1: 1/18 Course, Topics, Participants
 

Film: The Battle of Algiers (Italian, dir: Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966, 135 min)

Homework (deadline = 1/25, hand in in class) Write a 600-word review of The Battle of Algiers as for the way it deals with

•     the motives and tactics of the colonial power and
•     the countervailing motives and tactics of the subaltern

Readings for Class Discussion:  

• Scott, Alan. 1999. "Introduction. Globalization: Social process or political rhetoric?" Pp 1-22 in Alan Scott (ed.) The Limits of Globalization. Cases and arguments. London & New York: Routledge.

 
• Fanon, Frantz. 1965 [1963]. "Concerning Violence." Pp. 35-106 in The Wretched of the Earth. Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press.

 
• Fanon, Frantz. 1965 [1963]. "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness." Pp. 148-205 in The Wretched of the Earth. Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press.

 
• Fanon, Frantz. 1965 [1959]. "Algeria Unveiled." Pp. 35-68 in A Dying Colonialism. Translated from the French by Haakon Chevalier. With an Introduction by Adolfo Gilly. New York: Grove Press.

 
• George, Susan. 2000. "Fixing or nixing the WTO. Seattle turning point." Le Monde diplomatique -- English edition. January. http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/2000/01/07george

 

Readings:  

• Sklair, Leslie. 1999. "Competing Conceptions of Globalization." Journal of World-Systems Research. 5:141-159. http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol5/num2/v5n2a1.htm

• Chase-Dunn, Christopher K. 1999. "Globalization: A World-Systems Perspective." Journal of World-Systems Research, 5:176-198. http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol5/num2/Chase-Dunn/v5n2a3.htm

 
• Martin, William G. and Mark Beittel. 1998. "Toward a Global Sociology? Evaluating Current Conceptions, Methods, and Practices." Sociological Quarterly, 39, 1(Winter):139-161.

 
• Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1999. "The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis." Pp. 192-201. in The End of the World As We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.

Reading:
 

• Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.

 

Readings:
 

• Böröcz, József. 1997. "Doors on the Bridge: The Border as Contingent Closure." Paper presented at the ASA Meetings in Toronto, to become a chapter in Social Change by Fusion: Understanding Institutional Creativity. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jborocz/s2.htm.

 
• Urry, John. 1999. "Globalization and Citizenship." Journal of World-Systems Research, 5:263-273. http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol5/num2/v5n2a7.htm

• Böröcz, József. 1996. Leisure Migration: A Sociological Study on Tourism. Cambridge: Pergamon Press. Only the following chapters:

 

• "Travel-Capitalism: The Structure of Europe and the Advent of the Tourist." Pp. 23-52
• "Comparative Tourism Growth: Austria and Hungary, 1870-1988." Pp. 53-82.
• "Austria's and Hungary's External Linkages after World War II." Pp. 83-100.

 

• Brubaker, Rogers. 1998. "Migrations of Ethnic Unmixing in the 'New Europe'." International Migration Review, 32, 4(124), winter, 1047-1065.

Readings:
 

• Polányi, Karl. 1992 (1957). "The Economy as Instituted Process." Pp. 29-51. in Swedberg, Richard and Mark Granovetter (eds.) The Sociology of Economic Life. Westview Press, Boulder. OR: in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson (eds.) 1957. Trade and Market in the Early Empires. Economies in History and Theory. The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.
 
• Altvater, Elma & Birgit Mahnkopf. 1999. "The World Market Unbound." Pp. 306-26 in Alan Scott (ed.) The Limits of Globalization. Cases and arguments. London & New York: Routledge.

• Böröcz, József. 1996. "The Splitting of International Leisure Migration in Hungary." Pp. 133-152. in Leisure Migration: A Sociological Study on Tourism. Cambridge: Pergamon Press.

 
• Arrighi, Giovanni. 1999. "The Global Market." Journal of World-Systems Research, 5:199-224. http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol5/num2/v5n2a4.htm

 
• Köhler, Gernot. 1998. "The Structure of Global Money and World Tables of Unequal Exchange." Journal of World-Systems Research 4: 145-168. http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol4/v4n2a4.htm

Reading:
 

• Arrighi, Giovanni and Beverly Silver (eds.). 1999. Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
  
  

Readings:

• Renan, Ernest. 1996 [1882]. "What Is A Nation?" Pp. 42-56. in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.) Becoming National. A Reader. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

 
• Hobsbawm, Eric. 1982. "Introduction: Inventing Traditions." Pp. 1-14 in Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 
• Hobsbawm, Eric. 1982. "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914." Pp 263-308. in Hobsbawm & Ranger.

 
• Eley, Geoff and Ronald Gregor Suny. 1996. "Introduction: From the Moment of Social History to the Work of Cultural Representation." Pp. 3- 37. in Eley & Suny.

Readings:

• Anderson, Benedict. Anderson, Benedict. 1991 (1983). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso.

 
• Brubaker, Rogers. 1999. "Rethinking nationhood: nation as institutionalized form, practical category, contingent event." Pp. 13-22 in Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OR: in Contention: Debates in Society, Culture, & Science, 4, 1, fall, 3-14.

 
• Hroch, Miroslav. 1996. "From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe." Pp. 60-77. in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.) Becoming National. A Reader. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

 
• Smith, Anthony D. 1996. "The Origins of Nations. " Pp. 79-103. in Eley & Suny.

 
• Balibar, Etienne. 1996. "The Nation Form: History and Ideology." Pp. 132-48. in Eley & Suny.

Readings:

• McClintock, Anne. 1996. "'No Longer in a Future Heaven': Nationalism, Gender, and Race." Pp. 260-84 in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.) Becoming National. A Reader. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

 
• Stoler, Ann. 1996. "Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia." Pp. 286-323 in Eley & Suny.

 
• Hall, Stuart. 1996. "Ethnicity: Identity and Difference." 339-50. In Eley & Suny.

 
• Gilroy, Paul. 1996. "One Nation under a Grove: The Cultural Politics of 'Race' and Racism in Britain." Pp. 352-68 in Eley & Suny.

Readings:

• Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1999. "States? Sovereignty? The dilemmas of capitalists in an age of transition." Pp. 20-33 in Smith, David A., Dorothy J. Solinger and Stephen C. Topik (eds.) States and Sovereignty in the Global Economy. London and New York: Routledge.

 
• Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. "Globalization and sovereignty." Pp. 1-36. in Smith et al.

 
• Arrighi, Giovanni. 1999. "Globalization, state sovereignty, and the 'endless' accumulation of capital." Pp. 53-72 in Smith et al.

• Pomeranz, Kenneth. 1999. "Two worlds of trade, two worlds of empire: European state-making and industrialization in a Chinese mirror." Pp. 74-98 in Smith et al.

 
• Helleiner, Eric. 1999. "Sovereignty, territoriality, and the globalization of finance." Pp. 138-56 in Smith et al.

• Sassen, Saskia. 1999. "Embedding the global in the national: implications for the role of the state." Pp. 158-70 in Smith et al.

Readings:

• Anderson, Benedict. 1998. The Spectre of Comparisons. Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. London & New York: Verso. Only the following chapters:

• "Introduction." pp 1-28.
• "Nationalism, Identity, and the Logic of Seriality." pp. 29-45
• "Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings." pp 46-57
• "Long-Distance Nationalism." pp 58-76
• "El Malhadado País." pp 333-359
• "The Goodness of Nations." 360-368.

• Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. "Nationhood and the national question in the Soviet Union and its successor states: an institutionalist account." Pp. 23-54 in Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 
• Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. "National minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands in the New Europe." Pp. 55-77. in Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Readings:

• Frank, André Gunder. 1977. "Long Live Transideological Enterprise! The Socialist Economies in the Capitalist International Division of Labor." Review, 1, 1, summer, 91-140.

• Böröcz, József. 1992. "Dual Dependency and Property Vacuum: Social Change on the State Socialist Semiperiphery." Theory & Society, 21:77-104.

 
• Böröcz, József. 1992. "Dual Dependency and the Informalization of External Linkages: The Case of Hungary." Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 14:189-209.

 
• Böröcz, József. 1999. "From comprador state to auctioneer state: Property change, realignment, and peripheralization in post-state-socialist central and eastern Europe." 193-208 in Smith, David A., Dorothy J. Solinger and Stephen C. Topik (eds.) States and Sovereignty in the Global Economy. London and New York: Routledge.

 
• Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1999. "Social Science and the Communist Interlude, or Interpretations of Contemporary History." Pp. 7-18 in The End of the World As We Know It. Social Science for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.

Readings:

• Caygill, Howard. 1999. "The Futures of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz." pp. 25-54 in Alan Scott (ed.) The Limits of Globalization. Cases and arguments. London & New York: Routledge.

 
• Bowker, Mike. 1999. "Nationalism and the Fall of the USSR." Pp. 238-55 in Scott.

 
• Bodnár, Judit. 1998. "Assembling the Square: Social Transformation in Public Space and the Broken Mirage of the Second Economy in Postsocialist Budapest." Slavic Review, 57, 3(Fall): 489-515.

 
• Bodnár, Judit. 1998. "Art and Commerce as Logics of Budapest's New Public Spaces" in Hemalata C. Dandekar (ed.): City, Space and Globalization. An International Perspective. College of Architecture and Urban Planning. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Pp. 183-192.

 
• Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1999. "The ANC and South Africa: The Past and Future of Liberation Movements in the World-System." Pp.19-33 in The End of the World As We Know It. Social Science for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
  
  

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