Hi - I'm teaching this course as an adjunct/replacement; the description covers
racism, feminism, queer theory, religious factionalism, the shrinking planet,
and so forth - more or less of a grab-bag. I want to emphasize the global
aspect. For reading materials, I'm hoping to use Ryan's Culture Studies: An
Anthology (as background), and all sorts of online materials (as foreground).
The approach will be less theory and more description, etc. than usually the
case (perhaps). Anyway, below is a description of the first two classes'
material, which is designed to create a kind of backdrop; it's divided into
'Picture' and 'Framework' - the former, a rough description of global issues,
etc.; and the latter, a close division emphasizing theory, practice, and
example. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated, including URLs of relevant
sites.
Thanks greatly, Alan
Notes for course on 'cross-cultural human relations':
PICTURE and FRAMEWORK
PICTURE:
EXPONENTIAL, SINUSOIDAL, and LINEAR models:
CATASTROPHE THEORY:
The UNIVERSAL and the CASE:
Global resources: ecological constraints: water, territory, food,
climate, population.
Group resources: cultural inhibitions, identifications.
Carrying-capacity of earth: EXPONTENTIAL POPULATION INCREASE.
Wars and their causes, increased weaponry, numbers and power.
Expansion gap between haves and have-nots: enclaves, gangs, 'rogue states,' and
shifting territories.
FRAMEWORK:
Heredity and environment: entangled (Waddington's chreod).
Essentialism and 'choice': what is taken as a given in human experience.
Prosthetic technologies: transformations of essentialism.
Identifications, a-identifications, non-identifications, issues of -
tolerance, prejudice, advocacy, all the way up and down.
Projections and introjections.
Purity and abjections.
What are the cultural and political manifestations?)
Race (how defined, how divided, how is it culturally and
biologically manifest, what sorts of groups are created?)
'Traditional' male/female divisions: political and biological issues
(wage, pregnancy, life-span, crime, socio-cultural issues).
Cross-gendered, trans-gendered, gays, lesbians, heterosexuals: queer theory.
Religious divisions: issues of inerrancy, truth, world-view.
Subcultures: punk and other divisions.
Class and caste divisions: related to economic divisions.
Cultural and economic capital (Bourdieu, Distinction).
Age divisions (individual and national/international demographics).
National divisions.
Bias, stigma, bullying: symptomology and theory.
Sociobiology, anyone?
History and historiography of divisions, individual and group memory.
Technological capital increasingly important.
Related to technological capital: information/communications capital.
Related to all of the above: attention economy.
Can one speak of an entertainment economy?
Global culture identifications: Michael Jackson, football (soccer), etc.
-- Their relation to corporate production and local cultures. (Think of
radio/television in this regard.)
Splintering of identifications online: Youtube or Facebook for examples.
Hardening of identifications online: Stormfront, jihad sites, political
blogs.
Animals: extinctions, bushmeat, starvation, habitat shrinking, disturbed
systems ('extreme' sports etc.).
How are all of the above entangled/interrelated?
Ecological constraints: the carrying-capacity of the earth, limited
resources (water, energy, food, shelter, transportation, medical care,
wilderness, changing climate, pollutions, extinctions, etc.).
Labor force. (Slave, wage, surplus, global, etc.)
What are the lines here?
1. Ecological constraints.
2. Inherent identifications: sexual?, health, age, race?
(What constitutes inherency?)
3. Cultural and territorial identifications: subcultures, religious,
national, global: ~~ selves and others.
(Primatological, psychoanalytical, sociobiological explanations.)
4. ECONOMIC and SYMBOLIC CAPITAL.
Think of a playing-field of continuously-changing structures, virtual-
particle vacuum.
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