[lbo-talk] help my students...

[Alan Rudy]

Students in my general education, "integrative studies" Global Urban Systems
(I did NOT generate that title) summer session class have read and discussed
a number of things but have been focused on Mike Davis' City of Quartz and
his Planet of Slums.

Not surprisingly, esp.since not one of them was actually interested in the
topic before taking it as "the least worst gen ed class I gotta take"),
their primary reaction has been a combination of confused moral outrage and
a-/pre-/post-political depression... however, to my great joy, a number of
them (OK, a small number of them) have asked for specific groups they might
look into working with, particularly if they were interested in a variety of
critical and participatory urban development in the global South (they've
been exposed to Michael Goldman's wonderful critique of the World Bank's
green neoliberal cooptation of "NGOs" so they know to be suspicious).  Davis
IS depressing and I want to reward their interest without generating false
hope for simple, quick solutions.

A limitation of mine is that I know the academic and intellectual side of
this stuff fairly well but not the activist NGO side.  Could a fella get
some help?

Thanks,

A
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Visiting Associate Professor
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319