Wonder or Wander

Altbach, Philip. (1998). Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing. The university has been always a global institution since the medieval period (all the modern universities stem from the European model in the medieval epoch and the universities in the medieval were more international and taught in Latin students all around Europe until nationalism swept around the continent in the 19th century. p. xviii), and now with the global economy and communication technology advance, increasing internationalism among universities has become a main operating engine of knowledge based society and created an international knowledge system. (However, access to knowledge is limited by the availability of resources, such as books and the Internet.) Market forces--ideas are as important as products--of the institutions of industrialized nations and local demands--academic degrees from the 'center' is useful at the 'periphery'-- of developing nations have pushed greater internationalism in high...

Keck, M. & Sikkink, K. (1998). Cornell University Press. The authors focused on networks in order to conceive transformative and mobilizing actions to the international political system and named networks of activists formed on the basis of common values and discourse--notably human rights, women right, and enviromental issues--'transnational advocacy networks'. The core of the relations among actors in the network is information exchange. The quickness and accuracy of generaing information and the effectiveness of the deployment are the most important factor for the network. The network works such that boundaries between domestic social/political struggles and those at the international level are blurred through colletive pressure applied at a domestic level. This mechanism is called boomerang effect, "which curves around local state indifference and repression to put foreign pressure on local policy elites"(p.200). In other words, when state repression is too st...