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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Impact of Technology — Global Perspectives Individual Report

Global Perspectives Individual Report

• Categories: Impact of Technology Progress

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Published: Jan 15, 2019

Words: 637 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Einstein, A. (1952). Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. Journal of Technology Critique, 10(3), 45-57.
• Ellul, J. (1978). The irresistible and menacing force of technology. Sociological Perspectives, 25(2), 87-99.
• Johnson, R. S. (2016). The negative impacts of gaming technology. Journal of Digital Society, 32(4), 201-215.
• Keller, M. L., & Thompson, L. A. (2009). Examining the role of technology in changing human outlook. Technology and Society Review, 18(3), 156-168.
• McMillan, C. D., & Simmons, J. M. (2010). Critiques of technological advancements: A global perspective. Global Perspectives Quarterly, 45(2), 112-127.
• Roberts, H. A., & Watson, B. R. (2012). Assessing the reliability of technology in the digital world. Journal of Technological Studies, 30(4), 201-215.
• Thompson, M. J., & Davis, K. L. (2014). Media portrayal of the impact of technology on youth. Journal of Media and Communication Studies, 40(3), 123-137.
• Williams, P. R., & Lewis, S. G. (2006). The role of technology companies in shaping society. Journal of Social Impact, 24(3), 112-127.
• Young, A. J., & Mitchell, E. R. (2019). The influence of technology on communication patterns. Journal of Communication Studies, 48(1), 35-49.
• Zeng, H., & Li, W. (2021). Exploring the limits of technological advancements. Journal of Global Technology, 52(2), 78-92.

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Content structure, the way forward, introducing global perspectives: an editorial essay.

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Helmut K. Anheier , Payal Arora , Thomas Biersteker , Miguel A. Centeno , Sara Curran , Dirk Messner , Hagen Schulz-Forberg , J. P. Singh; Introducing Global Perspectives: An Editorial Essay. Global Perspectives 11 May 2020; 1 (1): 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.11777

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Global Perspectives is a new journal for the social sciences: online only, peer reviewed, inter- and transdisciplinary, and taking advantage of the multimedia publishing opportunities presented for academic journals today. Global Perspectives seeks to advance contemporary social science research and debates, specifically in terms of concepts, theories, methodologies, and evidence bases. Global Perspectives is devoted to the study of patterns and developments in fields such as trade and markets; security and conflicts; communication and media; justice systems and the law; governance and regulation; cultural spheres, values, and identities; environmental issues and sustainability; technology-society interfaces; and societal changes and social structures, among others.

More generally, Global Perspectives is open to the whole thematic range of the social sciences, and in particular those phenomena that are no longer located neatly within established geographical or national boundaries, if they ever were. After several decades of globalization, many facts, trends, or relations that were seemingly more or less contained within nation-states, societies, or regions now increasingly cross borders and show significant degrees of “in-betweenness.” Units of analysis are both overlapping and embedded in each other. The concepts and empirical bases needed for a profound understanding of financial flows, climate change, intellectual property rights, technological advances, or migration flows are just some examples that illustrate the complexity of the research task ahead.

Global Perspectives is also interested in conceptual and empirical approaches that go beyond established disciplinary boundaries. From their common origins in the moral political economies of the eighteenth century, the modern social sciences are now in their second century. They have become a global enterprise with millions of researchers and many more students. As a product of the Enlightenment and modernity, they have been significantly shaped by national interests, changing higher education policies, and numerous attempts at professional and political control. When the various disciplines emerged in earnest from the late nineteenth century onward, they were closer to each other than they are now, and the borderlines between what is today regarded as science, social science, and the humanities were more fluid. The often unsettled positions of psychology, history, anthropology, geography, and legal studies are cases in point.

Arguably, economics, political science, and sociology have become the three “pillar” disciplines, with others straddling the science–social science (anthropology, geography, psychology) or the social science–humanities border (history). The rather fluid division of labor proved highly beneficial, especially during their founding periods, and ushered in what could broadly be called the age of the classics. Towering figures—from Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim to Vilfredo Pareto, and from Max and Alfred Weber, John Maynard Keynes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Theodor Adorno, and Hannah Arendt to Karl Popper —combined and indeed represented multiple disciplines. Others, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Ali Mazrui, added valuable and challenging perspectives, even though they were not social scientists as such.

In essence, the age of the classics, ranging from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, was a highly productive period that laid the foundation of contemporary social science. Even today, with the various disciplines having grown rapidly—as well as further apart—some of the most innovative works come from scholars that cross or combine disciplinary perspectives: Elinor Ostrom (political science), Harrison White (sociology), Michael Spence (economics), Mary Douglas (anthropology), Allen Scott (geography), and Edward Said (cultural studies) are cases in point.

We do not argue that the disciplinary setup of the social sciences needs some fundamental rethinking or revision. Nor do we seek to take away from disciplinary discourses. Rather, we wish to provide spaces for works that do not fit easily into established disciplinary frameworks and that, precisely because of this, may harbor important new insights and innovative potential. Opening up and nurturing such opportunities is a core concern of Global Perspectives. It will be no easy task, as it runs up against the deeply entrenched, historically contingent constructs that are increasingly recognized limitations of the social sciences, among them the emergence of strong disciplinary boundaries, methodological nationalism, and unsolved normative issues.

Disciplinary silos have been extensively criticized—for example, by Wallerstein (2003) when he puts forth the forceful argument that the social construction of the disciplines as intellectual arenas has outlived its usefulness. Yet calls for more interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity probably date back to the very time when the intellectual arenas were carved up, signaling persistent tensions that were mostly in favor of the disciplines as they assumed professional control.

Nonetheless, we suggest that more and more of what Stirling (2015) identifies as “nexus-related” challenges are emerging. By these he means compounded issues such as climate change, inequality, resource scarcity, digital transformations, or migration, which demand scholarly analysis of an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary nature. Inattention to these nexus-related issues can lead to failures, especially when singular disciplines fail to see the more multifaceted nature of the issues at hand. The global financial crisis is a case in point. Following the crisis, many observers demanded to know why few had predicted it. In 2009 Queen Elizabeth II asked an audience of economists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, if the crisis was so large and obvious in retrospect, “why did nobody notice it?” In the wake of the crisis, dozens of articles were published, mostly by economists to attempt to excuse themselves for their predictive errors (Rivas and Perez-Quiros 2015, 534-36) .

Nonetheless, the meaning and extent of how the various social science disciplines are to cooperate remains unclear, even contested. Despite his critique above, Wallerstein (2008) later discouraged multi-disciplinary approaches and spoke in in favor of boundaries of the traditional disciplinary boundaries as they make distinct contribution to an overall social science enterprise. Wallerstein seems to miss that this pattern is well established already, and specialties like gender, ethnicity, developmental, peace, and, indeed, global studies have contributed significantly to our understanding of society. What is missing, though, is a strong feedback loop from the specialties to the main social science disciplines. As a result, they remain somewhat isolated from the social science mainstream.

This relative isolation of interdisciplinary specialties also means that the social sciences are surrounded by weakly integrated fields in a hierarchical arrangement. This configuration has to be seen in the context of Burawoy’s (2013, 7) point, arguing that interdisciplinarity can be “dangerous to weaker, critical disciplines since it can become the Trojan horse for the dissolution of particular disciplines by bringing them into a hierarchical relation with more powerful disciplines.” In other words, the social sciences today are less of an open and level playing field than they were in the past.

In addition to disciplinary divisions, the issue of methodological nationalism remains a key feature of debates around the state of the social sciences. Wimmer and Schiller (2002, 301) describe this as “the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world.” They lay out the fundamental implication of this assumption when they point to the state of the debate: “Where there were fixed boundaries, everything is now equally and immediately interconnected. Structures are replaced with fluidity. Being sedentary is replaced with movement. . . . The territorial boundedness of analysis has been overcome by a spiralling rhetoric of deterritorialization and delocalization” (326). Clearly, complex dualities are at work, and to Sassen (2010) the global—as institution, process, practice, or imagery—emerges and operates in the framing of national states while at the same time transcending it. Put differently, globalization both defies, and is shaped by, the nation-state.

Reviewing the history of the social sciences, Chernilo (2011, 99) suggests that “methodological nationalism is seen as a result of the historical formation of both modernity and the social sciences that cohered around processes of nation-state formation.” This process was fortified by the emerging disciplines and professional-academic control structures that soon developed, but particularly after the 1960s and the expansion of university systems worldwide. In other words, disciplinary structures and methodological nationalism pose closely related challenges.

Understanding the history of the social sciences is critical, not only in relation to methodological nationalism but also in terms of Eurocentrism and Western biases. One approach to counteract Western dominance comes from postcolonial studies, particularly the notion of the subaltern. It is an approach that draws on Gramsci’s work on cultural hegemony, with an emphasis on narratives and sense making. It is also in the tradition of Said’s (1978) notion of orientalism; he argues that the West reduces Eastern societies to a static, nonmodern image while portraying itself as dynamic and “rational.” This creates a false view of “Oriental culture,” which can then be studied and portrayed in a way that serves imperial power.

Postcolonial thinking has gained some influence in recent decades, especially in anthropology and global studies. Can twenty-first-century social science be “de-Westernized,” and for what purpose? If it is true that the current social science mainstream reproduces Western hegemony, what follows, and who or what would or should be served under alternative scenarios? And if the “Western” approach to the study of social phenomena no longer can claim some universalist status, and indeed has become “provincialized” (Chakrabarty 2008) , what will follow?

These are difficult questions that soon enter normative, even political, terrain. They also point to a different challenge: the still-dominant Popperian and inferential approaches to social science. Critical rationalism as the attempt to conduct research in as normatively neutral a way as possible, and to do so with a systematic engagement of theories, hypotheses, and facts, faces contestation by political-cultural forces growing in strength and acceptance.

To some extent, there have been such challenges before, if we recall the Frankfurt School and Adorno’s critique of Popper’s critical rationalism. Outside the West, for example, in the Soviet Union, the study of politics was embedded within other disciplines and sought to “critique bourgeois theories.” These studies were considered closely linked to the regime, and political science as a discipline was not established until 1989 (Ilyin and Malinova 2008, 4) . Sociology in the former German Democratic Republic was highly professionalized as an empirical discipline—at least in terms of observing society. However, it was conceptually barren regarding the interpretation of data, caught in the ideological straitjacket of Marxism-Leninism. Across socialist regimes, economics became subservient to state planning. At the same time, however, we should recall that economists such as Oskar Lange, Wassily Leontief, and Michal Kalecki had a significant influence on the study of market pricing, production systems, and economic cycles in capitalist contexts.

More fundamentally, we need to revisit the normative nature of the social sciences. Karl Popper himself, conscious of his own ideological roots, was a member of the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society along with Friedrich Hayek, his lifelong friend. Together with other leading thinkers of their generation, they regarded the social sciences as an instrument of constructing a social order on the supposition of common core values. A normative social science can flourish in liberal orders, and can also be challenged, as the Frankfurt School did in the 1960s and postcolonial studies do today.

A core issue is whether the social sciences can flourish in non-democracies or illiberal orders. Here, Gupta (2019) makes a strong argument when suggesting that “before democracy, the context for the pursuit of social sciences did not exist.” This statement is historically rather questionable as the classical period of modern social science took place in political systems that would not qualify by today’s understanding of what constitutes a democratic order. The flourishing of sociology in early twentieth-century Germany is a clear case in point. Yet in a fundamental sense, the future of the social sciences globally no longer depends on the West alone; it increasingly also depends on the trajectory of the social sciences in China in particular—not only politically but also in terms of its epistemological impact (Reny 2016; Ahram and Goode 2016) .

As important as the relation between the social sciences and democracy is the issue of Western and non-Western notions of the “social” and the concept of society, economy, and polity. However, these ultimately Western notions, initially carried by colonialism, and then by academia and the institutions of the Bretton Woods world, did not diffuse globally without variations of semantics and understandings. How were concepts of society and economy shaped in non-Western societies—and, crucially, in their languages? What conceptualizations and epistemologies exist outside the Western canons? The various meanings of al-ijtima’ (Arabic), shehui (Chinese), samāj (modern Hindi), masyarakat (Malay and Indonesian), and sangkom (Thai)—all terms that equate to the English society —surely had an impact on the way social sciences are practiced in these countries and academic systems. These terms did not always carry the same meaning as their Western counterparts. In some cases, existing words were chosen to translate “society” (e.g., the Hindi samāj existed for centuries before the connotation “society” was introduced). In others, the decisive tensions between citizen and state disappeared in translation (as in the Korean sahoe or in Thai).

There are other issues we could raise: the rise of the cyber world, artificial intelligence, robotics, and the future of “analog” society; the big-data phenomenon, with massive amounts of information becoming available for analysis, and the issue of data protection; or the interface between the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities, on the other. For these and the issues raised above, the social sciences seem ill-equipped. They appear caught somehow between the national, international, and transnational, and the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. The combination of disciplinary work in a national context still dominates and receives more academic recognition. What is more, the social sciences have collectively failed to put themselves under critical review to become fitter to face the forceful cultural and political currents that are increasingly questioning their legitimacy and impact.

Global Perspectives sets out to help overcome such national-disciplinary fragmentation and isolation and wants to be a platform for uncomfortable debates where nagging questions can be addressed. Global Perspectives starts from the premise that the world that gave rise to the modern social sciences in their present form is no more. The national and disciplinary approaches that developed in the last century are increasingly insufficient to capture the complexities of the global realities of a world that has changed significantly. New concepts, approaches, and forms of academic discourse are called for.

Global Perspectives will be organized in subject sections informed by major conceptual or empirical issues, sometimes grounded in traditional disciplines, while inviting significant interdisciplinary crossovers and transdisciplinary approaches. All of the sections imply the respective adjectives ranging from the global, transnational, and international to the national, regional, and local, and they include the relevant institutions and organizations.

Initially, Global Perspectives has eight subject sections (listed below in alphabetical order), which carry equal weight:

Communication, media, and networks

Cultures, values, and identities

Epistemologies, concepts, methodologies, and data systems

Political economy, markets, and institutions

Politics, governance, and the law

Security and cooperation, international institutions and relations

Social institutions, organizations, and relations

Sustainability transformations and technology-society interfaces

The subject sections include disciplines like economics, sociology, political science, geography, psychology, and anthropology, and they encompass fields or specializations like global history, gender studies, developmental studies, policy studies, education, cultural studies, health studies, and data analytics, among others. What unites them is a push to reach across established boundaries to enhance the capacity of the social sciences to improve our understanding of a complex, globalizing world. This also implies reaching out to the natural sciences and the humanities.

Section on Communication, Media, and Networks

Editor: Payal Arora, Erasmus University, Rotterdam

The “global turn” in media and communication demands new ways of conceptualizing relations and boundaries between the local, the national, and the transnational. In recent years, ubiquitous computing, mobile technologies, and social media have amplified the urgency to unpack the globalizing of media platforms and communication patterns and processes as well as their underlying politics and policies.

While the media continues to be implicated in the disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics, as Appadurai (1990) astutely observed a quarter century ago, their digital cultures have created new opportunities and discontinuities at a global scale that require a prolonged and thoughtful investigation.

Speculations about the fate of traditional mass media like print, radio, and television continue to be of rising concern in academic and industrial research. The rise of user-generated content has challenged conventional framings of media producers and audiences bound by the nation-state. For example, bloggers, podcasters, online celebrities, digital activists, and citizen-journalists can shape global public opinion and the media landscape at large.

As a few digital platforms control the vast amount of data generated through everyday communicative practices worldwide, scholars across disciplines are rightfully concerned about who gets to collect, curate, store, and moderate such media content. What is driving the expansions in media infrastructures and policies, and is there a unified and shared logic to their organization? What are the implications of new media technologies for politics and governance at national and international levels?

We have witnessed a significant shift in discourses surrounding globalization and media, from a celebratory to a more critical stance. Only a decade ago, studies were tethered to the notion of the “networked society” of collective intelligence, participatory knowledge making, community building, and activism. Today, we appear less optimistic, as scholars sound the alarm on new forms of discrimination, alienation, and victimization through the uninterrupted datafication, predictive analytics, and automation of the “surveillance society.”

While big data did not reify into an “end of theory” as prematurely envisioned, we hesitate to ask the big questions that can best encapsulate the interconnectedness of information flows and the intersectionality of their data sets. It remains a challenge to “decenter” and “decolonize” the global to stay clear of a singular and universal logic to explain the social order of global media. This endeavor requires a reexamination of past formulations of information/media systems, as well as a critical assessment of the velocity, variety, volume, and other such rubrics posited to define new media architectures and practices.

How do we transcend the binaries of the online and the offline, the public and private media spheres, “data rich” and “data poor,” producer and consumer, homogenization and heterogenization, media convergence and divergence, and disembodiments and the situated materiality of media imaginaries to the contextual integrity of the media event? What alternative frameworks, systems, etymologies, and ontologies are on offer to reconfigure our understandings of how global media are organizing the power relations in society?

In this context, we invite papers that propose methodological innovations and conceptual alternatives to how we approach the dialogue between media and the global. Should we continue to use the nation-state as a central unit of analysis or push for a provincializing or translocating of the global in media studies? Are we giving too much primacy to data in untangling global digital cultures and overestimating their influence? How do we conceptualize the global transformations of the traditional media without being too medium- or usercentric? These are some of the many issues contributors to Global Perspectives are welcome to address.

Section on Cultures, Values, and Identities

Editor: Helmut K. Anheier, Hertie School and Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles

Culture is one of the most complex terms in the social sciences today, being deeply implicated in diverse and contested disciplinary discourses. Culture, in a broad sense, is a system of meaning, its social construction, articulation, and reception, including religion, ideologies, value systems, and collective identity. In a narrow sense, it refers to the arts—that is, what artists create and what is regarded, preserved, exchanged, and consumed as cultural artifacts.

Various disciplines regard culture as their terrain: anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, and, of course, history and the humanities, including cultural studies and the arts themselves. Frequently divided by methodology and a split between quantitative and qualitative approaches, they function too much as closely guarded silos, discouraging the inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue Global Perspectives advocates.

Global Perspectives will challenge and contrast the presuppositions within the social sciences toward culture: too often, culture is either a residual once the “hard” economic and political factors are considered, or it becomes the all-encompassing construction supposedly explaining everything. Similarly, culture is seen as something that either prohibits or accelerates progress, or it becomes a politically innocent reference category to paint over increasingly absent shared values and common narratives.

That globalization affects culture and vice versa may seem a truism. Yet the interaction involves some of the most vexing questions of our times, and it remains inadequately documented, analyzed, and understood. It challenges previously more stable cultural systems, forms of everyday life, and identities, and it does so in very uneven and diverse ways. The triangle of collective heritage, identity, and memory, long assumed a foundation of societies, has become uncertain and is being transformed.

There are deeply rooted clashes of national cultural interest that have been set in motion as globalization has advanced. Is the world moving, as some would claim, toward cultural uniformity or toward tensions and conflicts? Or are there signs of an alternative set of outcomes rooted in a more polycentric system of cultures in terms of meaning and identity, production or consumption? What is the meaning and validity of a Western or Asian “cultural imperialism” thesis or a “clash of civilizations” between East and West?

In contemporary society, there is a deepening intersection between the economic and the cultural. The media presents one dramatic illustration of this intersection—that is, commercially produced cultural artifacts. At the same time, culture has come to be seen as an instrument of economic development and urban revitalization—a view that is encapsulated in terms like creative class, creative cities, and the creative economy.

Yet culture is also about the arts. Notions of l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake) in the sense that culture is about the arts and creative expression first and foremost are challenged by the deepening intersection with the economy and politics. Interpretative frames for what counts as art, what can be regarded as cultural innovations, and who “owns” or represents them imply many changes for how works of art, for example, are appreciated, collected, presented, bought and sold, and preserved.

Section on Epistemologies, Concepts, Methodologies, and Data Systems

Editor: Miguel A. Centeno, Princeton University

Social science has not kept up with globalization. While the scale and the scope of global interactions has increased exponentially, the unit of analysis for much of social science remains at the national level at the highest. That is, with the world assuming a different shape, social scientists continue to study it using arguably outdated scholarly foci. To develop a global perspective, we have to reorient ourselves to a new level of aggregation.

Essentially all social science is interested in the process through which individuals combine to form more complex, organized wholes. Today, we have created an unprecedented level of organized, complex aggregation. The number and types of nodes and the different links between them now form what could be envisioned as a three-dimensional spiderweb across the globe. How to study it?

We propose that a basic epistemology might be the analysis of the complex systems that form the backbone of increasingly interconnected and interdependent societies. What were once local and regional economies and socio-ecological systems with somewhat bounded cultures are now becoming rapidly globalized, depending ever more on coordination across spatial and temporal scales. Each component in such systems connects with countless other components, creating a web of interactions that is to some degree self-organizing, not centrally controlled, and susceptible to nonlinear responses to change.

To unify the study of systems across academic disciplines and operational domains, we might use and develop concepts such as those offered by network analysis as both tool and metaphor, and also invite the introduction of new concepts that help the social sciences solve the conundrum of methodological nationalism. Such concepts could have more universal currency across disciplines and provide an insightful level of abstraction for understanding the underlying mechanisms of systems without losing the important characteristics of the whole system.

We are open to all forms of methodology, qualitative and quantitative. For the former, we would welcome historical analysis of the development of global links, institutional analyses of relevant organizations, and ethnographies of (and tracing approaches to) the process and consequences of globalization. Quantitative approaches would include networks analyses, multilevel analysis, event history, flow and diffusion models, and, thematically, studies of possible stress and tipping points in complex systems (e.g., global finance, communication, logistics, environment, etc.).

We would also welcome studies of existing data sources on complex global systems. We are particularly interested in strategies for data collection, visualization, and dissemination of data reporting on units of analysis other than the nation-state. These include global or transnational flows and transactions in real as well as cyberspace among organizational and institutional complexes as well as noncontiguous geographical units such as cities, regions, or geopolitical alliances.

Section on Political Economy, Markets, and Institutions

Editor: J. P. Singh, George Mason University

Scholars continue to grapple with how markets work in tandem with—or in divergence from—political economy institutions from local to global levels. Markets include formal and informal forms of exchange including barter systems and new forms of cryptocurrencies. These exchanges—facilitating resource allocation and adaptations—are constrained by (and also shape) formal and informal institutions such as regulatory rules, governance systems, forms of collective action and societal organization, cultural and national boundaries, and ideological possibilities. The political economy of markets and institutions is also continually transformed with transverse factors such as fast-changing technologies, flows of ideas and peoples, and changes in the environment.

The political economy of markets and institutions requires multiple perspectives and methods to address a growing list of issues that confront humanity. These include concerns about global and societal inequalities, incompatibilities among regulatory and governance systems, effects of climate change, breakdown in global governance including international trade, transformations in global value chains, new forms of labor and work, and issues of artificial intelligence ranging from new forms of work and computation to financial sociometrics. Underlying notions from reciprocity and trust to coercion and discipline must be revisited to understand markets and institutions. The methods needed to address these issues include detailed ethnographies, comparative and historical cases, and quantitative models encompassing traditional data sets and new forms of big data.

From a common origin in questions of moral political economy in the eighteenth century, the social sciences diverged in disciplinary direction during the last two centuries. Current problems and anomalies are increasingly bringing the social sciences into meaningful conversations about common problems and issues. These have included interdisciplinary insights on preference formation at a micro level and addressing issues of collective action at the macro or global levels for issues such migration, climate change, and intellectual property. Silos are breaking down: issues of cultural identity and anxiety are discussed simultaneously with international trade and employment in understanding preferences and collective action; climate change severely impacts health, migration, and resources.

Global Perspectives is an important intervention toward fostering interdisciplinary and mixed-methods conversations on current theoretical, ethical, empirical, and policy questions surrounding the political economy of markets and institutions. Such scholarly work is often difficult to publish in journals that are monodisciplinary, privilege an empirical method, or are bound to one worldview. We welcome articles that analyze the political economy of markets and institutions from multiple perspectives and that utilize individual or mixed methods. The disciplinary domains include anthropology, cultural studies, demography, economics, geography, international relations, political science, psychology, and sociology. These and related disciplines are relevant to analyzing the political economy of human endeavor in the creation, sustenance, and regulation of markets and institutions.

Section on Politics, Governance, and Law

Editor: Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Aarhus University

At first sight, politics, governance, and law—both as concepts and as empirical realities—seem distinct and easily allocated to separate disciplines. Yet when considering them from global perspectives, they are ultimately contested, as are the relations among them. Generically, politics might be seen as the continuous self-design of a polity through ways of gaining and arranging power; governance as the way in which government might function effectively and simultaneously, when conceived of globally, as transnational and global regimes beyond national realms of sovereignty; and law can be grasped as a social technique by which societies and the international community choose and live by the norms they have reason to value.

The trinity of politics, governance, and law has shaped the “long twentieth century.” From the unraveling of European empires to the emergence of international law based on a liberal teleology in the interwar period, the interplay of the three concepts was crucial for shaping the global order. With the establishment of international organizations and institutions as the trinity’s resting place and the affirmation of the nation-state as the main locus of the social, seemingly inextricable tensions emerged between the local social organization and the larger transnational settings, regimes, and trade flows. When zooming in on concrete political practice in different parts of the world, what exactly politics is, beyond the general description, varies significantly. The same is true for governance and law. Clearly, different conceptualizations and traditions of law exist when taking a global perspective rather than a localized or a transcendental one.

What is at stake increasingly in the twenty-first century is an amplification of twentieth-century struggles over legitimate national and global order—and over how to make sure their relations remain supportive of peaceful coexistence. What was framed as tensions between “the political” as the ultimate source of normative power and “the law” as a value-based construction on which normative power is built and toward which all politics need to refer had reached a compromise formula in the postwar decades. Yet this was mostly about the West. The construction of international law and national constitutionalism presupposed basic norms, such as the “human person,” “human inviolability,” and “human rights.” When former colonies moved toward their own normative orders, and when non-Western religious influences refrained from copying the liberal script into their nations’ constitutions, their constructions of legitimacy became in tension with Western notions and practices.

Against the backdrop of the inescapable tensions between transnational economic and legal spheres and national political and social spheres, the old twentieth-century tension between legality and legitimacy is back on the agenda with full force. Alas, this tension arises in a much more complex global setting than seventy or fifty or even twenty-five years ago. The relations between politics, governance, and the law will play a decisive role in shaping a peaceful unfolding of the twenty-first century as the need for a new global sustainability becomes increasingly urgent, particularly in the face of increasing tendencies to autocratic rule and lasting “states of emergency.” When are nation-states shaped in a way conducive to global peace? And when are global relations shaped in a way conducive to national peace? What is the future of democracy in the twenty-first century? Will regional federations finally democratize, or will democracy continue to reside in nation-states? How resilient are national democracies in the face of authoritarian challenges, and how shall national, regional, and global politics, governance, and law interact to work together peacefully?

Section on Security and Cooperation, International Institutions and Relations

Editor: Thomas J. Biersteker, Graduate Institute, Geneva

Global security and cooperation take many forms and appear differently from different vantage points on the globe. This is why global perspectives on security, cooperation, and institutions are needed. Both what needs to be secured and the threats from which it must be secured vary across time and place. Security includes classic issues associated with the security of states, derived from Weberian justifications for state formation (to provide security within and protection from without). At the same time, security also extends to the domains of human security, system or network security, and the security/survival of the planet itself. The state can be the provider of security and/or the source of insecurity for different populations. Sources of insecurity for different populations can come from inter-state conflict (nuclear conflict), from the collapse of functioning state institutions (anarchy at the local level), from the commitment of acts of terrorism, from lack of access to basic resources (like water), from cyberthreats to existing global networks, from debris from outer space, or from neglect of the ecological health of the planet.

International cooperation is also multidimensional and increasingly emerges at multiple levels. International institutions extend far beyond the realm of formal intergovernmental organizations and increasingly include informal arrangements that engage state actors along with actors from business and civil society. These informal arrangements can take many institutional forms, ranging from public-private partnerships to multistakeholder initiatives, transgovernmental initiatives, and transnational policy networks or communities. Governance deficits at the intergovernmental or inter-state level can be overcome or addressed at the regional or the local (and increasingly the urban) levels.

International relations as a subject remains a contested domain, with successive generations of scholars pushing the boundaries of the subject with conceptual, normative, and methodological innovations. Global Perspectives is open to those challenging the limits and contesting the variety of different parochialisms that emerge in various national, disciplinary, and institutional settings, as well as challenging those who engage in efforts to “discipline” the field. While it is essential to remain empathetically open to the existence of multiple vantage points and sensitive to the possibility of the coexistence of multiple truths to describe international relations, it is imperative to maintain a commitment to science, in the broadest sense of the term, with attention to value-informed and systematic analysis.

Global Perspectives encourages submissions that take a global view of security, cooperation, international institutions, and international relations. That is, deliberate attempts to look at a common problem from multiple vantage points or from underrepresented vantage points are particularly encouraged. Multidisciplinary approaches are encouraged but not required, as are contributions that go beyond addressing debates in social science alone to thinking through and spelling out some of the policy and practical implications of their analysis.

Section on Social Institutions, Organizations, and Relations

Editor: Sara R. Curran, University of Washington

If one consequence of globalization is that national sovereignty and international order are unraveling or, at least, deeply challenged and reconfiguring, then it becomes necessary to ask fundamental, even nagging, questions such as the following: What knits people together? What ensures the continuity and sustenance of communities? And what are the deeper social forces that either accelerate or slow the forces of global change and shape cascading effects within localities (and vice versa)?

Social scientists seeking to better understand global complexity suggest looking for basic elements that bring some people together, exclude others, disrupt social orders, and invent new social relations. This means turning back to fundamental concepts such as social institutions, organizations, and relations in order to move knowledge forward and better understand meaningful social changes, compositions, and mechanisms, both conceptually and empirically. The global challenges of today hark back to other moments in social history when intellectual figures emerged to offer compelling interpretations and explanations for the nature of the human condition, the character of social change, and the emergence of social institutions, organizations, and relations.

Global Perspectives invites “big ideas” essays that take up the deeply humane inquiries that characterize our shared social scientific, intellectual antecedents and those who shifted our paradigmatic views of the meaningfulness of social institutions, organizations, and relations. These essays might ask questions formulated in earlier historic moments, such as the following: How do we explain social change? How is society possible? What is society in these times, and what are social organizations?

Why is it so important to ask these questions at this time? The paradoxes of today cry out for better explanations and plausible answers. Qualitative shifts in social relations are frequently invoked as explanation and outcome in these times of both extreme connectivity and insularity resulting from our global technosocial landscapes. For example, technology has spread access to the means that might connect us all, while at the same time concentrating powerfully destructive tools in the hands of just a few. With globalizing technologies, other paradoxes emerge. How do we make sense of the real possibilities for human-to-human compassionate contact across the globe with the proliferation of expressions of profound fears of the “other” and the concomitant insecurities and violent acts against the “other” from almost every corner of the globe?

We welcome contributions that help us see the taken-for-granted and reinvigorate the social science imagination to reveal the rules, norms, and strategies that structure the multiplicity of everyday interactions globally and locally. Because temporal and spatial distances governing transactions have, throughout much of history, created uncertainties around the future of social life, social institutional analyses offer ways, for example, to understand how uncertainties are framed, managed, and possibly limited through the infusion and reification of values and feelings into specific guidelines for expected actions and outcomes (Williamson 1998) . A global perspective on institutions might reexamine how the results of globalization’s temporal intensification and spatial shrinkage create new or more uncertainties and can disrupt or strengthen institutions, creating room for entirely new and coincident or competing institutional forms through new ideologies, imaginaries, and ontologies (Steger and James 2019) .

While social institutions are the norms, rules, and shared strategies constraining human life, social organizations are the formal and informal social spaces for controlled human interaction and provide indications of social cohesion (Moody and White 2003) . Social organizations enable social connections, accumulate and distribute, discipline and order, create and produce, and disrupt and repair, to name but a few of the meaningful actions that have been theorized and observed. As such, social organizations interact, shape, and react with both social institutions and social relations in an interdependent and dynamic way. A global perspective on social organizations attends to these fundamental actions, structurations, and cohesions (Foucault 2012; Giddens 2003) . Global social organizations research might “follow the money” through iconic studies of the flows and landing points around the world of any object or thing—for example, T-shirts or flip-flops (Knowles 2015; Rivoli 2014) . Such studies have the epistemic power to reveal previously hidden interlocutors of globalization at both the core and the periphery, possibly unveiling the fundamental mechanisms animating global assemblages (Sassen 2007) . There is much work to be done in this area to help explain crucial and immediate socio-ecological global problematics and dilemmas.

Social relations are fundamental foci of social analyses, defining interactions and statuses between two or more individuals or between an individual and any other higher order social collectivities. Crucial social theorists for understanding the agentic nature of social relations point to affinities, identities, and imaginaries as the cognitive mechanisms that are embodied and enacted in the everyday interactions of social life and that reveal the power, positionality, and intersectionality instantiated in social relations. And, as Hirschman’s (1970) work reminds us, it is not just the instantiation but the ruptures or dissolutions that must also be observed to fully understand social organizations and institutions. Global social relations research in this realm can be particularly productive via ethnographic studies of breaching and disruption with an ethnomethodological sensibility of the deeply embodied nature of social relations. A fascinating example of that kind of approach might be the studies found in a recent collection edited by Alexander, Stack, and Khosrokhavar (2019).

The essays in this section would contribute toward these new insights by centrally attending to the dynamic, interdependent, and mutable nature of societies and global forces. These essays should reinvigorate investigations of social institutions, organizations, and relations as they inform global complexities and should contribute toward generating new conceptual domains and new knowledge through multiperspectival lenses of space and time; analyses of processes, disruptions, and disruptors; recursive reflection; mutability; and dialectics.

Section on Sustainability Transformations and Technology-Society Interfaces

Editor: Dirk Messner, Federal Environment Agency, Berlin

This section addresses a triangle of three closely related themes: global change, sustainability, and technology. Understanding the dynamics of each as well as their interrelationships requires perspectives from across the social sciences but also from the natural and life sciences, including fields such as computer science, robotics, and environmental studies.

The UN 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement on climate change, among others, offer a plan for accommodating a global population of ten billion people by 2050. They acknowledge and accept planetary limitations, seeking to avoid tipping points in the earth’s carrying capacity. Understanding the implications of the many transformations toward sustainability requires profound inter- and transdisciplinary approaches: robust knowledge of interactions and feedback loops between globally interconnected social systems (societies, economies, polities, cultures), technical infrastructures, the environment, and cyberspace. Global Perspectives provides space for the social sciences and the humanities as well as the natural and life sciences, engineering, and informatics to contribute to the analysis of global sustainability transformations.

Digitization, big data, artificial intelligence, autonomous technical systems, biotechnologies, and nanotechnology will transform societies and economies profoundly. There is a need to understand the various and varied impacts these technological drivers of change are likely to have on fundamental aspects of society: new power patterns and different inequality mechanisms can emerge, and democracy and privacy might be challenged. Transferring the authority to make decisions to technical systems (e.g., in stock markets, the administration of justice, autonomous mobility, health diagnostics, or power grids) offers opportunities for problem-solving based on machine learning but also involves the risk of losing control over societal processes. How will sustainability transformations and these technological revolutions interact? Shaping these socio-technological dynamics requires new research alliances of sustainability sciences, social sciences, humanities, and digital and other engineering sciences.

A cornerstone of global sustainability transformations is the reconfiguration of the global order: the world is economically, technologically, and ecologically highly integrated and interconnected but socially, culturally, and politically fragmented. How does global governance, aiming at supporting sustainability transformations, work or erode under these conditions? Global governance is not only about power, institutions, standards, and enforcement mechanisms but also about building blocks of a global cooperation that can be emerging and changing as well as weakening and strengthening. What do we know about cooperation of humans in very complex systems that transcend established physical, political, and cultural borders and in which people interact with each other in noncontiguous space and across time zones?

Global Perspectives aims at publishing original contributions of the highest academic standard. Global Perspectives sees itself as the intellectual home of academic work that, taken together, can help advance a twenty-first century social science agenda. Such work will reveal characteristic tensions: global in focus and regionally bounded; cross- and even transdisciplinary while remaining relevant to major social science disciplines; normatively neutral yet aware of politics; conceptually ambitious yet engaging the growing complexity of facts; evidence-based while also questioning underlying methodological assumptions; and intensely scholarly and open to the multimedia options of journal publishing. In these respects, Global Perspectives invites and encourages diverse voices from academic communities across countries, disciplines, fields, and cultures to create a forum that advances the global literacy of the social sciences.

Global Perspectives will be an evolving journal, both thematically and technically. Organized by subject sections, it is enriched by invited perspectives through annotations that debate and enhance the global as well as the interdisciplinary implications of articles. Over time, the various contributions of Global Perspectives can be organized as themed tracks. To make such a thematic evolution technically possible, Global Perspectives uses current publishing technology and software to allow for swift publication and annotation of accepted contributions to broaden and enhance their impact.

Author Biographies

Helmut K. Anheier

Helmut K Anheier (PhD Yale) is editor-in-chief of Global Perspectives , professor of sociology at the Hertie School, member of the faculty of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, and visiting professor at LSE Ideas. He has published widely in the social sciences with an emphasis in civil society, organization, and governance, and received several national and international awards for his academic achievements. Previously, he was president of the Hertie School, and professor at the Max-Weber-Institute of Sociology at Heidelberg University, where he directed the Center for Social Investment and Innovation. Before embarking on an academic career, he served the United Nations as a social affairs officer.

Payal Arora

Payal Arora is a Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her expertise lies in digital media experience and user values among low-income communities worldwide and comes with more than a decade of fieldwork experience in such contexts. She is the author of a number of books including the award-winning “ Leisure Commons" and most recently the” The Next Billion Users " with Harvard Press. Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and the right kind of person to reform tech. Several international media outlets have covered her work including The BBC, The Economist, Quartz, Tech Crunch, The Boston Globe, F.A.Z, The Nation and CBC. She has consulted on tech innovation for diverse organizations such as UNESCO, KPMG, GE, and HP and has given more than 170 presentations in 109 cities in 54 countries including a TEDx talk on the future of the internet. She is the founder of Catalyst Lab, a digital activism organization and sits on several boards such as Columbia Univ. Earth Institute and World Women Global Council in New York. She has held Fellow positions at GE, ZEMKI, ITSRio, and NYU and. She has a Masters in International Policy from Harvard University and a doctorate in Language, Literacy and Technology from Columbia University. She was born and raised in India, is an Irish and American citizen, and currently lives in Amsterdam.

Thomas Biersteker

Thomas Biersteker is Gasteyger Professor of International Security and Director for Policy Research  at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. He previously directed the Graduate Institute's Programme for the Study of International Governance, the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and has also taught at Yale University and the University of Southern California. He is the author/editor of ten books, including  State Sovereignty as Social Construct  (Cambridge University Press, 1996),  The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance  (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and  Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of United Nations Action  (Cambridge University Press, 2016). His current research focuses on targeted sanctions, transnational policy networks in global security governance, and the dialectics of world orders. He was the principal developer of  SanctionsApp , a tool for mobile devices created in 2013 to increase access to information about targeted sanctions at the UN. He received his PhD and MS from MIT and his BA from the University of Chicago. Until 2017 he was Director of the  Global Governance Centre , formerly Programme for the Study of International Governance at the Graduate Institute.

Miguel A. Centeno

Miguel Centeno is Musgrave Professor of Sociology and Vice-Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School. He has published many articles, chapters, and books. His latest publications are War and Society (Polity 2016), Global Capitalism (Polity 2010),  States in the Developing World (Cambridge UP, 2017) and State and Nation Making in the Iberian World (Vol I, Cambridge UP 2013; Vol. II 2018). He is also finishing a new book project on the sociology of discipline. He is the founder of the Research Community on Global Systemic Risk funded by PIIRS from 2013 ( http://risk.princeton.edu ). He has served as Head of Wilson College, Founding Director of PIIRS, and Chair of the Sociology Department. In 2001, he founded PUPP ( https://pupp.princeton.edu ) and in 2019-20, PSP ( https://paw.princeton.edu/article/new-faculty-path-princeton-leads-effort-encourage-underrepresented-students-seek-phds ).

Sara Curran

Sara Curran is Director of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington and a Professor of International Studies, Sociology, and Public Policy & Governance.  Her research interests include migration, globalization, gender, development, and climate change and adaptation, and she employs a variety of research techniques, including qualitative field work, survey field work, regression modeling, mixed methods, and spatial and network analyses.

Dirk Messner

Dirk Messner is the president of the German Federal Environment Agency. Prior to that, he led the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany. From 2003 – 2018 Messner was director of the German Development Institute (Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, DIE). He is also co-director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg (Centre for Global Cooperation Research), which was established in 2012 at the University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Messner is a development economist and political scientist with research and teaching activities in different Latin American and Asian countries. His work focuses on global change and sustainable development, transformation towards the decarbonization of the global economy, globalization and global governance, and international cooperation and human behaviour. Based on his research, Messner is engaged in several high-ranking policy advisory councils. For example, he is co-chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change and member of the China Council on Global Cooperation on Development and Environment. Messner is a member of the Lead Faculty of the Earth System Governance Project.

Hagen Schulz-Forberg

Hagen Schulz-Forberg teaches modern global and European history and thought at the Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University.

Visit: https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/hagen-schulzforberg(150b1f5b-9570-4dcd-8030-111f86fd1ad7).html to see additional information.

J. P. Singh

J.P. Singh is Professor of International Commerce and Policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Previously, he was Chair and Professor of Culture and Political Economy, and Director of the Institute for International Cultural Relations at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Singh has authored five monographs, edited five books, and published dozens of scholarly articles.  Many of these books and articles are on international trade and development, national and international cultural policies, and international negotiations and diplomacy. His books include Sweet Talk: Paternalism and Collective Action in North-South Trade Negotiations (Stanford 2017), Negotiating the Global Information Economy (Cambridge 2008) and Globalized Arts: The Entertainment Economy and Cultural Identity (Columbia 2011), which won the American Political Science Association’s award for best book in information technology and politics in 2012.

Professor Singh has advised the World Bank and the World Trade Organization for trade and international development, and the British Council and UNESCO on international cultural policies. He has played a leadership role in several professional organizations, and served as Editor from 2006-09 and dramatically increased the impact of Review of Policy Research , the journal specializing in the politics and policy of science and technology. Professor Singh currently edits and founded the journal Arts and International Affairs . He also edits Stanford's book series on Emerging Frontiers in the Global Economy . He holds a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Public Policy from the University of Southern California.

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A Global Perspective: Bringing the World Into Classrooms

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The need for students to be able to empathize with others, value diverse perspectives and cultures, understand how events around the world are interconnected, and solve problems that transcend borders has never been greater. Just consider the recent attacks inspired by hate and terrorism in Orlando, Fla., San Bernardino, Calif., Brussels, Paris, Tunis, Istanbul, and Yemen, or the unparalleled flow of migrants—many of them children—from war- and violence-stricken regions in the Middle East and Central America. Then there’s threat of damaging and deadly viruses such as Zika and Ebola hopping across people and countries.

The quick tick of news headlines exemplifies just how interconnected the world is today. It also points to the intercultural collaboration and problem-solving skills necessary to thwart the hatred that spawns terrorist attacks, successfully integrate culturally and linguistically diverse populations into classrooms and communities, and solve health and environmental crises.

Engaging students with the world is one step toward one day accomplishing such objectives. But what should educators teach to ensure that all students are prepared to successfully engage in the globalized world in which they already live? Furthermore, what steps can educators take to effectively foster globally minded knowledge, skills, and attitudes in students?

As part of the movement to educate the whole child and ensure students are challenged academically and prepared for participation in a global environment, the organization for which I work, ASCD, has launched an effort to focus on answering these questions. The place to start, I believe, is with some definitions on what global engagement means in a practical sense.

More Than a ‘21st-Century Skill’

For students to participate effectively in the global community, they will need to develop global competence: the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to live and work in today’s interconnected world and to build a sustainable, peaceful, inclusive world for the future. Global competence is often, and rightly, labeled a “21st century skill” needed for employment in today’s global economy. Yet global competence is so much more than a ticket to a competitive job. Students also need global competence to participate as empathetic, engaged, and effective citizens of the world.

What exactly does global competence entail? Many organizations have devised specific frameworks that define the term (see examples from the Asia Society , the OECD , World Savvy , and the Globally-Competent Teaching Continuum ). These frameworks tend to coalesce around the following attitudes, knowledge, and skills:

• Attitudes : This includes openness, respect, and appreciation for diversity; valuing of multiple perspectives, including an awareness of the cultural and experiential influences that shape one’s own and others’ perspectives; empathy; and social responsibility, or a desire to better the human condition on a local and global scale.

• Knowledge : This refers to the ability to understand global issues and current events; global interdependence, including the impact of global events on local conditions and vice versa; the processes of globalization and its effects on economic and social inequities locally and globally; world history; culture; and geography.

• Skills : These includes the ability to communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries, including the ability to speak, listen, read, and write in more than one language; collaborate with people who have diverse cultural, racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds; think critically and analytically; problem-solve; and take action on issues of global importance.

Connecting Educators Across the World

Just as teachers of algebra know how to solve equations and music teachers know how to play scales, educators should also strive to develop these global competencies in themselves so that they can foster them in their students.

Engaging with the world is one way educators can develop global competence. Traditionally in the United States, educators as a whole have experienced limited training around global diversity. For example, very few teacher-preparation programs provide opportunities for preservice teachers to study abroad or require coursework in global topics. Therefore, connecting practicing teachers, principals, and district leaders across communities and continents through summits, conferences, exchanges, and virtual meetings geared towards common professional learning needs can provide experiences that help develop a globally oriented mindset, knowledge base, and skill set. Furthermore, when provided a platform to network, educators can lead the way in changing the broader education system locally and globally to better support the whole child and elevate the teaching profession.

A number of opportunities already exist for teachers to connect with one another across the world. There are an array of exchange programs run by the U.S. State Department and NGOs (e.g., American Councils for International Education , EF Tours , Teachers2Teachers-International ) that provide educators with opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural interactions. And if travel is not always feasible due to financial or familial obligations, teachers can still engage with the wider world through virtual exchanges that connect classrooms across the globe as partners in learning activities that prepare students to be productive, engaged citizens of the world (for example, iEARN , Global SchoolNet ).

Classroom Strategies

There are plenty of steps that educators can take today to put students on the path towards creating a better world for tomorrow. This doesn’t require legislation that mandates a change in the curriculum, the introduction of a global studies course for graduation, or a line item from the state or federal budget. In a recent study of teachers committed to globally competent teaching , researchers found that the educators used the following common strategies to foster global citizenship and competency:

• Integrating global topics and perspectives across content areas. Globally competent teaching does not require a separate course or unit of study. Instead, teachers infused global content into the required curriculum, regardless of subject area. For example, math teachers used real-world global challenges as contexts for introducing new concepts (e.g., using word problems on population growth as a way to teach the rules of exponents) and language arts teachers used texts that represent diverse cultural perspectives and that take place in settings around the world to teach literature and informational texts.

• Providing opportunities for authentic engagement with global issues. Teachers provided real-world audiences for students to engage with around global issues. This took the form of pen pal and Skype exchanges with schools in other countries, service-learning projects emphasizing issues of global concern (e.g., access to clean water), or working in teams to devise and debate solutions to real-world problems, such as climate change, and sharing those solutions with government leaders. Notably, these activities were student-centered and inquiry-based.

• Connecting the global experiences of students and teachers to the classroom. Teachers adopted culturally responsive teaching practices that incorporated the cultures, languages, perspectives, and experiences of diverse students into curriculum and instruction. Teachers also incorporated their own cross-cultural experiences into the classroom through informal conversation, discussions around artifacts and photos, and lesson plans that incorporated knowledge gained and relationships built through their global experiences.

With these strategies in hand, the time is now for teachers to engage themselves, and their students, with the world. The lives of all students, no matter their zip code or their cultural, racial, linguistic, or economic background, are in some way influenced by the wider world. They too have the potential to shape that world. Their future, and the future of our world, depends on it.

What does global engagement mean to you? Why do you think it is important? Join the conversation by posting your reflections in the comments section.

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9239 Global Perspectives & Research Team Project (2021)

Topic outline.

• Introduction
• Assessment criteria
• Presentation
• Reflective Paper

The main aim of this resource is to exemplify standards of the Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives & Research, Component 3 Team Project, and show how different levels of candidates' performance relate to the subject's curriculum and assessment objectives. 

Candidate responses have been selected from four Cambridge centres from the November 2021 series to exemplify a range of candidate responses across the presentation and reflective paper. All candidates seen in the recordings of the live presentations were contacted and permissions provided to use the videos from their Team Project submission. 

The candidate responses are followed by examiner comments on how and why marks were awarded so that you can understand what candidates have done to gain their marks and what they could do to improve. The examiner comments also helps teachers to assess the standard required to achieve marks beyond the guidance of the mark scheme and the syllabus. There is also a list of common mistakes. 

• Presentation (25 marks)

• Reflective Paper (10 marks) 

Now that you have read the assessment criteria, you may want to practise marking the presentations and reflective papers . Watch each candidate's presentation, making a note of the strengths and weaknesses and give a mark, before you read the examiner comments and marks below. Complete the same task for each reflective paper candidate response.

We want to give you a small explanation of why we choose poverty as a subject. The 3 of us do not suffer from the effects of poverty, however, others do. And with the ongoing pandemic, people tend to forget other problems like Poverty. And that is why we wanted to talk about it, to make sure people understand that it is still an ongoing problem and that it has gotten worse the past year!

Poverty, what is poverty? How can we describe poverty from an economic perspective? Poverty in the eyes of economists is a state in which a person, a community or a neighbourhood lacks the financial resources to achieve a minimum standard of living. So, poverty means that the level of income of a person or a group of people is below a certain threshold. This threshold is so low that basic human needs can just be met. Receiving income that is below this threshold is considered living in poverty. The effects of living in poverty can be horrendous, people living without proper housing, clothing struggling to be able to eat healthy food or drink water every day. Although poverty seems to be a worldwide problem concerning millions of people around the world, poverty is also different in a lot of countries. because the threshold that determines whether someone is poor or not can differ per country. However, the IPL international poverty line has been set at $1.90 per day. Global estimates are that around 689 million people live in absolute poverty right now.

Let's start with a local view of Poverty.

In Maastricht, around 8.2% of the inhabitants live in poverty. We have a place in the top 10 municipalities with the highest number of habitants living in poverty. When compared with the averages of the Netherlands as a country we have a higher average of people living in poverty in Maastricht, which shocked me. I was under the impression that Maastricht would score 'better' on this list. And that is another problem with poverty.

You can not always tell when someone lives in this state of poverty. People tend to not talk about it and sink into an even deeper hole without trying to get help for the situation they are in. This can make the situation for people in poverty even worse. if you get to the point where you live in poverty the smart thing to do is get help for your financial situation. let people know what you are undergoing and get help. In the Netherlands, we have certain safeguards in place where you can explain your situation and get help from financial advisors. They will help you to limit your expenses and will try to help you pay off your debt if that is applicable.

Even with this available help people still live in poverty. In the Netherlands, about 6.2% of the population lives in poverty. With a poverty threshold of €1090 per month which almost a million people don't pass. This seems rather alarming, however, it is an improvement when compared with the numbers from several years ago. In 2013 7.4% of our population was living in poverty! So we are making small progress on the national level.

So there is a slight improvement, however, are we going to keep that up or even improve the situation faster? I think we can keep the progress up. On a global level, people have been hit hard financially by the lockdown. Businesses had to close down and people have been struggling financially. However, with the election in the Netherlands promises of improvement and support for those who need it have started to arise.

When we take a look at Maastricht once again, we can see that people are fighting for change. 6 of the political parties have agreed to a program in which they will get 50 households who live in poverty and have extensive debts, a financial plan and a guide to slowly get their lives back on track. Furthermore, before the year is out they want to make a plan to attack the poverty in and around Maastricht.

On a national level, things are starting to change as well. Food Banks are starting programs to support the people who need to get their food at the food banks. An example of this support is the 10 point plan created by a food bank in Groningen. This foodbank helps its 'customers' with a 10 point plan attack on poverty. Some examples are:

1. Only buy things you can afford!

2. Getting help when in a big debt has to become faster, right now it can take up to 4 months to get people to listen to your story.

3. Trying to remove the own risk of health care for people who live in poverty.

when looking at the biggest picture, international poverty, I am not sure if we are going the right way. at least we should be able to do better. because of the differences between countries on poverty we do not have a clear view of the real numbers. We do have estimates of absolute poverty, the $1.90 a day, and from those numbers we can conclude that we must do better.

There are some great ideas and initiatives out there to help reduce poverty around the world. For example: Improving the transition from school to work of the vulnerable work population. And implementing policy measures to reduce household debt and vulnerability to housing price changes.

Another great idea is to create a worldwide organisation that makes a centralised policy around poverty and the battle against poverty. Another thing that would help would be to make sure people are warned about the risks of borrowing money. There are some regulations around these risks already however we could improve them, make sure that vulnerable people can not miss the warnings, maybe even make it harder for them to borrow money because it will eventually put them in even more debt and make them even poorer. And lastly, we need to make sure everyone has the opportunity to get out of poverty, We need to give the poor the tools to become financially healthy again. Courses on finance, debt and interest, financial advice and learn them how to get back on their feet.

• Multimedia materials Click here for multimedia materials
• Examiner commentary on the presentation Click here for examiner comments and mark awarded

So the problem, what is cyberbullying?: Cyberbullying is bullying with the use of digital technologies. It can take place on messaging platforms, gaming platforms and on social media. Cyberbullying includes sending hurtful and mean messages, impersonating people, embarrassing someone and Spreading lies about someone [uhm]. The incidents of depression and suicides caused by cyberbullying are rising. A growing problem that leads to depression and anxiety cannot be left unnoticed.

Global Relevance. So, this is Dr. Sameer Hinduja, and he is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University , and he said that 34% of students worldwide have experienced cyberbullying at least once in their lifetime. People that have experienced cyber bullying in their life time are nearly 2 times more likely to attempt suicide. Another global [uhm] cyberbullying research survey in 2008, found out that 43% out of 2,000 students that they have tested have said that they have experienced cyberbullying too. Then we have Ipsos, that’s an American study, has ranked the highest cyberbullying rates throughout the world and it is based on parents' testimony, because they are more likely to be concerned. [Uhm] the study is from 2018 and here you can see the results. India has the most cyberbullying rates and Germany, our neighbour country has 17%.

Local Relevance. In the Netherlands, the Association of Universities (VSNU) is going to draw up a plan to better support scientists that are intimidated and threatened. Professors and university educators face online hate campaigns, death threats and home harassment a lot. [Uhm] on this picture, the cover, you see Marion [uhm] Koopmans and shes on dutch television. She is part of the plan. [Uhm] in the article they talk about Catherine E. de Vries. She is a Dutch political scientist and she receives a lot of swear words everyday.  "I hope you get corona," was one of the death threats she has received. It even went so far that they made her address public and they threatened her family. She wants this to stop. [Uhm] online hate is rampant. Dutch moderators receive thousands of hate reports every day. Especially during elections and Sinterklaas. They end the article with: "We can't help the scientists, [uhm] , to silence those who are trying to, those who are trying to silence them through intolerance, sexism and threats, however we can support them. I disagree. I found a political solution and Britt, my team mate, has found  [uhm] an educational solution.

So, a political solution. I think that we can only.[uhm, uhm] tackle cyberbullying by tackling anonymity. A Dutch professor of social psychology, Paul van Lange, says the largely lack of social control on social media accounts is the perfect breeding ground for hatred to occur.

Bullies should be punished. When a target goes to [uhm] goes to court they should be able to sue the person that has violated them. However, it is in most cases hard to find the guilty party, due to the many majority of fake accounts online. [Uhm] meaning the people spreading the lies or rumours can’t be punished.

So I think you need to show proof of your identity, before making an account on social media. This means an improved verification process that allows for accurate identification of the person behind the account. This way cyberbullying will diminish.

[Uhm] In the Netherlands, [uhm] a Dutch singer named Gordon is fed up with all the anonymous hate reactions online. Since the large amount of anonymous hate reactions on the Press release website, he decided to no longer remain silent. He started a petition that has already been signed up more than forty thousand times. He said that you should hold people accountable for the things they post on social media and prevent people from hiding behind a false name when making offensive remarks. [Uhm] This is only possible with stronger real name policies and enforcement. [Uhm] In China they already took control of [uhm] social media and they have controversially banned certain social media platforms, and anonymizers. The operators of social networks are responsible for removing posts that are considered as rumours. Rumours are identified by undermining [mora] morality, the authenticity of information and undermining the social system. So these [uhm] Social networks should put them in different categories therefore they need several licenses. [Uhm] spreading false information and online hatred is a crime and is punishable for up to seven years in prison. This has in fact stopped false information and mean comments from spreading.

However in most, in some  countries [uhm] people are prosecuted for their opinion. So anonymity has its value. The Chinese government [uhm] has control because they don't want anyone directly threatening the government’s power. So any information that could harm the government's power will be deleted, because they will say it's false or it's a rumour even though it's not false or a rumour. So hiding their identity is [uhm] can be a value to be able to express your opinion there. And everybody should be able to encrypt their communications and personal data as an essential protection of their rights to privacy and free speech." The Chinese laws on social media simply limit those established standards of free speech. And governments shouldn’t determine what speech is true and what is not.

So, I think that tackling anonymity is still the best solution, because the negative aspects of anonymity outweigh the positive aspects. Especially, in America and countries within Europe, where everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right includes the freedom to have opinions and to receive or convey information or ideas. So, if you want to share your opinion, you may. There is just no excuse to hide behind a false name. Besides, the identity data does not necessarily have to be made public. They can be withheld from the judiciary. [If] Only if something that clearly involves false and harmful information, [uhm] the justice system should investigate it and know where the information came from, to be able to catch the bully. The rights to privacy will not be harmed when the court and government [uhm] can only look into your data when the judge approves it, just like the police needs a warrant before they can make an arrest. [Uhm], so, to be clear, all users should be subject to an enhanced verification process that enables accurate identification only when required by law [uhm], by law enforcement. When the sources can be traced, we can hold people accountable for what they post on social media, and we can catch the cyber bully and they can be punished accordingly.

These are my sources if you want to look further into this subject.

• Some candidates only identified their own perspective and did not refer to alternative views and approaches, including those of the other members of their team.
• Some presentations provided only an informative overview of their issue which describes what it is, rather than making an argument about why it is a problem and proposing a solution.
• Candidates made the mistake of not making any reference to their visual aids when speaking, meaning that they did not then support their argument.

Initially, our group work was quite organized. We agreed on the topic of illiteracy on day 1 after a class discussion. From then onwards, I took charge and brainstormed sub-topics and delegated them for us to research individually; [ Team member ] searched about the causes of the issue whereas I focused on the consequences. This method was effective as we could gather a considerable amount of information in a short period of time without any uncertainty as to who would research what. It was also useful as we realized early on that our issue was much more complex than we had thought and targeting specifically female illiteracy would allow for more focused, nuanced perspectives, and thus more interesting solutions. As for communication, most of our in-person meetings were in school rather than outside of school due to COVID risks. However, in between classes we talked and called frequently on WhatsApp which was sufficient enough to let us clarify our perspectives and keep track of each other's individual progress on our presentations.

• Examiner commentary on the reflective paper Click here for examiner comments and mark awarded

The teamwork went fine. All of us made sure that each one of us knew what was expected from them and attended the zoom meetings. We learned our personal team roles by the Belbin test, due to this we can now recognize our strengths and become more tolerant of our weaknesses. we tested our team fit in a practical team building exercise. When the introduction was finalized and the project was clear we were ready to brainstorm about the project in brainstorm sessions. During these sessions we were invited to join breakout rooms where we were given time to brainstorm. We chose our objectives, what are the goals and end product, divided team roles and appointed a scrum master. [Teacher] was our scrum master and made sure we did everything as we planned.  After brainstorming we chose three perspectives who were related to each other, had enough valid sources and were most related to the nuclear energy debate. We chose a topic that was both interesting and controversial making the subject debatable and relevant for this project. After doing quick research on different topics that meet our acquirements we decided that the nuclear energy debate fitted the best. The tasks were divided and each one of us chose a perspective. By choosing perspective, we assured that each one of us was interested and motivated in the subject. My personal perspective was the economical aspect., it is very relatable to the economics lessons I have been following for over three years so my knowledge I have built up was very useful for further research on the perspective. We helped each other out on the perspectives as we brainstormed on the topics during the sessions so we all were aware of each perspective. [Teacher] was our scrum master and made sure we did everything as we planned. He was in control of the time management and did a good job. Some members of the team were further than the others and were almost finished whilst the other members were still at the start of their transcript. To prevent this inconsistency within our time management in the future, we will have to re-evaluate personal progress within the group. The best solutions after researching each perspective were presented and evaluated. All the proposed solutions were compared and so we have concluded, nuclear energy must always be safe for the environment, environmental damage must be minimized at all costs and it has to satisfy three requirements; accessibility, availability and acceptability and it must be better for the climate. Thus being renewable, ecological and non-air polluting. This can be achieved by securing safety regulations and waste disposal management. The environmental and political aspect both agreed on the solution that human work should be replaced by machines for extra safety and to be sure no mistakes are made in the construction process. The placement of nuclear power plants should be far away from society to prevent disastrous situations. My interest and knowledge about nuclear energy, on a local and global scale, has increased. The research on the environmental, political and economical aspects changed the way I look at nuclear energy. At first, my belief was that it was extremely harmful for the environment and a very dangerous energy source, this due to things I heard in my city, Maastricht. people said that the local power plant, Tihange, is a threat to the environment of Maastricht and this formed my negative belief on nuclear energy. However, after this project I learned that nuclear energy has a great potential and is actually a good alternative energy supply that is better for the environment than fossil fuels. Environmental regulations like nuclear waste management must be made and further research on nuclear energy should be done to use nuclear energy to its optimum and replace fossil energy.

• Candidates sometimes only described what their team had done and did not identify strengths and weaknesses of their work together which would have led to an evaluation.
• Some reflective papers asserted what the candidate knows or believes about the issue and did not engage with how their thinking has changed or developed. This means that they did not reflect on the impact of alternative perspectives.
• Reflection needs to be on the effect of alternative perspectives on the issue. Some candidates reflected instead on their development of skills (of making presentations, for example, or doing research) which does not gain credit.

IGCSE Global Perspectives .net

2018-24 syllabus

Example Individual Report – Sustainable Living

This Individual Report demonstrates the requirements outlined in the IGCSE Global Perspectives Syllabus, Coursework Handbook, and Mark Schemes, as well as and the latest recommendations from Examiner Reports. Use this checklist to explore how it meets the assessment requirements.

Please also take a look at our Out of the Box teaching materials for IGCSE GP, which includes a unit on Sustainable Living which nicely complements this resource.

A personal voice is used for parts of the report. This is intentional because the IR is not simply a report about the issue , it is a report about the research project , and includes a requirement to develop and justify the writer’s own personal perspective (AO2 Reflection). The personal voice does not affect the academic standard of the writing. See this article for more discussion of style.

Note that the photographs illustrating this webpage are not part of the IR, but the two charts are.

IGCSE Global Perspectives Example Individual Research Report

Topic: Sustainable Living

Should we stop eating animal-sourced foods to live sustainably?

As a vegetarian, I am often asked to justify my choice of diet. I initially decided to stop eating animals when I found out about the horrors of the industrial farming system, 1 but lately I have heard claims that sustainability is another reason to avoid animal-sourced foods, and I want to find out if this is true. Vegetarianism and veganism are perspectives on diet shared by many people around the world. The number is growing, but they are still only a few percent of the population in most countries. 2 This means that the dominant global perspective is that animal-sourced foods are essential (or at least right and proper). The United Nations offers a third global perspective, which is worth considering because it attempts to create global agreement on sustainable development.

Evaluation of sources

I started with the documentary film Cowspiracy , which may be biased with a vegan perspective, but transparently lists its sources via its website so I could check its claims. Most seemed well sourced, but I rejected the striking claim that 51% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from animal agriculture because it included controversial assumptions, so for this I used a landmark scientific study: Poore and Nemaek (2018) 3 . Published in Nature , a leading peer-reviewed journal, it is based on a huge data set (which gives it high accuracy) and has very comprehensive analysis (giving it high credibility). We can see Poore is highly expert from his affiliation to Oxford University, 4 and the study is highly praised by other experts. 5 I have also used the findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). UN bodies can be trusted because they have large global teams of top scientists, and they are under such scrutiny that they cannot spin their findings. For other information I have used only quality sources such as government websites and reputable news agencies rather than blog posts. 

Effects of production and consumption of animal-sourced foods

As Fig.1 shows, animal agriculture takes up a massive proportion of the world’s habitable land and the bulk of the agricultural land, but it supplies only 18% and 37% of the world’s calories and protein respectively, meaning it is very inefficient.

Fig.1 – Global land use for food production 6

Compared to agriculture as a whole, animal agriculture consumes a disproportionate amount of land and fresh water, and causes the majority of air and water pollution. 7 It is also the biggest cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones and habitat destruction. 8

Of these many dreadful effects, I think greenhouse gas emissions is the most important to focus on, because the IPCC is warning that without drastic action we are heading for a future 3-degrees hotter, with potentially catastrophic effects on ecosystems, food security, sea levels, migration and wars. The window to take effective action is rapidly narrowing, so it is extremely urgent. 9

The IPCC says there is “significant potential” to mitigate climate change by adopting healthy diets high in plant-based foods and low in animal-sourced foods worldwide. 10 According to Poore’s study, even just reducing animal agriculture by 50% while targeting the worst producers would reduce total GHG emissions by 20%. 11 That is more than emissions from all transport (16%) or all energy use in buildings (17.5%). 12 GHG savings from those will need massive investment in infrastructure and technology and will take a long time. In contrast, the plant-based proteins to replace animal-sourced ones make far lower GHG emissions (Fig.2) and could be grown cheaply using just a little of the 3.5 billion hectares 13 of land saved from animal agriculture.

Fig. 2: a comparison of the carbon emissions from producing equivalent quantities of protein 14

Poore’s personal perspective must be one of the best-informed in the world. He says: “‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth.” 15

Is this perspective from the UN and from science being adopted by nations? — Not very well! Governments around the world are missing the opportunity to promote the lowest-carbon lifestyle choices, according to a 2017 study. 16 I confirmed this was true for my country, the UK — in the 135-page document that explains its plan to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 I could find no mention of diet whatsoever. 17 Unsurprisingly, the government is being sued by environmental campaigners for failing to create an adequate plan. 18

For balance, I sought out the perspective of the animal agriculture industry. The global industry does not speak with a single voice, but since the USA produces and consumes far more meat than most other countries, 19 I looked to the largest USA industry lobby group “Animal Agriculture Alliance” (AAA) for a representative perspective supporting animal-sourced foods. The AAA claim that the industry’s environmental impact is widely exaggerated, and that improving efficiency with technological innovations is enough environmental action, without cutting down on production. 20

However, I was not persuaded that the AAA is a good source of information. The website spins facts to support the industry, e.g. telling “Meat & Milk’s Sustainability Story” entirely by percentage improvements in efficiency, 21 which hides the fact that high growth has caused overall environmental impact to rise.  The AAA’s claim that the industry can reduce its environmental impact just by increasing efficiency is wrong because people will buy more when the product gets cheaper – an effect known as “price rebound”. 22 Overall therefore, this perspective seems highly distorted by vested interest and tries to maintain business as usual by giving false reassurances.

[Group of Zebu calves grazing in recently deforested land in the Amazon, Brazil.]

Causes of production and consumption of animal-sourced foods

If vegan foods offer such an environmentally beneficial alternative to meat, dairy and seafood, why are there so few vegans? Why is consumption of animal-sourced foods so high, and why aren’t governments and mainstream environmental groups persuading us to switch to plant-based foods?

One reason is that the livestock industry is very powerful and intimidates its opponents. In South America, many campaigners have been murdered. 23 In countries with stronger rule of law such as the USA, critics can be sued 24 under laws that protect the industry by restricting freedom of speech. 25 The powerful industry lobby also influences the government to subsidise the cost of production, e.g. by hunting predators and granting grazing on common land. 26 One study finds that if the externalised costs of meat production in the USA had to be included, the price would more than double. 27

Food supply is big business, so countries with large natural resources have an opportunity to exploit them to create wealth, regardless of sustainability. “You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours,” said President Bolsonaro in 2019,” citing what he sees as hypocrisy from overseas environmentalists: “You destroyed your own ecosystems.” 28 Believing two wrongs make a right, Bolsonaro has engineered a boom in Brazil’s beef and pork exports, causing huge additional damage to the Amazon rainforest. 29

Global economic growth has expanded the number of people who can afford meat, and animal-sourced foods symbolise prosperity and status, 30 so people eat more as they get wealthier. China is the most spectacular example in recent years. China ate 5kg of meat per person per year in 1960 and eats 63kg today. 31 Unlike others, this is not a cause we would want to reverse, but it points to the frightening prospect of massive additional environmental impact if billions more people follow this trend when they make it out of poverty.

The widespread belief that meat and dairy are nutritionally essential is a major driver of consumption. It is not supported by the UK’s National Health Service, which voices national policy on health and nutrition: “As long as they get all the nutrients they need, children can be brought up healthily on a vegetarian or vegan diet.” 32 Cultural beliefs like this require time and education to shift, so it is disappointing to see that the UK government’s “Eatwell Guide” infographic 33 only weakly acknowledges plant-based alternatives.

In contrast, China’s government has recently set a goal of halving meat consumption by 2030, and is encouraging innovation and growth in the mock meat industry. 34 China’s Buddhist heritage may make it more culturally willing to embrace meat substitutes, and it is starting to view meat as risky, as the origin of diseases such as avian flu and COVID. 35 Cost is still a significant barrier to mass uptake, and good plant-based meat is still more expensive than animal meat, but China’s active government backing will help create the mass production which will bring down costs. 36

Taste is another key cause, but recently I have personally noticed huge improvements in plant-based meat and dairy substitutes, from companies such as Omnifoods, Impossiblefoods, and Beyond. 37 Growing rapidly, such companies intend to take market share from animal agriculture. 38

Which causes of meat consumption should we focus on? Some, like bullying and lobbying by the animal agriculture industry seem unjust, selfish, negligent, or even criminal, which motivates us to demand action against them. However, it is hard to challenge powerful vested interests, so in the search for a solution it may be better to consider the price and taste of substitute foods as the most important factors because once the technology improves it will spread globally and tend to weaken demand for animal-based foods naturally. Cultural factors are also critical because they will strongly affect people’s willingness to eat different foods.

Conclusions and reflection on the development of my personal perspective

Should we stop eating animal-sourced foods? – Yes, my investigation shows that they cause massive environmental harm, yet I found no reasons humanity couldn’t thrive without them. I was astonished to find that despite such a high impact on climate change, reducing animal agriculture is not yet prominent in climate action plans. I also realised that alternative climate actions such as travelling less would diminish our lives far more.

As a vegetarian myself, I was vulnerable to confirmation bias during this investigation, and I realised the need for patience and empathy when reading sources that opposed my views. The AAA website did not change my opinion, but it did help me to see how destructive their opponents must seem from their perspective, so I understood the need for support to help people transition their livelihoods out of animal agriculture. It made me wonder whether I am equally critical when I read information that supports my views, which prompted me to make extra effort to check facts.

Suggested course of action

Because of the urgency for climate action, I think only government policies can drive the necessary widespread change fast enough. All national governments should accept the IPCC’s message and effectively plan a switch to low-carbon plant-based diets. China’s 50% meat reduction policy is a good example to follow. To achieve this, government education materials like the UK’s “Eatwell Guide” should be updated to actively promote plant-based foods. Vegan food producers should receive tax breaks, and meals funded by the government (in schools, canteens for civil servants, etc.) should make the switch to increase demand. This will boost development of ever more attractive plant-based foods, and economies of scale to bring down their prices. Because culture and habits take time and effort to change, the government should also enlist the help of opinion leaders such as celebrity chefs to develop new, culturally attractive vegan dishes. Governments will need to help people switch their livelihoods from animal agriculture to the new opportunities which will arise, and should buy up surplus agricultural land for rewilding as carbon sinks.

Creating new national parks and restored ecosystems to enjoy, plus delicious new alternative foods to eat, this policy will have an overwhelmingly positive impact besides reducing climate change.

Body: 1910 words; within Fig 1: 62 words; within Fig 2: 28 words. Total: 2000 words

1 Foer, J. Eating Animals. First Back Bay paperback edition. New York: Back Bay Books, 2010. Print.

2 Wikipedia, “Vegetarianism By Country” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Demographics , accessed 2 Feb 2022

3 Goodland, R Anhang, J. “Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change were pigs, chickens and cows?” https://awellfedworld.org/wp-content/uploads/Livestock-Climate-Change-Anhang-Goodland.pdf accessed 2 Feb 2022

4 Poore & Nemecek (2018) Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers, https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf accessed 2 Feb 2022 and erratum https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30792276/   accessed 2 Feb 2022

6 The Guardian, 31 May 2018, Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth accessed 2 Feb 2022

7 Data source: UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, graphic from Our World in Data website: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture accessed 28 Jan 2022

8 Poore & Nemecek (2018)

9 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Report, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM , accessed 1 Feb 2022

10 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Climate Change and Land, Executive Summary “5.6.3.1 Can dietary shifts provide significant benefits?” https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/ accessed 25 Jan 2022

11 Poore & Nemecek (2018) erratum https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30792276/  

12 Our World in Data website: “Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from?” https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector accessed 31 Jan 2022

13 Our World in Data website: “If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares” https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets accessed 2 Feb 2022

14  Data source: Poore & Nemecek (2018). Graphic from The Guardian, 31/04/2018, accessed 31 Jan 2022 

16 Wynes, S. and Nicholas, K. 2017 Environmental Research Letters, “The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions”, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 , accessed 31 Jan 2022

17 UK Government: HM Treasury, “Net-Zero Review”, October 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1026725/NZR_-_Final_Report_-_Published_version.pdf accessed 2 Feb 2022

18 The Guardian, 12 Jan 2022, “UK government sued over ‘pie-in-the-sky’ net-zero climate strategy”, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/12/net-zero-climate-strategy-uk-government-sued accessed 2 Feb 2022

19 OECD Data: “Meat Consumption”, https://data.oecd.org/agroutput/meat-consumption.htm accessed 2 Feb 2022

20 Desmog.com, “Animal Agriculture Alliance”, https://www.desmog.com/agribusiness-database-Animal-Agriculture-Alliance/ accessed 2 Feb 2022

21 Animal Agriculture Alliance website, “Sustainability”, https://animalagalliance.org/issues/sustainability/ accessed 2 Feb 2022

22 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Climate Change and Land, Executive Summary “5.6.3.1 Can dietary shifts provide significant benefits?” https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/ accessed 25 Jan 2022

23 The New York Times, 21 June 2016, “The Rising Murder Count of Environmental Activists.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/science/berta-caceres-environmental-activists-murders.html   accessed 2 Feb 2022

24 Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press website: “Appeals court upholds win in ‘mad cow’ lawsuit”, from Spring 2000 issue of The News Media & The Law https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-spring-2000/appeals-court-upholds-win-m/ accessed 22 Jan 2022

25 Andersen & Kuhn, “Cowspiracy” 2022 version, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfmpXM7TADU accessed 21 Jan 2022

28 The Guardian, 19 July 2019, “Bolsonaro declares ‘the Amazon is ours’ and calls deforestation data ‘lies’” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/19/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-amazon-rainforest-deforestation accessed 2 Feb 2022

29 The Guardian, 16 March 2021, “Eating up the rainforest: China’s taste for beef drives exports from Brazil”, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/16/eating-up-the-rainforest-chinas-taste-for-beef-drives-exports-from-brazil accessed 31 Jan 2022

30 United Nations, Academic Impact: “Shifting to Sustainable Diets” https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/shifting-sustainable-diets , accessed 2 Feb 2022

31 Time, Jan 22, 2021: “How China Could Change the World by Taking Meat Off the Menu”, https://time.com/5930095/china-plant-based-meat/ , accessed 2 Feb 2022

32 UK National Health Service website: “Vegetarian and vegan diets Q&A”, https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/vegetarian-and-vegan-diets-q-and-a/ accessed 31 Jan 2022

33 UK Government, Public Health England, “The Eatwell Guide” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-eatwell-guide accessed 31 Jan 2022

34 Time, Jan 22, 2021: “How China Could Change the World by Taking Meat Off the Menu”, https://time.com/5930095/china-plant-based-meat/ , accessed 2 Feb 2022

37 Own experience

38 MSN News: “Impossible Foods Prepares To Go Public At Around $10B Valuation: Report” https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/impossible-foods-prepares-to-go-public-at-around-10b-valuation-report/ar-BB1ft0qO accessed 27 Jan 2022

Works Cited (separate document)

10 comments

Commendable job

really good work

which citation style is this?

I used Easybib to build this citations list. I think I used MLA. CAIE don’t mind which standard you use, but they assess it for “consistency”.

Very useful! In my school we use APA format for citations.

Who else is watching this to write an individual report assignment at 3AM

Shouldn’t use wikipedia

It really depends what you use Wikipedia for. It may be open access, but it does have a community of editors who care deeply about accuracy and academic integrity. I have just noticed this video from Mike Caulfield of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, in which he uses Wikipedia as a prima facie guide to the nature of an organisation and thus the likely credibility/bias of its website. There is little reason to fear misinformation from the Wikipedia page, given the comparatively low stakes and uncontroversial nature of the query. There are certainly other times when Wikipedia would not be a sufficiently authoritative source. However, Caulfield is talking about the evaluation of sources appropriate for members of the public as they form their views on issues, and that is about the level of IGCSE.

How much time did you spend on this report? also amazing job

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Trafficking of Children and Women: A Global Perspective Essay

Introduction, definition of human trafficking, reasons for increased human trafficking, vulnerability of women and children, human trafficking in the global south, human trafficking in the global north.

Human trafficking is a rampant crime in both the North and the South. Men, women and children are trafficked in this dirty activity. However, women and children are the most vulnerable when it comes to abuse of their human rights.

The scale of women and children trafficking is very large but difficult to put a figure on the actual number of women and children trafficked all over the world. The trafficking of women and children has increased in the recent past and become a major social problem. The problem is borderless but very organized crime and very difficult to combat (Ghosh, 2009).

The crime of human trafficking is very secretive and remains a clandestine activity. Many cases of human trafficking are not reported while many of those reported are untraced. The problem of human trafficking is deep despite there being international initiatives to push governments to take action against the vice. Women and children are the easiest victims of human trafficking due to their vulnerability. The vulnerability of women and children makes them an easy target for traffickers.

Human trafficking is the movement of children, women and men against their will using force or deception with the purpose of exploiting them sexually and economically. Some are forced into the sex industry, forced labour or domestic servitude (Bernat & Winkeller, 2010).

The council of Europe describes human trafficking as a threat to the fundamental human rights and values. Human trafficking violates the basic rights of a human being according to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rights violated include the right of freedom of movement as the victims are taken to places against their will and prohibited from any kind of movement.

They are denied the right to security, liberty and life. Their right to be free from slavery is denied. In addition, the right to free choice of employment is denied to the victims of human trafficking because they are made to work against their will in deplorable conditions. Moreover, they are not given an opportunity to choose the kind of work they would like to do rather they do the work they are forced by their abductors (Carrabine & Lee, 2009).

The rate of trafficking has increased in the recent past due to globalisation. Globalisation has led to an easy flow of people across borders. The ease of movement makes it easy for traffickers to operate without notice. There are many causes of human trafficking such as poverty, conflicts, weak governance and discrimination.

The causes of trafficking vary from one society to another. Human trafficking can be likened to modern day slavery. It is estimated that about 27, 000, 0000 people are victims of human trafficking globally and about one to two millions are trafficked each year (United Nations Population Fund, 2009).

Other estimates show that the vulnerability of women and children is high in number. According to the United States, government between 600,000 and 800,000 people have been trafficked worldwide and eighty per cent of the total number is female. 50 per cent of them are minors or children. 70 per cent of the trafficking victims are exploited sexually (Shelly, 2010).

Women and children are very vulnerable compared to men thus making them easy targets for trafficking. Human trafficking and child trafficking in particular has increased in many countries. The demand is very high in Asian countries and in Latin America. The demand is driven up by the high profits accrued from the activity. The United Nations estimates that profits from human trafficking drug come second to drug sale and arms sale. For instance, in 1997, human trafficking raked in about $7 billion dollars according to International Organization for Migration (Shelly, 2010).

The need for children to work in sex tourism has led to the increased demand. Social cognitive factors during socialisation of children make them an easy target for human trafficking; they may have socialized to appreciate and respect adults making traffickers have an easy “catch”.

Trafficked children are different from trafficked adults because some do not even realize the situation they are in hence they cannot seek for help, as an adult would do. Some of the children who are trafficked are difficult to identity thus combating child trafficking becomes very hard.

Moreover, children and women who are initially trafficked to provide domestic labour mostly end up being abused and used sexually. Women are also trafficked for marriages (Shelly, 2010). Men and boys are usually trafficked to be exploited economically. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that about 300,000 children who are under the age of eighteen years are trafficked to serve as child soldiers in conflict areas.

According to Estes & Weiner, 2001, children trafficking in the United States of America have an average of fifteen thousand every year; the research further shows that about seventy per cent of the children trafficked into America is exploited sexually and they get entry into the country with some kind of visa (Estes & Weiner, 2001). The other thirty per cent of the trafficked children enter the country uninspected.

Most of the children trafficked into the country gain entry through an intermediary country rather than directly from their countries of origin. The major source for trafficked children into America is Central America and Mexico. A good number also comes from Asia, and Africa. Children and women are trafficked in Africa as well; however, the crime is not well documented. The vulnerable position of the human trafficking put the women and children at a greater risk of being trafficked than their male counterparts.

Conflicts and wars make children vulnerable to human trafficking. War leads to hunger and impoverishment and hungry children are very easy to lure with foodstuffs. Traffickers take advantage of the dire situation of the children and promise them better lives elsewhere hence they follow then voluntarily.

Young girls are given promises of jobs and marriages hence fall victims of human trafficking. Children are easy to manipulate hence traffickers have an easy time in luring them. The high demand for children and the fact that traffickers see them as commodities increases their exploitation and. Children are also easy to hide from the scrutinizing eye of the public hence from legal protection.

Moreover, children fall for promises of better life or education easily. Once they are taken, out of the country, they become disoriented and without papers, they are forced to endure suffering in prostitution or as domestic servants. Some are pushed into early marriages and others forced to work in hazardous environments (UNICEF, 2003). Women refuges also fall victims of human trafficking easily especially from war prone regions such as Darfur in Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Children are vulnerable to trafficking because they are a good source of cheap labour. Most children under the age of sixteen years serve as domestic servants in many homes across the world. The demand for cheap domestic labour makes it necessary to smuggle children to foreign countries.

The children working as domestic servants are often abused by their employers but they cannot do anything about it, as they have no power. For instance, in Ghana many children are trafficked to work in the fishing industry both from within and outside the country.

Children are also vulnerable to trafficking for adoption. Childless couples in both Europe and North America often do not want to go through the red tape in child adoption process. Most will look for an easier way of getting a child and trafficking becomes the next better option.

Traffickers will look for young children to be adopted by such couples and they are encouraged by the ready market for young children. for example, in Guatemala between 1000 and 1500 babies are trafficked from the couple to be adopted by couples in North America and Europe (Child Trafficking, 2010).

Women are vulnerable to human trafficking due to their economic dependence. They lack the means to support themselves financially and depend on the men in their lives. Poverty can be said to have the face of women due to feminization of poverty (Sen & Ahuja, 2009).

The women are often from very poor backgrounds and when they get a hope of a job that might enable them to support their families they do not hesitate the offer. The traffickers lure such women with the promises of jobs and once they smuggle them out their country they do whatever they will with them. The abductors may sell the women to work as domestic servants in foreign countries. The women may be mistreated by their employers but will endure the mistreatment if they are threatened to be returned to their home country.

They will often persevere because they cannot bear the thought of going back home to live in poverty as they consider this the only way to earn a living and save their families back at home from the misery of poverty (Hart, 2009). In other instances, the traffickers threaten the trafficked women that they will harm their family members if they dare run away hence the women endure all the kinds of suffering thrown their way (Sen & Ahuja, 200 9; Tapia, 2003).

The demand for women to work in prostitution is high. Trafficking for prostitution is one of the fastest growing forms of transnational crime. The highest number of human trafficking victims comes from Asia. Eastern Europe and Russia also form large source of women to be trafficked to work in the commercial sex industry in North America and Europe.

The flow of traffic of women trafficking is higher toward the developed countries; they are mostly fetched from less developed countries. When the women are trafficked into the foreign countries, they are taken to big cities, tourist cities and around military bases because the demand is high in such areas (Troubnikoff, 2003).

Women are not valued in most societies. They come second to boys and thus they are discriminated against in terms of educational and employment opportunities. The families especially if poor view the women as burdens. Such families will not hesitate to sell their daughters off to traffickers as long as there are promised to get immediate payoffs (UNICEF, 2003).

Some will also sell their daughters especially from societies where the girls pay dowry so that they can skip its payment because the dowry is usually very high. Such families living in poverty cannot afford to pay dowry and thus when an opportunity to get rid of the daughter presents itself it is not passed (Troubniko, 2003). In other instances, the traffickers might approach the families of the women and promise to offer them job opportunities abroad and many take the offer only to end up as trafficking victims.

Other women opt to look for job opportunities abroad because they lack such opportunities in their home countries. This happens because most women do not have power rather they occupy low positions when it comes to power hierarchies. Many are unskilled and lowly educated if at all they get a chance to go to school. The women see the opportunity to work abroad not only as an opportunity for economic liberation bust also as a chance for personal freedom (UNICEF, 2003; Schloenhardt, 2003).

Some families will also sell their daughters of in early marriages especially in many African societies. Young girls are sold of to old men to become wives.

Their families sell them mainly due to poverty. The old men pay high dowries hence the families take it to enable them survive economically at the expense of the young innocent girls. Some families may also hire out their girls to men or in some cases in Ghana; girls are given to priests so that their families can get protection (UNICEF, 2003). The girls are often abused and some opt to runway.

Once they run away from their husbands, they cannot go back to their homes for fear of reprimanding thus some will run away to towns. Once they reach towns they need up in working in brothels to make money for survival. The brothels become a very good environment for the traffickers to prey on the young girls. Some of the traffickers will promise the girls a better life and once they win their trust and move them across borders they become slaves to be used in the sex industry.

The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the consequent economic hardships and conflict in the then Yugoslavia increased the vulnerability of women and children to human trafficking. The lack of opportunities to advance economically makes them eager to leave their countries. The traffickers often advertise better paying jobs abroad in the local dailies, which any desperate women are wiling to take.

The lure of better opportunities abroad make the young and women easy prey for the traffickers who entrap them with false promises of a better life. Moreover, the law enforcement organs are weak in such areas and thus it is easy for criminals to run their activities unperturbed. The organized criminal gangs operate hand in hand with the law enforcers and women have no chance against such a combined force (Troubnikoff, 2003).

The demand for people to work in the sex industry increases the vulnerability of women and children. Moreover, the demand is high for domestic servants and cheap labour. Children are needed to work in sweatshops and in sex tourism, as the women are required for domestic servitude and in prostitution.

The traffickers get high profits from providing cheap labour hence they work very hard to traffic as many children and women as they can. Furthermore, the use of the same people to provide cheap labour ensures that they traffickers continue to make huge tax-free profits. It therefore becomes necessary to have women and children working under bondage (Troubnikoff, 2003).

On the other hand, the laws against human trafficking do not protect women and children against trafficking adequately. The laws are very lenient and the fines given to human traffickers are even lower than those for pushing drugs are and selling illegal arms are.

Moreover, trafficking victims are often treated as criminals making it hard for them to seek assistance from the police or other authorities. The women caught in prostitution are considered criminals and end up in jails or face deportation to their home countries. Many law enforcers do not take time to distinguish between women who work in the sex industry voluntary and those there against their will.

In some cases, the women are kidnapped and taken out of their countries of origin forcefully. Their disadvantage position in the society does not help them, as most are victims of domestic violence.

The discrimination puts the women and children in great risks of being trafficked, as the society does not offer them adequate protection because they are not considered important in the first place. Some societies view women and children, as objects that can be disposed and hence selling them to traffickers is not considered a crime (UNICEF, 2003).

The long discrimination of women is deeply rooted in some societies such that trafficking is seen as a norm and it is morally acceptable. Hence, with such perceptions towards women their vulnerability increases as the society works with traffickers (UNICEF, 2003). Unfortunately, reporting the women as missing persons does not help much as many are never traced. In other cases the women are sold by people, they know who collude with the traffickers and the women go along with their plans unsuspecting.

Moreover, violence against women and children is rampant in both the private and public spheres in many areas across the globe (Locher, 2007; United Nations, 2011). The women endure cases of physical abuse from their male counterparts. The trend of violence increases the probability of the women being trafficked twofold.

In addition, there is a perception that women and the girl child are weak and inferior to men and boys. Due to this perception, the women and children are often forced to work and inhabit destitute conditions. The men in such women and children’s lives may also recruit them or force them into the hands of traffickers (UNICEF, 2003).

The Global South is acts as the source for trafficking. Women and girls end up in the commercial sex industry where they are forced to work in inhuman conditions by their abductors who keep their travel papers so that they have no way of running away. The children are trafficked in sex tourism.

Increased sex tourism in the Southeast Asia region has led to an overflow of human trafficking victims. Children are in high demand to serve sex tourists who come from countries such as Japan, Australia, Europe and North America (Kohlweg, 1998). Paedophiles also take advantage of sex tourisms and visit the southeast region. The favourite travel destinations for sex tourism are countries such as Cambodia, Philippines and Thailand.

On the other hand, Japan acts as the largest destination for women trafficked from Asia. The women who end up in Japan are alleged to come from Thailand and the Philippines. The women from Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe are also brought to Japan. Other destinations for trafficked women are Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia. Vietnamese women are often trafficked into china and many hundreds of thousands of children and women sold into the sex industry in Thailand (Kohlweg, 1998).

Many victims of human trafficking end up in the North. The North acts as a destination for many trafficked women and children. However, it is important to note that human trafficking also occurs internally with the North.

The problem of trafficking of women and children into the United States has not been major like in countries such as Japan or Australia but the problem has been on the increasing (Territo & Kirkham, 2009). Many human trafficking are taken to America from the south to work as forced labourers and serve in the sex industry. For instance, the state of Georgia has a high number of child prostitutes.

Children are trafficked from the south into the North. For instance, in the United States the problem of child trafficking is rampant. In spite of the efforts to stem out trafficking, it goes and the true grasp of the problem remains vague. The United States established the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000 to combat human trafficking.

The report for trafficking persons shows that about 50,000 persons were trafficked into the country in 2002 and 20,000 in 2003. The exact figure is hard to get because different agencies provide different figures and the figures might be higher than the ones provided (Gozdziak & MacDonell, 2007).

In a country such as Canada, it is estimated that about 800 people are trafficked into the country and about 2000 human trafficking victims are ferried through the country and taken to the united states. The victims are involved in prostitution, which is estimated at $400 million per year.

Mexico has a large human trafficking business. About $20 billion is made yearly making this criminal activity only second to the drug trade. Many children and women are trafficked from Mexico into the United States. Most of the victims end up in the sex industry. In the area called Chiapas, children are traded for as low as $100 and $200.

The area is very impoverished explaining why people take such little amount for their children. In addition, the area tops the world in the number of child prostitutes. Many female victims been molested, beaten and even killed in this country. The country receives many sex tourists from America (U.S. Department of State, 2009).

Finally, human trafficking has increased and combating the crime is a major challenge for many governments as the traffickers keep changing their means of carrying their trade. The era of globalisation has also made it easy for people to move across borders easily and human traffickers are able to move the human trafficking victims easily.

The increase in demand for children and women to be exploited sexually is worrying as more become victims of this inhuman activity that robs them of their human rights. The children and women suffer greatly in the countries they are trafficked to making their lives miserable. Trafficking of children denies them an opportunity to experience a normal childhood.

They are introduced into the adult world at a very young age and they suffer so much some with no hope for a normal life. The vulnerability of women and children has put them at risk of being trafficked. It is therefore imperative to deal with the factors that make it easy for criminal gangs to smuggle innocent children and women. More needs to be done to protect women and children from the modern day slavery.

Bernat, F.P. & Winkeller, C.H. 2010. Human Sex Trafficking: The global becomes local. Women and Criminal Justice, 20, 186-192.

Carrabine, E & Lee, M. 2009. Criminology: A Sociological Introduction. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Child trafficking . 2010. Web.

Estes, R.J. & Neil A. W. 2001. The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work.

Ghosh, B., 2009. Trafficking of women and children in India: nature, dimensions and strategies for prevention. The International journal of Human Rights , 13 (5), 716-738.

Gozdziak, M.E. & MacDonell, M. 2007. Closing the Gaps: The Need to Improve Identification and Services to Child Victims of Trafficking. Human organization, 66(2), 171-185.

Hart, J. 2009. Human Trafficking . New York: The Rosen Publishing Group.

Kohlweg, K. 1998. Combating Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in South Asia . Darby PA: DIANE Publishing.

Locher, B. 2007. Trafficking in women in the European Union: norms, advocacy-networks and policy-change . The Netherlands: VS Verlag.

Schloenhardt, A. 2003. Migrant smuggling: illegal migration and organised crime in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Sen, S Ahuja, J.2009. Trafficking in women and children: myths and realities. New Delhi, India: Concept Publishing Company.

Shelly, L. 2010. Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tapia, 3. New patterns of irregular migration in Europe: seminar report 12 and 13 November 2002, Council of Europe . Turkey: Council of Europe.

Territo & Kirkham, 2009. International Sex Trafficking of Women & Children: Understanding the Global Epidemic. New York: Looseleaf Law Publication.

Troubnikoff, A.M. 2003. Trafficking in women and children: current issues and developments . New York: Nova Publishers.

UNICEF. 2003. Web. Trafficking In Human Beings, Especially Women and Children, In Africa . Web.

United Nations . 2011. Web.

United Nations Population Fund. 2009. Gender Equality: Trafficking in Human Misery. Web.

U.S. Department of State, 2009. 2008 Human Rights Report, 2009. Web.

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Programmes & Qualifications

Cambridge international as & a level global perspectives & research (9239).

• Syllabus overview

Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives and Research is a skills-based course that prepares learners for positive engagement with our rapidly changing world. Learners broaden their outlook through the critical analysis of – and reflection on – issues of global significance. They will develop unique, transferable skills including research, critical thinking and communication by following an approach to analysing and evaluating arguments and perspectives called the 'Critical Path'.

Collaborative skills are enhanced through participation in a team project. The skills gained through study of this course help students to meet the demands of Twenty-First century learning, preparing the transition to higher education and the world of work.

As part of the course learners write a research report on a research question of their choice. You can find out more information on this on the School Support Hub and viewing the supporting documents.

View our Global Perspectives and Research Statement of Support .

The syllabus year refers to the year in which the examination will be taken.

• -->2023 - 2025 Syllabus update (PDF, 145KB)
• -->2026 - 2028 Syllabus update (PDF, 150KB)

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• -->2023-2025 Grade Descriptions (PDF, 118KB)

Syllabus updates

We revise our qualifications regularly to make sure that they continue to meet the needs of learners, schools and higher education institutions around the world, and reflect current thinking. Please see the 2023-2025 syllabus document for full details on the changes.

What are the main changes to the syllabus?

• refreshed the list of Cambridge International AS Level topics
• updated the assessment objectives to make the links to the assessed skills clearer.

What are the main changes to the assessment?

• For Component 3, learners can now choose between recording a live presentation or submitting a presentation with a recorded voiceover. This offers greater flexibility for centres and is more accessible for some students.
• The Cambridge Research Report (Cambridge International A Level) is now marked by Cambridge International. We have discontinued the oral explanation and learners do not submit an Outline Proposal Form.

When do these changes take place?

The updated syllabus is for examination from June 2023 onwards. Examinations are available in March 2023 for India only. Please see the 2023-2025 syllabus above for full details.

We are developing a comprehensive range of materials to help you teach the updated syllabus. These resources will be available from June 2021 onwards (before first teaching) through our School Support Hub and include:

• Scheme of work
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• Example Candidate Responses (after first examination).

Face-to-face and online training will be available. For up-to-date information, visit our Events and training calendar .

Endorsed resources

Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives and Research (Collins)

Encourage critical thinking, self-reflection and independent thought and provide students the opportunity to engage with key global issues. This series comprises a Student’s Book, Workbook and Teacher’s Guide.

Read more on the Collins website

Guide students along the critical pathway as they advance their Twenty-First century skillsets in areas such as research, reasoning, thinking and communication. Includes essay writing support and guidance for forming research questions.

Read more on the Cambridge University Press website

Important notices

We are withdrawing Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives & Research (9239) from the March exam series. The last March series for this syllabus will be March 2025. 

From 2026, we will only offer this syllabus in the June and November exam series.

We communicated this change to schools in September 2022.

Schools offering Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives can access resources, courses and build online communities through our . Access the Online Learning area .

For some subjects, we publish grade descriptions to help understand the level of performance candidates’ grades represent.

We paused the publication of grade descriptions in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the temporary changes to the awarding standard in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

As the awarding standard has now returned to the pre-pandemic standard, we are working to produce up-to-date grade descriptions for most of our general qualifications. These will be based on the awarding standards in place from June 2023 onwards.

The national agency in the UK for the recognition and comparison of international qualifications and skills, UK NARIC, has reviewed Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives and found that it is comparable to UK A Level and develops skills that are particularly relevant in preparing students for higher education study internationally. Read the executive summary of the UK NARIC report.

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