Associate Professor of Political Science Hollis France’s Maymester course, “No Passport Required: Globalization from a Community Perspective,” brought the concept of globalization home to students through examples affecting the Lowcountry every day.
To illustrate the impact of globalization in the Charleston community, she used shrimp.
Shrimp tasting: wild-caught versus farm-raised.
France spoke to students about the dying local shrimping industry and its replacement, the farm-raised shrimp industry. “Who knew shrimping could be such a lightening rod in the classroom,” France said. “Farm-raised versus wild-caught shrimp got students riled up about the impact of imported farm-raised shrimp on the shrimpers in Charleston.”
A field trip to Rick Eager’s Swimming Rock Fish Farm in Meggett, S.C., where students witnessed firsthand fish and shrimp aquaculture in action, and a conversation with Frank Blum, executive director of the South Carolina Seafood Alliance (SCSA), provided students with a sense of the impact of the global seafood industry on the livelihoods of local shrimpers.
The students performed a taste test comparing wild-caught to farm-raised shrimp and the majority favored the wild-caught shrimp.
A student group wrote in a final paper for the course, “As citizens… we are often blind to the impacts of our choices as consumers… globalization has reshaped the relationship between our actions and the effects they have. For example, our decisions as consumers within the United States can have huge impacts on individuals, environments, species, or even societies in countries all around the world.”
France will teach “International Political Economy” in the fall, where students are offered a grounding in how the global economy works.
