CCGL9069
Multinationals and the Global Economy
Semester 2, 2023-24 (Not being offered in 2024-25)
Course Description
What are the drivers of globalization? When you read this question, you will most likely think of major nation-states such as China or the United States, international organizations such as the United Nations, and technological innovations, such as the internet or the airplane. However, there is another important driver that fuels globalization: multinational companies. These are companies that do business in multiple countries and move, manufacture and market capital, commodities and services across borders, often owning assets and employing people throughout the world. Multinational companies are major pillars of the global economy, but at the same time shape our daily lives locally. In this course, you will explore how these multinational companies operate across the world and influence globalization. We will discuss the positive and negative effects the ever-growing presence of multinationals have on our lives, not only economically, but also in terms of the larger impact multinationals have on local cultures.
*Not being offered in 2024-25
*Not being offered in 2024-25
CCHU9065
A Life Worth Living
Semester 1 & 2, 2024-25 (course will be offered twice)
Course Description
What does it mean to live a worthy life? This is one of the most fundamental questions of human existence and this course addresses the relevant issues through an engagement with various philosophical and religious traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity and Secular Humanism. We shall discuss how the teachings of important historical figures from these traditions have influenced the choices of people over the centuries, and how they have been contextualized and adopted in contemporary society. We shall examine how these figures regard the place of bodily pleasures, intellectual pursuits, power, status, possessions, accomplishments, virtues, relationship with other human beings and the relationship (or not) with the transcendent in their vision of a good life. We will explore the resources they offer for dealing with stress, temptations, disappointments and failures, social oppression, the loss of possessions and of loved ones, and with one’s own death. The course will help students connect across different disciplines and cultures, and develop the ability to examine controversial issues from multiple perspectives. Students will achieve these aims through interactive learning and high impact practices such as group debates and interviewing contemporary advocates of different worldviews concerning the question of “what makes a worthy life?”
CCHU9090
The Love We Give and the Lies We Tell: The Ethics of Relationships
Semester 2, 2023-24
Course Description
From dating apps to family life, Instagram to the workplace, we all want to have good relationships and live a good life. What does that look like in the modern world? Everyday life is complex and we are often presented with relationships, situations, and technologies that ask us to make compromises, whether we know it or not. This course looks at some of these everyday ethical questions through the lens of different scales of human relationships. It will equip students with ethical frameworks through which to view these relationships, enabling them to identify and develop their own values to navigate them. It will examine five key relationships through cross-cultural perspectives: (1) with oneself — including self-care, self-forgiveness, and conscience; (2) with friendship and dating; (3) with one’s immediate community — including family and professional life; (4) the larger society in which one lives — including social media and the politics of respect; and (5) with the transcendence of mystery, the divine, and the sacred — including urban space and the ecological other with which we participate.