The Globalizing World (HU12001)
Module Convenor: Convenorship circulates; Lecturers are from Politics, History, English and Geography
Credit Rating: 20 SCQF credits
Level: Level 1 optional module
Module Content
The module explores the following key areas:
- The cold war world
- Decolonization
- Theories of post-colonialism and post-colonial culture
- Power in the post-cold war world order
- The processes of Globalization
- The United Nations system
- European integration
- New security challenges
- The emerging world economic order
Module Aims
The principal aims of the module are:
- To locate perceptions and experience of the post-1945 world in a comprehensible perspective.
- To highlight the connections between political, economic, social and cultural aspects of life in an increasingly “globalised” international environment.
- To make linkages between the major phenomena of post-1945 international politics (such as the cold war and decolonization)
- To highlight the growing importance of both inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations in the contemporary international system.
- To explore and evaluate the arguments surrounding the nature and extent of the process of globalization in the contemporary international system.
- To identify and explore competing historiographies of post-1945 world history.
Intended Learning Outcomes
Having successfully completed this module, students should have:
- A fundamental grasp of the nature and relative importance of the forces which have shaped the contemporary international system.
- An awareness of the linkages between political, social, economic and cultural phenomena in determining the nature of contemporary international relations.
- An understanding of the complex linkages between the “high politics” of state relations and the “low politics” of transnational movements in the contemporary international system.
- A competent grasp of the inter-relationships (political, economic and cultural) between the global North and the global South,
- A capacity to assimilate and evaluate contending theories of how and why the contemporary world has acquired its current economic, social and political forms.
- An enhanced sense of “international community” and his/her place within it.
Teaching
The module will be delivered through two weekly lectures over eleven weeks and one weekly seminar. Seminars will consist of structured tasks for group work and/or student presentations. Each week will explore a single distinctive theme within a broader sub-section of the module as a whole.
Assessment
- Source exercise: 10%
- Two essays: 15% x 2 = 30%
- Unseen exam (2 hours): 60%
Indicative Reading
- John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owen (eds), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, 4th ed. (OUP, 2008)
- Peter Calvocoressi, World Politics since 1945, 9th ed.(Pearson Longman, 2009)
del.icio.us
digg
reddit
facebook
stumbleupon