GLOBALIZATION AT A CROSSROADS: 
CRISIS, CONFLICT, & ‘COMMON SENSE’ IN A TIME OF REVOLT

Geography N20 – Summer 2015
University of California, Berkeley

Introduction: Crisis, Revolt, Rupture

In a globalized world, local problems have planetary consequences, and vice versa. The strikes, riots, occupations, and radical movements that erupted around the world in the last few years can be read as a ‘map’ of fault lines in our global political-­economic system, where mounting pressure from these instabilities can produce a rupture affecting the whole. Understanding how globalization works is now more important than ever, as the Eurozone crisis reaches this critical point. Greece’s referendum of July 5th, which delivered a clear “No” vote to the EU­‐mandated terms of the nation’s bailout agreement, highlights a fundamental political conflict at the heart of ‘free-­market’ globalization: Can the dictates of international finance override national democracy? Whereas Greece’s former ruling parties conceded as much, the ‘far-­left’ Syriza party owes its very existence to the possibility, and popular demand, for a different answer to this question. Like Spain’s Podemos, Syriza’s rise to power is a localized expression of the global wave of revolts that has swept the world since 2011. From the Arab Spring and Occupy to Greece, Gezi Park and beyond, revolt has become a defining feature of our current age: a globalized response to the global specter of economic, political, and ecological crisis that has also stalked the world since the great financial crash of 2008. 

Given this state of affairs, what do we make of ‘globalization’ today as a political, social, and economic paradigm for ordering our world? Is what we mean by ‘globalization’ the same as that which existed in 2007, before the financial crash? How was the suicide of a fruit seller in Tunisia able to spark a worldwide firestorm of protest? Are these protests a series of ‘isolated incidents’ – or do the twin themes of global crisis and revolt signal a kind of systemic breakdown, a ‘tipping point’ into an unknown and unpredictable future?

This course provides a world-historical overview of ‘globalization as we know it’ – the economic objectives, power relations, and socio-spatial relations that have structured our current global political-economic system – and poses it in the context of ‘globalization as we are experiencing it now,’ in terms of three fundamental questions:

• Is ‘globalization’ as we know it undergoing a crisis - both as an idea/paradigm for organizing the world, and as a lived reality?
• How did we end up here? What are the major factors – historical, social, cultural, economic, and spatial – that led to this current ‘conjuncture’ of crisis and revolt?
• What are the contours of the various crises and challenges facing globalized societies today? How have people responded so far, and what do their reactions tell us about their experiences of globalization? Is it possible to develop a different kind of ‘common sense’ for how we see the situation and respond to its challenges?

(PDF of full syllabus and reading list below)

LECTURE SLIDES

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WEEK 1 - Seeing the 'Elephant': Conceptualizing Globalization

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1.   Discourses of Globalization

2.   Globalization and its Discontents

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WEEK 2 - Globalizations before 'Globalization'

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 1.   Colonialism & Imperialism - Setting the Terms of the Global Economy

2.   World Wars to the Postwar Project - Bretton Woods & the Rise of Global Governance

3.   The Cold War, Decolonization & Development in the Third World

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WEEK 3 - Neoliberalism & the Rise of a 'Free Market' Regime

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1.   Neoliberalism and its Origins: The Chicago Boys Take Over the World

2.  Geographies of Neoliberal Capitalism I: Commodities, Capital, and the 'Hidden Fist'

3.   Geographies of Neoliberal Capitalism II: Labor in the New World Order

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WEEK 4 - Globalization's Fallout: Inequality & Crisis

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1.   Life and Debt: Global inequalities on human scales

2.   Megacities, Urban Poverty, Wageless Life, & Illicit Economies

3.   Anatomy of the Global Financial Crisis I: History & Theory of Capitalist Crises

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WEEK 5 - The World You Will Inherit - And Is Another One Possible?

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1.   Anatomy of the Global Financial Crisis II: From Wall Street to Shanghai

2.   Climate Change, Food, and the Future of Mother Earth

3.    Global Crisis, Global Revolt: Populists vs. Banksters in the USA, Eurozone & beyond