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Joe Siracusa: Globalisation, to me, and this is the $64 000 question, is a hotly contested
term. There are all kinds of encyclopaedias and handbooks on what globalisation is.
Paul Battersby: Globalisation is a concept which is very, very broad and it means many
different things to many different people. Julian Lee: Globalisation is very much debated
in both academic and in popular circles. So, it is natural that people have very diverse
understandings of what globalisation is. Jonathan Makuwira: It's part of that process
where the boundaries have become so fluid, and movement is very rapid and the exchange
of ideas is very rapid. Technology has evolved the entire globe into a small village.
Reina Ichii: For example, in my course, in Microfinance, it's about how poor people can
access these financial services. They can access these digital technologies and then
transfer monies easily, so they have more opportunities to improve their life.
Joe Siracusa: With the revolution in the Internet and information, we have everything as, sort
of, connected. If someone sneezes in North Korea, someone in New York catches a cold,
so to speak. Robbie Guevara: From an environment perspective,
there was always a consciousness that the Earth was interconnected. So that interconnectedness
of the world, or the Earth, has always essentially been part of my understanding of globalisation.
Paul Battersby: I like to think of globalisation, really as meaning, in its simplest sense,
greater openness: Openness to new ideas, openness to communication with people from all different
parts of the world, openness to exchange, openness to movements of people.
Julian Lee: Globalisation is not just Americanisation, everyone is becoming Americanised.
Peter Phipps: What I see is, globalisation is actually leading to new kinds of differences
and diversities. Julian Lee: At the same time as you have the
sort of proliferation of global symbols you have the people reinventing the meanings of
them and also reasserting their own symbols as well.
Aiden Warren: Particularly since 1990 and the end of the Cold War, is really the interconnection
between the political and the economic. You can no longer separate those two entities.
Joe Siracusa: Since the 1970s we have the proliferation of states and governments and
transnational corporations and NGOs and INGOs and IGOs and all the rest of it, which have
broadened the world a great bit. Aiden Warren: But it also cascades and caresses
across many different areas, obviously relating to gender, the environment, technology, conflict.
Peter Phipps: You can't just separate these different domains of culture, economy, politics
but actually are, and always have been, deeply interconnected. And in some ways, globalisation
and the intensifying forces of globalisation make those interconnections more apparent.
Paul Battersby: Global Studies Week at RMIT really is a demonstration of how we approach
globalisation and how we prepare graduates for a globalised world at RMIT.
Aiden Warren: Global Studies Week is really a keystone feature of our program; it's really
highlighting to the community and really the broader academic, commercial sector, government
sector communities what we do in our program. It highlights the key features in terms of
the academic and the research. Paul Battersby: We established out undergraduate
degree program in International Studies in 1999. It was the first degree in Australia
to actually build a degree program around the concept of globalisation, that attempted
to engage in a process of curriculum design, curriculum development, that asked the question
'How do we prepare undergraduates for life but also for professional work in a globalised
world?' To kick off Global Studies Week we have our Global Careers Day, which is a conference
composed entirely of graduates of our Bachelor of Arts (International Studies) and Masters
of International Development. And the diversity of occupations that's reflected in the conference
program, I think, reflects upon the diversity of students and the diversity of interests
that we have in our Global Studies program. Aiden Warren: It also brings back some past
graduates and some of the successes they gave attained post-graduation.
Paul Battersby: We do have students who work in media. One of our speakers on the careers
day conference will be James Scurry, who is a TV news producer with Al Jazeera in London.
By opening up our doors and allowing the outside world to come in and actually view many of
our curriculum activities, for example our Student Learning Conference on the Thursday
of Global Studies Week. Aiden Warren: On the Thursday we have our
Second year students and Third year students present on what they have been doing in terms
of Working and Managing, International Professional Practice.
Paul Battersby: We are very fortunate to be able to feature one of the creators, if you
like, of the globalisation concept, Professor Roland Robertson, who will be giving the annual
Tom Nairn address on Monday evening after our Global Careers Day. And that, in one day,
in many ways, sums up a lot of what we're trying to achieve in Global Studies Week itself,
which is to emphasise the learning aspects of Global Studies and also the research and
engagement that we have in Global Studies.