Hi Alan,
Reading your list, I would think that it would be enough for a whole
semester. Personally, I would hesitate in offering them too much so soon.
I would rather put in place functions which are more based around,
reflecting a dialogue around their collectively 'earned' knowledge and
experiences.
Encourage the students to earn this valuable 'given' knowledge - and be
wary of filling them up with an awful lot of information that they may
not contextually know how to enable themselves with - step by step
awareness.
In respect of my own experience when teaching - supporting, advising,
and sharing information with students is one of the most important
aspects of connecting with others. Understanding and respecting their
own ideas and circumstances, thus expanding one's own knowledge base in
making authentic and relational dialogues, mutually with them. If they
can pratically use the information that you propose, then they will show
how they can use it as well as declare through their activities how much
they actually understand, hopefully reflecting their own contexts mixed
with your own teachings. A kind of critical and pragmatic engagement
through their experience, will inform all involved how to succeed and
fail when using/exploiting received knowledge with others - a valuable
learning curve. I would also allow space for personal responsibility and
human context, what it means and what effect they have on others from
their future actions and interactions with networked technologies - why
it exists politically, socially and creatively. As soon as anyone is
informed of anything it changes their own position, but without
knowledge and responsibilities of why and how to use it, they are merely
drones following mannerisms rather being empowered, in understanding the
bigger picture.
wishing you well.
marc
> > 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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