Sociology 265j, Global Inequality

Winter 2004 Thursday 4-7

College Building South- Map Room C. Chase-Dunn

Suggested topics for Five-Page Essay

The five-page essay should use readings and seminar discussions from the course to address a question or problem that is germane to the study of global inequalities and global social change. The five-page essay is due in class on March 18. A one-paragraph description of the essay topic is due on February 19. You may propose your own topic or select from the suggested topics listed below. One or more of these could be combined.

1. Discuss the idea of peripheral capitalism as commodity production using coerced labor.
2. Describe and critique the hypothesis of semiperipheral development as presented in Chapter 2 of Social Change.
3. Discuss and compare the idea of class structures with the idea of core/periphery relations.
4. Discuss and criticize the idea of a global stage of capitalism.
5. Discuss and compare the different definitions of globalization.
6. Discuss the prospects and difficulties of organizing transnational social movements and coordinating the activities of these movements to democratize global governance.
7. Describe and critique the idea that capitalism and socialism have challenged and responded to one another over the past 200 years.
8. Discuss the idea that semiperipheral democratic socialist parties will be an important component of the challenge to capitalist globalization in the next few decades. What are the implications of recent developments in Brazil and Cancun for this hypothesis?

9. Discuss and critique Stephen Gills’s notion of the post-modern Prince.