Reading: Chirot, Social Change in the Modern Era, pp. 97-105 (article)
Nietschmann, "When the Turtle Collapses, the World Ends" (article)
Steiner, "The Trade in West African Art" (article)
Watson, "McDonald's in Hong Kong"
Wilk, "Learning to Be Local in Belize"

1. According to Chirot, what were the characteristics of core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral countries during the first decade of the 20th century? What made a society peripheral, and why was it hard for such a society to develop?

2. How has the expansion of a world market for turtles transformed Miskito economic, cultural, and social life? How does the turtle market exemplify the problems of primary export products discussed by Chirot?

3. How are the traders studied by Steiner exchanging both objects and information? How do the objects become commodities? What notions of authenticity and art are involved?

4. Watson asserts that "In Hong Kong...the transnational is the local" (80). What does he mean by this? Does McDonald's promote cultural homogeneity or heterogeneity?

5. What does Wilk mean by "structures of common difference"? How have people in Belize learned to be local? What role do beauty contests play in this process?

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu