Please join us for the Transnational Studies Seminar on 18 March 2015 from 5:00-7:00 PM in 65/1177  when we will welcome Professor Caroline Knowles from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Globalisation on the Ground

This paper interrogates some of the intersections between work, globalisation and youth. It is based on empirical research following the trail of a pair of flip-flops from the oil fields of Kuwait, to petrochemical plants in South Korea, to production centres in SE China and to Ethiopia, the largest market for Chinese manufactured plastics where the trail ends on a landfill site outside of Addis. Focussing on three characters who appear along the trail – a Chinese factory worker, an Ethiopian smuggler and a ‘scratcher’ who reworks the Addis garbage – the paper proposes a reworking of globalisation for the opportunities for manoeuver its instabilities might provide for those who struggle in their own ways to navigate it.