SOCI 21900 - Globalization & Contemporary China

Course Credit: 1
(ANTH, CHIN, EAST)
GLOBALIZATION AND CONTEMPORARY CHINA We will explore the social causes and consequences of the economic, cultural, and social changes that China is undergoing today. In particular, the course situates the transformation of China within the larger context of globalization. The goal is to tease out global-local power dynamics and to debunk the presumed privilege of the global over the local under globalization. Following a roughly chronological order, we will focus mainly on events and trends of the past thirty years: from the social movements of 1989, to the economic expansion of the early 1990s, to the subsequent increase in social inequalities and injustice (e.g., migrants, the rural-urban divide, etc.), to emerging social activism (e.g., the environment, women’s rights, human rights, etc.) in various forms. Prerequisite(s): SOCI-10000; or permission of instructor Alternate Years. [C, D, GE, HSS]