Welcome to Volume 9 Number 1 of the Journal of International and Global Studies. We continue to increase our subscriptions to this free open access online interdisciplinary journal. If you would like to subscribe to the journal, just click on the Subscribe tab below the journal title. We will be sure to send you the web link to the journal so that you can read and download the essays and book reviews in accordance with your interests. You will also provide us with a database so that we can draw on your expertise for peer reviewing essays for the journal.

This Fall/Winter 2017 issue features six essays from a variety of different disciplines, two Review Essays, and 25 book reviews on globalization topics (defined broadly), a predominant theme of the journal.

The first essay is by Daniel Ervin and David López Carr, two geographers who have global interests. They discuss a classical issue that extends back to the earliest demographer, Reverend Thomas Malthus on the linkages among population growth, how much food humans consume, and the practice of agriculture. In their essay, they discuss the complexities of the relationships between population, food, and the environment since Malthusian arguments, including Ester Boserup’s cornucopia theories, and more current developments. Ervin and López Carr discuss some of the major theoretical bases for assessing the correlations and causes of population growth, food resources, agricultural practices, and global and local level developments. They explore these issues drawing on global and specific case studies from Latin America (Amazonian Brazil, Guatemala, and Costa Rica) using precise statistical data from 1970 to 2010. These geographers pay attention to the importance of scale including village level developments compared with livestock ranchers or larger farms, as well as export agriculture, diet choices, agro-business global activities. Nevertheless, they see that increased population does lead to increases in food consumption, other resources, and environmental degradation. They consider population growth in respect to urban/rural factors along with fertility, mortality, migration, and remittances from migratory trends in their analysis. In conclusion, they review some of the future trends of population growth, food, and agricultural practices and propose some solutions for the adverse problems resulting from increases in red meat and dairy products consumption among burgeoning middle class consumers.

The second essay is by Jack Thornburg a sociologist who has been investigating ecotourism and sustainable developments in Cuba. He has been visiting Cuba and studying this topic for some time. Thornburg finds that if communities control local resources to create economic opportunities for local goals, there is a greater chance that community development will be more effective and sustainable. He summarizes the developments in Cuba since the 1959 revolution and Castro’s call for global environmental awareness. Following the USSR collapse Cuba’s had an economic depression that influenced the local environments. Recently Thornburg describes Cuba’s potential to develop a major eco-tourism industry compared with those in Costa Rica. He provides the example of the village of Las Terrazas located in Cuba’s Sierra del Rosario Mountains, about an hour from Havana. Las Terrazas was designated a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1985. Thornburg’s description of Las Terrazas in 2001, was as a significant cultural attraction with new hotels, restaurants serving local food, ruins of a coffee plantation, and a zip line experience for international tourisms, a model for eco-tourism. He assesses the economic developments in Cuba under Raul Castro and the different models being promoted: a statist model with a state-controlled economy; the China model of socialist market economic production with free enterprise and privatization under a dominant Communist Party; and a more democratic socialist position known as autogestionario involving strong local control, which is more compatible with a sustainable environmental program. Thornburg concludes that this third model offers a more community-based democratic process that will help the future for Cuba’s eco-tourism developments.

The third essay is by Stephen Reysen at Texas A&M Univeristy and Iva Katzarska-Miller at Transylvania University. Their essay compares U.S. and Bulgarian citizens as they self-report and engage with their identity as global citizens. The authors examine the number of global versus domestic stories in the media in the U.S. versus Bulgarian media to study the differences in global citizenship identification. They note how globalization has changed institutions such as education and workplace environments producing more interconnectedness of individuals throughout the world. Reysen and Katzarska-Miller, both psychologists, ran several different types of tests of the cultural psychological model that suggests that increasing identification of global citizenship is related to one’s degree of adherence to ingroup norms. The greater identification with global citizenship norms, the more likely individuals would become more prosocial, i.e., value diversity and pluralism, be more favorable to human rights, feel obligations to protect the natural environment, assist individuals outside of their own ingroup, and in general have more intergroup empathy. Less identification with global citizenship would have the opposite of prosocial ingroup norms. In an earlier study Katzarska et al. surveyed individuals in the U.S., Bulgaria, and India regarding global citizenship and prosocial values. Most research has shown that larger countries have fewer global stories than smaller countries, thus, these psychologists found that Bulgaria has more global stories than in the U.S., which has produced more prosocial and pro-global views among Bulgarians. Finally, Reysen and Katzarska-Miller ran a manipulative study that determined a causal link between perceptions of family and friend behaviors and the development of a more prosocial and pro-global identification. They encourage more research on the importance of a pro-global normative environments and self-identification.

The fourth essay is by Isiaka Alani Badmus of the Peace and Conflict Studies Unit at Afe Babalola University in Nigeria and ’Dele Ogunmola in Peace Studies at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. The essay discusses Nigeria’s foreign policy and practices since independence in 1960 up through the years of military authoritarianism until the more democratic governments today. The essay investigates the internal workings of the Nigerian administration following more democratic rule, Africa’s security management, and economic development. Following independence and joining the UN in 1960, Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa became a major oil producer and the second largest economic power in Africa. However, military rule soon afflicted the country and it became a ‘pariah state’ isolated from the democratic countries of the world. Under military rule corruption flourished that weakened economic development and also resulted in inequalities and ethno-religious conflicts along with political assassinations of dissidents, in Nigeria. A rebirth of democracy came with the Fourth Republic beginning in 1999. Although Nigeria’s foreign policy was based on non-alignment between the East-West Cold War, that policy was abandoned after the collapse of the USSR. Following the Fourth Republic the authors conclude that there was a more democratization of the state, privatization of the domestic economy, an attempt to clean up corruption, and new more formulations and improvements of foreign policy, which need to be continued presently.

The fifth essay is authored by Kimberley Brown and Shawn Smallman at Portland State University and Rosa David at the Universidad del Norte, Colombia. These authors argue that the ideals of universal design within pedagogy that have been widely adopted in elementary education and some universities should be adopted for international studies courses in higher education. As international studies courses usually include more international students and ‘third culture kids’ (those students who have been educated outside of their parents’ culture during their prime developmental years), there ought to be pedagogical techniques to maximize more inclusion for these diverse learners. The authors note that novel pedagogical techniques that stress active learning, learner autonomy, and student engagement have been significant, but the ideals have not had a major impact on international studies courses. Drawing on the ideals expressed by Paulo Freire and others, the authors encourage a move away from a ‘banking education’ approach to learning and knowledge that reflects the dominant power structure in society that does not meet the needs of diverse groups of student learners. They propose a scaffolding strategy that involves more autonomous learning, negotiating syllabi with flexibility for assignments, and more multilingual writing, which will improve inclusivity and social justice that reflect the curriculum goals of international studies courses.

The sixth essay by Krishna Bista at Morgan State University explores the issues related to recruiting Nepalese students into higher education at U.S. universities. He notes that a U.S. university education is very attractive for Nepalese students compared with the poor quality found in the universities in Nepal. However, these students have to rely on recruiters of educational agents in Kathmandu in order to assist them when they attempt to gain admissions. They perceive that they will have a better chance at receiving a visa if they use an educational agent. Bista studies how these educational agents are perceived by the Nepalese students as they prepare to study abroad in the U.S. He uses both quantitative data and also interviews 112 Nepalese students for more qualitative data to understand their perceptions of these agents as they are in the process of exploring different colleges and universities. Although Bista found that the Nepalese students had mostly positive experiences with these agents and could trust them, they found that the service fees of the agents were often higher than expected and there were some other problems with the process. He concludes that U.S. universities could help facilitate the process by providing up-to-date admissions and scholarship information on their websites to assist these Nepalese students.

Volume 9 Number 1 also includes two Review Essays. Tarique Niazi, a sociologist from the University of Wisconsin, reviews two Routledge titles on human rights issues, Hehir, A. & Murray, R. Protecting Human Rights in the 21st Century and Yilmaz, G. Minority Rights in Turkey: A Battlefield for Europeanization. Another sociologist, Lydia J. Hou at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reviews two Routledge works on development and sustainability, Brown, S. Sustainable Development Goals and UN Goal-Setting, 2017 and Dodds, F., Donoghue, D., & Roesch, J. Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals: A Transformational Agenda for an Insecure World, 2017. Both of these volumes are dealing with globalization issues and consequences for development and sustainability throughout the world.

Volume 9 Number 1 also includes 25 book reviews dealing with global trends throughout the world; we intend to maintain this standard of generalized interdisciplinary readability for all of our essays and book reviews in future issues of our journal. We hope that you will subscribe to our journal to read future essays, review essays, and book reviews. We also invite you to submit essays, review essays, book reviews, and suggest possible book reviews for the journal.

Sincerely,

Raymond Scupin, PhD Director: Center for International and Global Studies Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University Email: [email protected]