Globalization is both the process and product of rapid, widespread social change. It has us eating sushi and mashed lentils, watching films made by Nicaraguan fishermen, exporting U.S. higher education, reading Portuguese fashion mags, buying sneaks made in sweatshops in Ho Chi Minh City, entertaining Sudanese entrepreneurs and hunkering down to learn new critical languages: Malaysian and Hindi.

For those sloshing around helplessly in the ideological blender, help is on the way. The Department of Sociology in the Spring 1998 semester will offer a new graduate seminar, "Special Topics: Globalization" (SOC 593). Taught by Christopher Mele, assistant professor, and Mark Gottdiener, professor and department chair, the course will offer a critical examination of globalization as a central feature of social change in the late 20th century.

The seminar will interest students across a broad range of disciplines, since globalization has changed nearly every field of study, not to mention the lives of many millions of individuals in all but the most isolated cultures on earth. Seminar participants will survey current literature related to globalization as a set of economic, social, cultural and political processes. They also will look at how global processes transform regions and communities here and abroad.

Perhaps especially critical to the understanding of globalization is the relationship between globalization and the formation of social identities. Mele's students will explore this issue and the forms of collective action and resistance to which globalization has given rise.

The course (No. 173818) will be taught from 9-11:40 a.m. on Fridays. For information, call 645-2417.