In March 2012, Santa Monica College students, staff, and faculty, voted online to choose our annual Global Citizenship theme for 2012-13. The winning theme, receiving nearly one-third of the 765 votes cast, is:
The Global Citizenship Theme for 2012-13 is: Poverty and Wealth, Want and Waste - The Unevenness of Globalization
This was the fourth consecutive year that SMC Global Citizenship has presented an annual campuswide theme. These themes are incorporated into numerous classes, campus events, and extracurricular activities throughout the year, and everyone throughout the college is invited to interpret and explore the theme as a means of thinking and acting as global citizens. Here is how several SMC faculty have utilized this year's theme in their classes (opens in new window) .
As a further prompt to investigating the theme, here is how is was described on last spring's ballot:
Despite recent economic stagnation in Europe and North America, the last quarter century's rising tide of global affluence continues to transform human societies and natural environments. According to the UN's 2010 progress report (opens in new window) on the Millennium Development Goals (opens in new window) , the proportion of humanity living in extreme poverty soon will be just half of its 1990 levels, thanks largely to economic growth in emerging countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS (opens in new window) ). But the fight against poverty is far from over, and nearly one billion people worldwide continue to live on the equivalent of less than US$1.25 per day. This is but one indicator of how the wealth-generating effects of globalization have, so far at least, proven to be disproportionately concentrated on an elite global minority, leading to rising resentment among the "99 percent" who believe they are being left behind. Moreover, regardless of how the growing affluence yielded by globalization is distributed, it is tied to a modern economy built around mass consumption. How we manage our voracious demand for energy and other resources, and how we handle the large mountains and rivers of waste that our consumption yields, will go a long way in determining the fate of our species--and others--on planet Earth.
And here are just a few of the many, many questions that could be pursued under the theme--a list that is meant to be suggestive, rather than comprehensive:
- Is fighting poverty enough, or should humanity also take actions to promote economic equality, both within and between societies? And if so, what actions can most effectively and appropriately address the gaps between rich and poor?
- Do patterns of consumption merely reflect social-economic inequality, or does our consumption help to create that inequality, too?
- How do our consumption choices drive our demand for natural resources?
- How does our consumption help define and redefine our cultural identities, as well as our changing notions of the “good life”?
- Does a sober, dismal rhetoric of finite limits and growing ecological “footprints” push us more toward effective action, or instead toward paralyzed inaction or, worse still, counter-productive reaction? Would we be better served by conceptualizing a global “handprint” of hope and possibility?
- How do other species handle issues of want and waste? Is such evenness of resource use a natural part of life on Earth?
In addition to choosing their preferred theme for 2012-13, voters were asked in the spring to list books, films, or other resources that might be used in support of that theme. Here are their suggestions:
Recommended Readings
The following is the initial, preliminary list developed during the theme-selection process. A more complete bibliography can be found at our Goodreads site (opens in new window) .
- Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (opens in new window)
- Alison Brysk, Globalization and Human Rights (opens in new window)
- Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (opens in new window)
- Harm De Blij, The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape (opens in new window)
- William Easterly, The White Man's Burden (opens in new window)
- Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (opens in new window)
- Jacque Fresco, The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty & War (opens in new window)
- Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded (opens in new window)
- Tupelo Hassman, Girlchild: A Novel (opens in new window)
- Chi Cheng Huang, When Invisible Children Sing (opens in new window)
- Edward Humes, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash (opens in new window)
- David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else (opens in new window)
- Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (opens in new window)
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (opens in new window)
- Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (opens in new window)
- Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (opens in new window)
- David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (opens in new window)
- Ervin Laszlo, Chaos Point 2012 and Beyond: Appointment with Destiny (opens in new window)
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (opens in new window)
- Soon Ok Lee, Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman (opens in new window)
- Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World (opens in new window)
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (opens in new window)
- J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (opens in new window)
- Stephanie Mills, On Gandhi's Path (opens in new window)
- Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (opens in new window)
- George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (opens in new window)
- Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy (opens in new window)
- Ruby K. Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty (opens in new window)
- John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (opens in new window)
- Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (opens in new window)
- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (opens in new window)
- Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution (opens in new window)
- Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (opens in new window)
- Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (opens in new window)
- Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty (opens in new window)
- Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (opens in new window)
- Beth Shulman, The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans and Their Families (opens in new window)
- Phil Smith and Eric Thurman, A Billion Bootstraps (opens in new window)
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (opens in new window)
- Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work (opens in new window)
- Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (opens in new window)
- Latife Tekin, Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills (opens in new window)
- Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life (opens in new window)
- Pin Yathay, Stay Alive, My Son (opens in new window)
- Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (opens in new window)
- Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (opens in new window)
Recommended Viewing
- American Beauty (opens in new window) (1999)
- Babel (opens in new window) (2006)
- Beijing Bicycle (opens in new window) (2001)
- Being There (opens in new window) (1979)
- The Blind Side (opens in new window) (2009)
- Blood Diamond (opens in new window) (2006)
- Blue Gold: World Water Wars (opens in new window) (2008)
- Born Rich (opens in new window) (2003)
- Capitalism: A Love Story (opens in new window) (2009)
- Citizen Kane (opens in new window) (1941)
- City of God (opens in new window) (2002)
- The Client (opens in new window) (2004)
- Czech Dream (opens in new window) (2004)
- Dirt! The Movie (opens in new window) (2009)
- Dive! (opens in new window) (2010)
- The Edukators (opens in new window) (2004)
- El Norte (opens in new window) (1983)
- The End of Poverty? (opens in new window) (2008)
- Erin Brockovich (opens in new window) (2000)
- Flow (opens in new window) (2008)
- Food, Inc. (opens in new window) (2008)
- Garbage Dreams (opens in new window) (2009)
- Good Will Hunting (opens in new window) (1997)
- Homeless to Harvard (opens in new window) (2003)
- Hotel Rwanda (opens in new window) (2004)
- Kids of the Majestic (opens in new window) (2009)
- Life and Debt (opens in new window) (2001)
- Manufactured Landscapes (opens in new window) (2006)
- Night on Earth (opens in new window) (1991)
- Nostalgia for the Light (opens in new window) (2010)
- Notes on a Scandal (opens in new window) (2006)
- The One Percent (opens in new window) (2006)
- Precious (opens in new window) (2009)
- The Pursuit Of Happyness (opens in new window) (2006)
- Salt of the Earth (opens in new window) (1954)
- Sicko (opens in new window) (2007)
- Sin Nombre (opens in new window) (2009)
- Slumdog Millionaire (opens in new window) (2008)
- The Story of Stuff (opens in new window) (2007)
- Street Dreams (opens in new window) (2009)
- Super Size Me (opens in new window) (2004)
- The Talented Mr. Ripley (opens in new window) (1999)
- Trashed (opens in new window) (2007)
- Wall-E (opens in new window) (2008)
- Waste Land (opens in new window) (2010)
- What a Way to Go! (opens in new window) (1964)
Note: The complete vote count was as follows:
- Poverty and Wealth, Want and Waste, 234 votes (31%)
- Communication and Community, 192 (25%)
- The Search for Truth, 182 (24%)
- Migrations, 157 (20%)