| Description: | "Globalization" has been a very popular term in recent years. Technological change, business strategies, cultural interactions and other aspects of human activity are occurring more and more on a planetary scale. The course aims at providing students with a basic understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon, by taking a historical approach covering the entire 20th century, and then focusing on the most recent political, social and economic processes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The course starts by defining the concept of globalization and then offers a brief but clear reconstruction of the trends towards globalization in previous phases of human history. It will then focus on specific questions: is economic globalization an inevitable phenomenon or, rather, a reversible one? Is economic globalization necessarily tied to western capitalism? Has globalization taken in the past, and could it take in the present, other forms than the laissez-faire capitalist one? What are the origins and the present role of global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank? What role is played by nation states? The conclusive part of the course will address specific issues that have been the subject of heavy debate in recent times, such as the "global protests" of the late 1990s, the relationship between globalization and poverty and that between globalization and global warming. |