Unique in its approach, Understanding the Global Community examines both international issues and regional perspectives. The first half of the book explores overarching global themes, including American foreign policy, international security, humanitarian intervention, and the global economy. The second half addresses nationalism and its challenge to the development of a global community, with region-specific chapters focusing on historic and contemporary issues in China, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The "global community" is a term we take for granted today. But how did the global community, both as an idea and as a reality, originate and develop over time? This book examines this concept by looking at the emergence, growth, and activities of international organizations--both governmental and nongovernmental--from the end of the nineteenth century to today. Akira Iriye, one of this country's most preeminent historians, proposes a significant rereading of the history of the last fifty years, suggesting that the central influence on the international scene in this period was not the Cold War, but rather a deepening web of international interactions. This groundbreaking book, the first systematic study of international organizations by a historian, moves beyond the usual framework for studying international relations--politics, war, diplomacy, and other interstate affairs--as it traces the crucial role played by international organizations in determining the shape of the world today. Iriye's sweeping discussion of international organizations around the world examines multinational corporations, religious organizations, regional communities, transnational private associations, environmental organizations, and other groups to illuminate the evolution and meaning of the global community and global consciousness. While states have been preoccupied with their own national interests such as security and prestige, international organizations have been actively engaged in promoting cultural exchange, offering humanitarian assistance, extending developmental aid, protecting the environment, and championing human rights. In short, they have made important contributions to making the world a more interdependent and peaceful place. This book, tracing the development of the global community in a truly innovative way, will win a wide readership among those interested in understanding the growing phenomenon of globalization and its meaning for us today. Global Community is based on Iriye's Jefferson lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.

Education has long been viewed as a vehicle for building community. However, the critical role of education and schools for constructing community resistance is undermined by recent trends toward the centralization of educational policy-making (e.g. racial profiling new laws in the US—Arizona and Texas; No Child Left Behind and global racism), the normalization of “globalization” as a vehicle for the advancement of economic neo-liberalism and social hegemony, and the commodification of schooling in the service of corporate capitalism. Alternative visions of schooling are urgently needed to transform these dangerous trends so as to reconstruct public education as an emancipatory social project. Teaching for Global Community: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategies of the Oppressor examines these issues among related others as a way to honor and re-examine Freirean principles and aim to take critical pedagogy in new directions for a new generation. The goal is to build upon past accomplishments of Paulo Freire’s work and critical pedagogy while moving beyond its historical limitations. This includes efforts that revisit and re-evaluate established topics in the field or take on new areas of contestation. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation, broadly defined and from diverse geographical context, are addressed. The theoretical perspectives used to look at these emerge from critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, marxist and neo-marxist perspectives, social constructivism, comparative/international education, postmodernism indigenous perspectives, feminist theory, queer theory, poststructuralism, critical environmental studies, postcolonial studies, liberation theology, with a deep commitment to social justice.

"A person can be a part of one or many different communities, or even one big world community. Being part of a community allows us to make friendships and to work together to solve problems at home, at school, and in our cultures"--

Who is in a community? What types of communities are there? Where can we find communities? Read What Is a Community? to find out! Through stunning photographs and simple text, books in the Our Global Community series introduce children to elements of our global community. In What Is a Community?, children learn about the clothing, families, games, homes, markets, schools, music and farming techniques in communities around the world.

Health Sciences & Professions

The author introduces readers to the philosophical underpinnings of the "global community," while illuminating the international institutions that made such a community possible in the real world. (Politics & Government)