My first encounter with Richard Florida was in a Global Studies (Cities and Globalization) class taken at St. Lawrence University. Even though his ideas came across to me as “elitist” and “naïve”, I did not completely disregard his theories. Since then Richard Florida has been at the back of my mind, and I have tried my best to keep my “eyes” and “ears” open to anything that will assist me

For many Shanghai fits into the category of an international cosmopolis. However abiding by strict definition of Saskia Sassen's concept of the “global city”, Shanghai still has a long way to go. The economic reforms of 1978 allowed Shanghai to grow and regain its significance as a major coastal city with links to different parts of the world. Yet, it is still not a “global city” with world wide economic, cultural and symbolic roles. This is to say that it is not on par with the favored few megacities of the world - New York, London and Tokyo.

September so far has been an exciting month! For all the environmental freaks out there and any other concerned responsible citizen of the world who cares enough to care.

On September 22nd, leaders from 100 different nations, civil society groups and activists gathered at the United Nations grounds in New York city to participate in the United Nations Climate Summit.

The headline that grabbed my attention today was about sex workers in India.  The front page of the Chennai edition of the Times of India reads:

“ Sex workers Warn of Poll Boycotts”

I have been reading up on the issue of sex workers and have been aware of the unionization of sex workers in Calcutta, but I do have to admit that this headline did catch me off guard. To give you an idea, the article mentioned here talks about how sex workers belonging to IPEC (Indira Peer Educators Collective) in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has put up a charter of demand in front of political parties.

On April 16th, the African Student Union (ASU) hosted a panel to discuss whether European nations should pay reparations to Africa for Slavery and Colonialism. The panel consisted of professors (Dr. Abye Assefa from the Sociology Department, Dr. Matthew Carotenuto & Dr. Elun Gabriel from the History Department) and students (Bupe Mazimba- Zambia & Francis Ndagijeimana – Uganda).

On March 30th 2009, Dr. Ronnie Olesker spoke at the Contemporary Issues Forum at St. Lawrence University. The topic of her speech was, “ One Land: Three Peoples. Future Prospects for Jewish-Arab- Palestinian Relations in Israel”.

 An interesting short clip by Al Jazeera on the G20 summit.

Found this very interesting article on BBC about how groups and individuals alike around the world are trying to use media technology in all sorts of creative ways to provide a wide range of content about the ongoing G20 summit.

While there is a lot of coverage in the news about the effects of the global economic crisis on the United States and other industrial nations, the coverage of how this crisis is affecting the developing nations is minimal.

I came across this very interesting survey conducted by the BBC World Service on people’s responses to the current global economic crisis and the steps they deem necessary in order to come out of the crisis and to ensure that this does not happen again.  This survey included responses of people from 29 different countries.

“Many politicians’ response to the looming catastrophe, however, beggars belief. Playing a reckless game of chicken with Mother Nature, they prefer to deny, squabble and procrastinate rather than heed the words of those who know best…. Spearheaded by a switch from oil to 100% renewable energy production within a decade, the Maldives will no longer be a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.”

There is no doubt that hard times have fallen on us. While the United States reported a national unemployment rate of 8.1% for the month of February, foreclosures are increasing and economic activity has declined all over the world.

There has been a lot of frenzy in the air recently about the decline of the print media. An article in the Washington Post reported the closing down of the 150 year old newspaper in Denver the Rocky Mountain News. The Post also fear that dailies such as the San Francisco Chronicle might close leaving the San Francisco bay area without a major newspaper.

Does the media cover stories of civilian solidarity, such as stories about social movements differently compared to those stories with vested economic and political interests. Or is there a difference in how much coverage that both of these stories get in the media?

This was a question that I was curious about, and decided to do a simple and quick analysis.

I specifically wanted to compare how much coverage the World Social Forum of 2009 got in comparison to the World Economic Forum of 2009.

I found the speech, “Settler Colonialism and Its Discontents: Why Palestine Matters So Much” by Dr. John Collins at the Contemporary Issues Forum to be an interesting speech that not only covered the Palestine- Israel conflict in light of a rich analytical model- settler colonialism, but also helped us understand the nature of settler colonialism by making comparisons to examples of settler-colonial states around the world

Slumdog Millionaire is an award winning independent movie by director Danny Boyle. A rags-to-riches movie based on the story of a boy born and raised in the slums of Mumbai, this movie is one that depicts the harsh realities of slum life in big cities such as Mumbai.

"What exactly is development?"

As an economics and global studies major, this is a question that I have been grappling with for some time now.  The need to define "development" and know its identifying features become even more relevant in a global world, where everyone and everything is connected.

One of the things that I was worried about with the new democratically elected coalition government in Maldives was certain apathy from civilians and other groups, networks and activists that had continuously criticized and scrutinized the former government.  What came out of Mr. Maumoon's thirty-year-old repressive regime and the legal right to organize politically is a rather politically

The 21^st century is an era of conflicting dichotomies. While the global market place and the time space compression of this era offers endless opportunities for many, some are left behind and marginalized. The fact remains that neoliberal globalization today is characterized by an increasing desire to impose market rule on all aspects of social life. In his book, Evil Paradises: Dream Worlds of Neo-liberalism, Mike Davis define neo-liberalism as the “outgrowth of the global counter revolution against social citizenship”. Thus neo-liberalism and neo-liberal globalization in general is a process that not only undermines and oppresses the civil society, but also curbs democracy, human rights, women’s rights and environmentalism. 

Taking a class about neo-liberalism and its aftermath, and reading Mike Davis’s recent book, Evil Paradises; Dream Worlds of Neo-liberalism I couldn’t avoid but think about some of the prime examples of neo-liberalism in the country that I was born raised. 

The first multi party elections ever in the history of the Maldives took place last November. Even though this small island nation of 300,000 people gained independence from the British in 1965, the journey to become a democratic nation has been slow and sidelined. Political parties were banned in the country until 2005, and the now former president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled the country for 30 years. Allowing for the existence of political parties and the first multi-party elections is one of the many things that came about due to a reform process that was initiated in 2005, following a number of riots and protests.