Chapter 1: Getting Your Global Bearings: Navigating the World
Chapter Overview
Chapter 1 provides a foundation to basic concepts and vocabulary that will be used throughout the text and clarifies the importance of international studies to understand and engage in a more globally connected society. In order to study the world, we may characterize the international system as having geographic, political, economic, social, and cultural borders, each of which focus on a different unit of analysis and are related to academic fields of study. Globalization is a paradigm that describes the causes and effects of increased cross-border interactions. This chapter discusses how globalization has benefited or harmed people around the world as well as the emergence of global issues that transcend state boundaries and require a collective response. Lastly, this chapter introduces the concept of the global citizen as a critical new perspective in thinking about the world and the issues we face together in the 21st century.
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
· Define the field of international studies.
· Describe the different kinds of borders that shape our understanding of the modern world and identify their main units of analysis.
· Understand the different stages of globalization.
· Explain the pros and cons of globalization.
· Explain the concept of citizenship and how it has changed over time.
Lecture Outline
What are international studies?
· International studies is . . .
· A field of inquiry that examines human relationships that involve cross-border interactions
· A growing field of study
· Multidisciplinary
· What fields of inquiry do international studies draw upon?
· What are the borders that shape our understanding of the world?
· The five borders
· Five types of borders: Geographic, political, economic, social, and cultural
· Their units of analysis: Physical earth, states, markets, class, and nations
· Their primary academic field of study: Geography, political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology
· Geographic borders
· Physical world
· How and where humans have settled and the degree to which they interact with one another
· Political borders
· Governing entities
· Distinguished on the basis of territory, population, governments, and recognition by others
· Economic borders
· Markets that promote the exchange of goods and services
· Social borders
· Class divisions
· Formed by inequality of opportunity
· Cultural borders
· Nations
· Form identities in terms of language, religion, ethnicity, or a common historical experience
·
What is globalization?
· Globalization is . . .
· Political, economic, social, and cultural flows across the international system
· Includes a broad range of interactions
· Other perspectives: Hyperglobalization . . .
· Emphasizes the progressive erosion of the borders that have differentia...
