III. Suggested activities for students:

1. In his book: “Globalization social theory and global culture” Roland Robertson talks about individuals and groups, but also whole communities and even nations, being “constrained to identify” with what he calls the “global circumstance”. He states that for a variety of reasons – a growing awareness of population issues, famine in Rwanda, the collapse of a currency in the face of intense speculation by the money markets or just watching a movie on TV – people develop a greater awareness of the world and a greater consciousness of the influence of global factors on the quality and conduct of everyday life. From your own perspective, could you identify any global factors which affect the way you live or does Robertson’s argument strike you as too simple?

2. Check out the web site of а non-governmental organization, such as Corporate Watch or the Institute for Policy Studies. What kinds of issues do they study? Which corpo­rations do they watch? Why? Is their criticism fair?

3. Using such resources as Forbes Magazine or Тhe Economist or their web sites, compile а list of the world's largest corporations and а list of their total sales. Using the resources of the World Bank, find а list of the gross product of the countries of the world in rank order. Compare the two lists and compile а list of the 10 wealthiest entities in the world. Of these top 10, how many are countries and how many are corporations? From the list of 100 you compile, which names are most familiar to you? Research more about recent mergers among large corporations. What effect have these mergers had on the wealth of these new corporate entities?

4. Choose а company that makes а product that you have at home. Find out more about the company, the location of its headquarters and other important locations, the products it makes, its history and growth. Check its web site to see if it has а corpo­rate code of conduct. Does it explicitly protect the environment, workers' rights and Human rights?

5. Make an informal survey of objects in your home to determine where they were made. See what items are made where. Or select а meal and list all the components of that meal. Where does each component come from? Or take а walk down the food aisle of а local supermarket. Look at the labels and find out the geographic origin of each prod­uct on the shelves. What conclusions can you draw?

6. What sort of effects might follow from the removal of spatial and temporal barriers to personal and other sorts of relationships?

IV. Comment on the following quotations:

• Globalization is a complex process which moves to no unique logic nor to unstoppable laws of history (Barrie Axford)

• In this globalized world, fewer and fewer problems affect only individual countries, and they certainly cannot be solved by individual countries acting alone (Kofi Annan)

• We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization. (Peter L. Berger)

• The process of globalization problematises aspects of political and other areas of social life previously taken for granted (David Held)

• The greatest challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes а positive force for all the world's people, instead of leaving billions of them behind in squalor. (Kofi Annan)

• What is globalization? The short answer is that globalization is the integration of everything with everything else. (Thomas Friedman)