Bangladesh's ready-made garment industry and its harsh working conditions have been the center of intense scrutiny for the past decade, especially following the massive death tolls of the Tazreen Fashions factory fire in 2012 and the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013. While lauded by many for its tremendous contributions to the Bangladeshi economy and its employment of primarily women, the garment industry is responsible for causing harm both to the women who work there and the local environment. Women workers are physically and verbally abused in the workplace for little pay, while the factories emit pollutants that contaminate the drinking water in surrounding areas and destroy crops. The global North, while being the main destination for exports from Bangladesh, refuses to intervene in a meaningful way to help the people who supply cheap goods for them, even in spite of highly publicized agreements to help improve factory safety, like the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. This paper will examine the Bangladeshi garment industry using an ecofeminist lens. Doing so helps to illustrate the various power relations involving gender, capitalism, and the environment that characterize the industry. These axes of power, all stemming from the same mindset of superiority, reinforce one another both ideologically and materially. Seeing how these different issues – including harassment, pollution, crop loss, and forced displacement – are connected will help to determine how to best solve each of these individual issues.

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Over the past several years, many state Cooperative Extension Services have taken inventory of their engagement with international issues, including barriers (real and perceived) to active participation in globalizing programs as well as staff needs for effective communication with diverse audiences. While Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) has actively involved 4-H youth in international exchange programs, they have not engaged in a coherent and proactive effort to globalize all program areas. The study purpose was to assess attitudes of VCE faculty toward globalizing their programming efforts. Also examined were information related to VCE faculty's current involvement in globally-focused activities and barriers to globalizing programming efforts. The survey instrument combined various sections of two surveys developed and employed by Barbara Ludwig in studies on Ohio Cooperative Extension. The web-based survey included four sections: 1) Employee Profile, 2) Involvement in International Activities, 3) Perception towards Global Issues, and 4) Perceived Barriers to Globalizing Extension Programs. The target audience included all VCE faculty members (N = 332). Two hundred six faculty members completed the on-line survey. This represents a return rate of 62%. Data revealed that 92% of the respondents were involved in international efforts within the past five years. On a scale of one to four, with four representing the highest level of engagement, campus administrators (mean = 2.66) and specialists (mean = 2.13) were the most involved in international programming effort; the least involved were the district directors (mean = 1.21). "Exchanged ideas with colleagues from other countries" and "hosted an international visitor" were the top two activities performed by faculty. Data also revealed an attitude mean score of 2.9 on a scale from one to four, with four being the most positive. Campus administrators (mean = 3) were the most positive of the four position categories; agents were the least positive (mean = 2.86). Furthermore, the top two barriers to globalizing VCE programs, as identified by respondents, were "lack of financial support" and "not a programming priority". Respondents also selected "Lack of time" as a major barrier. / Ph. D.

This qualitative study examined the changes that have occurred due to global and hemispheric market forces, and particularly through Hispanic immigration, in a small town in Southwest Virginia. The interdisciplinary study is written as a narrative, and includes descriptions of the town and people of Galax, Virginia and of the predominately Mexican immigrants who have come to live there. The primary focus is on the changes and challenges that occur in schools from the perspective of teachers and administrators, as well as from the students. Local residents and Hispanic immigrants alike share their perspectives on the impacts of immigration and their efforts to accommodate changes in their lives and communities. The researcher draws from his personal experience as an immigrant to Mexico to probe the search for identity and meaning that are common to immigrants. The study found that Hispanic children have devised an unofficial dual-language peer support system for learning in the classrooms that circumvents the assimilationist approach to which the schools have adhered. Immigrant children experience marginalization even in caring school environments such as those found in the Galax schools, due largely to the lack of preparation of teachers and administrators in culturally appropriate pedagogy. The study calls for more direct involvement between the university and local communities experiencing significant change due to global forces. Demographic change through immigration impacts schools implicitly, and requires the support and education of teachers and administrators through regional schools of education. / Ph. D.

The bankruptcy of the government of Orange County, California in 1994 is treated as a case study depicting a potentially critical problem emerging for democracies. The analysis links finan-cial and fiduciary perspectives by re-examining the actions of Orange County officials and citi-zens through three separate analytical frames: the dynamics of economic globalization; citizen engagement through the channel of civil society; and the theory of risk--both its nature generally and its financial aspect specifically. The conclusion reached is that globalization has made con-tingency and uncertainty ubiquitous and this indicates that the practice of governance in its pub-lic administration dimension should include a return to pragmatic, process approaches to policy and implementation. / Ph. D.

No / The rise of networked social movements contesting neo-liberal globalization and protesting the summits of global finance and governance organizations has posed an analytical challenge to social movement theorists and called into question the applicability to this global milieu of the familiar concepts and heuristics utilized in social movement studies. In this article, we argue that the self-defining alter-globalization movement(s) might instead be engaged with as an expression and effect of global complexity, and we draw upon a `minor¿ literature in social movement studies that includes Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze and Alberto Melucci to illustrate our claims. This article uses a Deleuzian reading of complexity to describe the phase space of the `movement of movements¿, and its perturbation of global civil society through the iteration of sense-making processes (reflexive framing) and the exploration of singularities inhering in social movement `plateaux¿. Those transnational gatherings, protests and social forums facilitated by computer-mediated communications and the advent of unprecedented mobility which constitute a `shadow realm¿ that remains largely invisible to political exchange theories operating within the conceptual confines of the nation-state.