INR2000 Issues in a Globalizing World (FOART)

Semester 1 (ONC)Toowoomba (EXT)Toowoomba

Units 1.0 (Human Geography) Band 1

Synopsis

This course, which follows on from courses INR1000 and INR1001 ("International Relations in a Globalizing Era" and "Global Transitions and Human Security") offered in year one, is one of the required courses in the International Relations Major and the International Relations Option Studies program in the Bachelor of Arts program. First, the course very briefly reviews the historical dimensions and contending analytical perspectives on international relations, with an emphasis on processes of globalization. Secondly, it explores the foreign policy perspectives of key regional and global actors. And, third, it puts the fore-mentioned into an international relations framework with a particular focus on Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. It encourages students to apply such analytical perspectives through the exploration of a number of specific key issues that pertain to a variety of communities at various levels of the global system. Students are then assigned a more concrete contemporary issue project for analytical study and, where practicable, group interaction so as to achieve a fuller understanding about the relevance of such key issues to their lives and to Australian communities. Due attention is given to both the ramifications that such key issues have for Australia domestically as well as their linkage to the pressing concerns of humanity more broadly.