Global Studies—The Handmaiden of Neoliberalism?

Abstract

The field of global studies has gained momentum over the past 20 years and today occupies a significant presence within many universities. As a result, there is now a burgeoning array of institutional support for global studies scholarship. Perhaps not surprisingly, concurrent to such institution-building there has been a spate of essays engaged with the question ‘what is global studies?’ that have promoted lively debate and commentary. In this essay, I ask a rather different question which is ‘who gets to define global studies, and what is at stake in these kinds of delineating efforts?’ I argue that debate about global studies demands the inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives from around the world. I conclude by urging global studies scholars to be deliberately conscious of their taken-for-granted assumptions with respect to power and the related capacity to speak for others from the global south and east who are largely still absent in defining this new field of inquiry.     

Shhh … The Teacher Should Be Silent: Critical Review of Social Studies As New Literacies in a Global Society

The humanistic nature of social studies education ensures that its related curriculum exists in a consistently contested terrain among educators, governing bodies, and the community at large. As our ability to investigate and interact with societies widens in scope and complexity, so too does the curriculum debate. To add to the complexity, social studies classes must now navigate through an increasingly technological world where some origins of knowledge are becoming more and more accessible, while others are becoming more and more silenced. Mark Baildon and James S. Damico's recent book Social Studies As New Literacies in a Global Society (2011) discusses potential answers to the ongoing questions of how to teach social studies in a twenty-first-century classroom. Although the book identifies the need for students to question sources of knowledge and the construction of knowledge itself, it falls short in the actual naming and deconstructing of the hegemonic frameworks of power that are prevalent within the sources and curriculum approaches that the students come into contact with.     

A Herdswoman Awarded with Global Medal

SEPTEMBER 8, 1995 was an unforgettable day for Lai Xiao. On that morning, she was awarded with the "Global Rural Women Creation of Life Award" by the NGO Forum of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, in Huairou, Beijing. Wearing sapphire-blue Mongolian attire,     

Women's Studies Enters New Period

Moving Into a Decision-Making Period Redefining gender relationships in terms of scientific research, and scientifically determining the influence women have on social decision-making forces is a new subject in women's studies since the 1980s in China. Channels enabling women to participate in decision-making processes have grown significantly. Women's studies organizations and specialists in the field directly participate in government decision-making processes. The promulgation and     

An Ontological Turn for Childhood Studies?

The so‐called ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences has brought with it yet another layer of theoretical concerns, except that this time the interest is in ontology rather than epistemology. New materialist thinking which has emerged in recent years promises to rethink the task of social theory in ways that circumvent modernist dualisms. In this paper, I explore what this might entail for childhood studies. What might such an ontological shift which emphasises among others relationality, connectedness and materiality mean for the further development of childhood studies? How would a decentring of children and the field's overpowering concerns for studying children's perspectives/voices/standpoints help rethink childhood studies and its remit? How, in short, would a shift from the child as an independent unit of analysis and of childhood as a categorical identity to a new ontology of emerging phenomena which implicate children, adults and non‐human forces affect the field's direction in the future?     

Tianjin Normal University Establishes Women's Studies Center

IN July, 1993, an international seminar titled "Chinese Women and Development—Status, Health and Employment" was sponsored by the Women's Studies Center at Tianjin Normal University. More than 100 international and domestic specialists and workers who deal with women's issues attended. At the conference, the Women's Research Institute of the All-China Women's Federation disclosed the results of an investigation about the status of women in China, which was launched in the early 1990s on a nationwide scale. The results showed that China's economic reform has greatly affected women. As a result, many researchers who began their research by considering China's present economic situation, tried to determine the influences the state's