Kursinformation

Description

How do people form globally interconnected communities? What are the reasons that in some social

and organizational fields, e.g., NGOs or public policy, labor practices look increasingly the same

across the world in spite of major cultural and historical difference that otherwise mark different

countries? What prevents convergence in other fields, e.g., healthcare and medicine? What are the

conditions under which objects, technologies, ideas and people travel from place to place? And

what social effects do they produce in new environments? This course introduces students to

sociological theories, approaches and empirical studies on globalization. We will specifically focus

on questions of cultural globalization in the fields of medicine, humanitarianism and Global Health.

Global Health is a paradigmatic phenomenon of global studies. As a field of transnational practice,

it asks about the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape people´s health and

access to health care.

The recent COVID-19 disease outbreak gives new empirical insights into Global Health

governance, controversies, and social dynamics. The COVID-19 crisis is a product of global

circulations, but responses to the pandemic are also constrained by imaginaries of globalization.

The COVID-19 pandemic thus invites us to newly reflect about how the way in which Global

Health is territorialized. The pandemic highlights the precariousness of health systems as well as the

structural violence that exacerbates vulnerability.