Week 4 Discussion

Hi. HERE are the lecture slides for Theories and Concepts in Globalization Studies.

I enjoyed our discussion this afternoon; I hope that you did as well. I hope that we can extend it to this online SPACE. (Or is it a splace?)

Once again, here are the guide questions for this week:
1) Do processes of globalization render space and time differences insignificant? I.e., do we all experience space and time in the same manner?
2) Critically discuss the notion of non-places.
3) Do you agree with Anderson (1983) and Dayan and Katz (1992) that shared/simultaneous experiences through media integrate society?
4) Bonus: How can spaces become places? How can spaces become non-places?
5) Are online spaces (chatrooms, MMORPGs, websites) spaces, places, or non-places?

I wanted to show this ad in class, but we didn't have Internet connection (how ironic). I hope that you can comment on this ad (a 1994 ad for MCI, an Internet service provider in the US) in light of the concept of time-space compression (Harvey) and also the technological deterministic arguments.
For next week (July 13), please read MacDonald's Exploring Media Discourse (chapter 1) and (optional:) Van Dijk's New(s) Racism. Please bring newspaper articles or magazines or CDs/DVDs that contain interesting representations of nation, culture, race, and/or gender. For the students who will go on immersion on Friday, make sure that you have your friends take notes for you. The July 13 lecture is very important, especially for those doing case studies on representations. Furthermore our first quiz on Week 6 (July 20) will be a class presentation where students present an analysis of a global media text.