UPCOMING GRADUATE SEMINAR
SOCIOLOGY 580
COLONIALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, GLOBALIZATION:
DECOLONIZING THE ANTHROPOCENE
This course examines the world scale process of social change called globalization from its two convergent manifestations. On the one hand, drawing on a world system perspective, the course examines how the globalization of the capitalist mode of social reproduction has given rise to a series of world systemic social crises: social inequality, hunger, conflict, oppression, debt peonage, unemployment, a myriad threats to human health all amidst unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power among transnationally linked social elites. On the other hand, drawing on a world ecology perspective, the course examines the global-local ecological degradations and dangers characteristic of our era. We examine the reasons for thinking that there is a systemic relationship between global social crises and global ecological crises of various kinds and set out to develop a theoretical framework able to comprehend this systemic convergence and generate guiding ideas for social movement engagement with these global crises.
Some of the key concepts and ideas we explore in depth include crisis, the commons, enclosures, ecology, environment, contradiction, accumulation, labour, reproduction, labour, capital, praxes, decolonizing sociology, subalternization, reification and dialectical skepticism. Some of the major crises we examine include those of war, refugees, hunger, poverty, debt, food, agriculture, deforestation, desertification, water scarcity, unemployment, urban degradation, toxic bodies, ocean death and especially carbon based energy dependence and climate change.
For details contact me at: sourayan@ualberta.ca