Scott Neigh
The exam will only draw from materials covered in course and no outside research will be necessary. This is an essay-style answer (meaning it should be written in full and complete sentences and paragraphs with a clear introduction and conclusion) and responses will be evaluated according to: how completely they answer the question;
demonstration of comprehension of the course material and themes; the use of relevant course material as evidence; clarity and coherence of the answer; and the degree of critical insight demonstrated. The exam is worth 20% of your final mark and will be graded out of 20. The exam must be typed in 12 point font, double spaced, with one inch margins, and should be free of grammatical and spelling errors. Student name, student number, and the course code should appear in the header at the top of each page. It also must be no more than 5 pages in length – any pages in excess of this limit will not be considered as part of your answer. In-text citations for referenced material should be provided but a works cited page is not necessary. Good writing!

Question:
In Resisting the State, Scott Neigh critiques the idea that dominant accounts of where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going are somehow value-free or objective representations of singular, timeless “truths.” He argues instead that conventional history makes certain assumptions about how society works and what history should be, and the exclusion of people and stories and ideas flows from those assumptions. Approaching history with a different framework can result in a much different and much more useful picture of how the present was produced by the past, and how the future can be produced by the present. (2012,
8)
In this course we have taken a similar approach to exploring both “globalization” and
“global transformations.” Drawing specifically on our course texts (Resisting the State,
Solidarity, and Everyday Revolutions), the movies we screened in class (The Fourth World War, If a Tree Falls, Eyes on the Prize, and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised), and lectures, discuss how people’s struggles for social justice can drive socially, and even globally, transformative processes. What is the difference between viewing social order and social change “from above” (the position of powerful and privileged actors) versus “from below” (the position of “ordinary” people). How is ournderstanding of the interests invested in social order and the forces driving social change affected when we take people’s struggles for social justice seriously analytically as well as politically?