GLOA 101 Students Find Globalization Embedded on Campus

GLOA 101: Introduction to Global Affairs is the keystone course for global affairs majors. In it, students explore economic, political, cultural, and environmental dimensions of globalization, discover how those dimensions affect their daily lives, and learn to recognize the evidence of globalization in the landscapes around them.

This semester in Dr. Studemeyer’s GLOA 101 classes, students completed “photovoice” projects for one of their assignments. Photovoice projects are exactly what they sound like— by writing an extended caption, the writer gives voice to the visible (and invisible) elements in the photograph. For their projects, Dr. Studemeyer’s students explored George Mason’s campus looking for how the processes of economic globalization are embedded in the campus landscape.

Student photographs featured a wide range of scenes. Christa Hart, for example, photographed an on-campus demonstration about transnational migration to the United States and wrote about the links between global economic processes and economic migration, observing that “many individuals participate in anti-Globalization movements” because they believe that “free market capitalism as it is currently implemented on a global scale does not have equal results.” Amine Elmissouab’s project focused on Starbucks and noted the banality of transnational corporations’ presence on Mason’s campus, writing that the coffee company’s $79 billion net worth rivals the economic power of some nation-states and is largely a result of the “connectedness and expansion into a global market through free trade and borderless markets.”

In GLOA 101, students connect concepts from the classroom with the real world, helping to “demystify” the processes and practices of a global and globalizing world and see how globalization functions in “everyday” spaces.

By Christa Hart

Christa Hart

by Amine Elimoussab

Amine Elimoussab