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Spring 2011 |
3412 Friedmann |
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R 4-6:30 pm |
Office Hours: T 12:30-1:30, 3:30-5; R 12:30-1:30;
& by appt |
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Dunbar 4201/3309 Friedmann |
387-5698 |
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jacinda.swanson@wmich.edu |
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Contemporary
Political Theory |
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Overview and Objectives:
This course is intended to
provide an introduction to some key texts and themes in the contemporary period, roughly the 20th
and 21st centuries, of the approximately 2500-year history of
Western political theory. (Western political theory first emerged as a field of
inquiry in ancient Greece.) Even within the time period we are studying, we
will not be able to discuss many important theorists and ideas. We will,
though, cover some important theorists writing within the following schools of
thought and on the following types of issues: freedom/liberty, justice, gender,
equality, democracy, power, liberalism (and critiques of it), feminism, civic
republicanism, poststructuralism, and Marxian theory.
As we
will see, even in the Western world, theorists have thought about politics and
government in very different ways. Yet, there are numerous themes or topics
that recur throughout the history of political thought, including the
following: the characteristics of human nature; the relationship between the
citizen and the state/government; the origin of government; the ends or
purposes of government; freedom; rights; equality; legislation; justice;
political obligation/duty; citizenship; the different types of political
regimes/forms of government, including democracy; the powers and functions of
government; revolution; property; and economics. Studying some of the different
forms of contemporary political theory allows us to see how issues like justice,
power, or the purpose of government can be thought about in different ways and
what the strengths and limitations of each of these different ways are. It will
also enable us to see how what is considered “political” is itself variable and
disputed.
In
this seminar, we will be taking the texts and their arguments seriously, paying
close attention to how authors define concepts, the logic of their arguments,
and the ethical, social, political, and economic consequences of their
arguments. This will require close, detailed readings of the texts. In other
words, this class seeks to further develop your skills in systematically analyzing political arguments and
theories, rather than simply summarizing them, which will require a particular
(analytical) approach to reading, discussing, and writing. (Analyzing involves,
for example, determining a writer’s assumptions, how she/he defines key
political concepts, the logical steps in her/his argument, how her/his
different ideas fit together, etc.) We will also be attentive to the
similarities and differences among the authors. The aim is not only to gain an
in-depth understanding of the specific theorists we read, but also, more
generally, to increase your ability to read and grasp the arguments of other
political theorists as well as your ability to formulate appropriate and
compelling theoretical frameworks for (empirically) studying various political
phenomena, whether it’s in the field of U.S. politics or comparative politics.
Required Texts:
Please purchase the specified
edition of these books, so that everyone in class is using the same edition (and
thus the same translation and pagination), which will facilitate seminar
discussion. Please bring the relevant book to class since we will often read
and analyze passages from the readings in class. The edition you use is also an
issue with regard to your paper citations—you’ll need to let me know if a paper
you submit cites another edition.
·
A course packet
with readings (referred to as “CP” on the syllabus), printed by
Mycoursepack.com and available at the WMU Bookstore in the Bernhard Center. If
they run out of copies, you MUST specifically ask the bookstore to order a copy
for you, which should be available for you to pick up the following day.
·
John Rawls. 2005.
Political Liberalism, expanded ed., 2nd
ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
·
Michael J.
Sandel. 1996. Democracy’s Discontent:
America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press
·
Iris Marion
Young. 1990. Justice and the Politics of
Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
·
Hannah Arendt.
2006. On Revolution, intro. Jonathan
Schell. New York: Penguin Classics.
·
Michel Foucault.
1984. The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books.
Additional
REQUIRED readings: articles and chapters available through WMU library’s various
article databases, online journal subscriptions, and e-reserve system (http://www.wmich.edu/library/reserves/,
under the listing for this class; most of these books are also on reserve at
Waldo Library). Please bring a hard copy of these readings to class.
Please notify me
if you have a documented disability that requires accommodation.
Please see the university’s
religious observance policy at http://www.wmich.edu/policies/religious-observances.html.
A complete and updated copy
of this syllabus can be found online, at the link for this class at http://homepages.wmich.edu/~jswanson.
Assignments will be handed out and/or emailed to you (at your WMU email
account).
Feel free to contact me via
email with questions about the readings, assignments, and so forth, although be
aware that, in general, I will not be checking my email regularly in the
evenings and on weekends.
Assignments:
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seminar
participation, 20%
Participation
includes regular, active participation in weekly seminar discussion (8%), as
well as writing 3-6 (depending on class enrollment) one-page maximum (1.5-spaced,
11 or 12 pt. font, 1” margins) in-depth analyses of an important concept or
argument from one of the week’s assigned readings (12%). These analyses
should NOT attempt to summarize an entire reading. With the exception of Feb.
10, 17, and 24, you should analyze the author’s own ideas, rather than the
author’s critique of another theorist. Each week, students will be assigned to
provide such an analysis for specific portions of the readings; each student
should email me a copy of her/his analysis by 3 pm on the day before the class (i.e., Wed.), which I will
then read, comment on, and photocopy for the rest of the class; each student
will read her/his analysis to the class during our discussion of that reading
(in the name of time, students should limit themselves to reading their
analysis and take no more than 5 minutes). These one page analyses will be
graded and should contain appropriate citations (see below). Regular, active
oral participation in weekly seminar discussion should reflect a careful
reading of the texts and include thoughtful questions about the readings;
students should keep their comments and questions brief and should make sure
they do not dominate the discussion, so that other students also have adequate opportunity
to participate.
·
3 short
(5-6 page) papers, 17% each
These papers will be on assigned topics and based on the assigned
readings; they do not require outside research.
·
take-home
final exam (approx. 12 pages), 29%
It will be based on the assigned readings and does not require outside
research. The questions will be distributed in advance (see below), so that you
can work on them during the last several weeks of the semester.
Note: Because I am typically
in my office only on Tues. and Thurs., you’ll need to email your papers and
final exam to me (unless you’re turning them in early, when I am in my office).
If you turn in a paper via email, do NOT assume I have received it just because
your email apparently went through. Make sure you receive an email back from me
confirming receipt.
You are responsible for
making yourself aware of and understanding the policies and procedures in the
Graduate Catalogs that pertain to Academic Honesty. These policies include
cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple submission,
plagiarism, complicity and computer misuse. (The policies can be found at http://catalog.wmich.edu under Academic
Policies, Student Rights and Responsibilities.) If there is reason to believe
you have been involved in academic dishonesty, you will be referred to the
Office of Student Conduct. You will be given the opportunity to review the
charge(s). If you believe you are not responsible, you will have the
opportunity for a hearing. You should consult with me if you are uncertain
about an issue of academic honesty prior to the submission of an assignment or
test. A finding of responsibility for
academic dishonesty on any assignment will result in failure of this
course (see the Graduate Catalog).
Students who take this class
must be prepared to submit electronic copies of some or all assignments. The
University expects that all students will be evaluated and graded on their own
work. If you use language, data or ideas from other sources, published or
unpublished, you must take care to acknowledge and properly cite those sources.
Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism. To deter plagiarism, encourage
responsible student behavior, improve student learning and ensure greater
accountability, assignments for this class may be submitted to Turnitin® for
plagiarism detection. Papers that are submitted to Turnitin® become part of the
Turnitin® database (student identities are protected). If you choose to request
that your paper(s) not become part of the Turnitin® student papers database
this must be communicated to me in writing at the beginning of the course. If
the results of a Turnitin® originality report may be used to charge you with
plagiarism you will be notified of the result of the report, and you will be
given the opportunity to respond per the regular institutional process and
procedures that govern student academic conduct (http://www.wmich.edu/conduct/).
Citations:
For various
reasons—proper scholarly practice, because the papers and exam are to be
grounded in a close reading of the text, and in order to properly back up your
interpretation and argument—you are
REQUIRED to give a citation for EVERY claim you make about the theorist’s
definitions, arguments, assumptions, etc. in ALL papers and exams you submit in
this class. (I should be able to look up every point you make in order to confirm that you are making a
plausible claim about the theorist’s argument.) Your paper should not consist,
though, of a bunch of direct quotes strung together: do not use too many direct quotes or overly long quotes (1-2 lines max),
because you always need to
explain/interpret the quote and to indicate its relevance to your argument,
both of which take up valuable space. Use quotation marks to indicate when you
are borrowing more than 3-5 exact words of the author. When you paraphrase the
author’s ideas, you should substantially
reword the author’s words. Unless indicated otherwise, simply cite page numbers
by putting them in parentheses at the end of the sentence(s) for which you’re
providing a citation. If you are using an edition of the reading different from
the assigned one, you will need to give me a copy of that edition when you turn
in your paper so I can look up any points I may need to verify.
Grading scale:
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A=93-100 |
B=83-87 |
C=73-77 |
D=60-67 |
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BA=88-92 |
CB=78-82 |
DC=68-72 |
E=0-59 |
Course Outline:
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Jan. 13 |
Introduction; overview of common theoretical terms |
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Liberalism |
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Jan. 20 |
Rawls, Political
Liberalism, “Introduction,” “Introduction to the Paperback Edition,”
Lecture I |
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Jan. 27 |
Rawls, Political
Liberalism, Lecture II, sections 1-4; Lecture IV |
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Feb. 3 |
Rawls, Political Liberalism,
Lecture V-VI |
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FIRST SHORT PAPER ASSIGNMENT DISTRIBUTED |
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Critiques of
liberalism |
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Feb. 10 |
Civic republican criticisms: Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent, ix, ch. 1, 2, 3 (pp. 55, 65-71, 79-90), 4
(read the theoretical chapters 1 & 2 particularly carefully) |
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Feb. 17 |
Iris Marion Young. 1995. “Rawls’s Political Liberalism.”
Journal of Political Philosophy 3,
no. 2: 181-90. (CP) |
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Sheldon S. Wolin. 1996. “The Liberal/Democratic
Divide: On Rawls’ Political Liberalism.” Political
Theory 24, no. 1 (Feb.): 97-119. (WestCat; print out pdf) |
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E. A. Goerner. 1993. “Rawls’s Apolitical Political
Turn.” Review of Politics 55, no. 4
(Fall): 713-8. (JSTOR; print out pdf) |
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(Sat., Feb. 19 |
FIRST SHORT PAPER DUE
BY 9AM) |
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Feb. 24 |
William E. Connolly. 1999. “Suffering, Justice, and
the Politics of Becoming.” Why I Am Not
a Secularist, 47-71, 193-6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
(e-reserve, print out pdf) |
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Bonnie Honig. 1993. “Rawls and the Remainders of Politics.” Political Theory and the Displacement of
Politics, 126-61, 242-56. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (e-reserve,
print out pdf) |
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SECOND SHORT PAPER ASSIGNMENT DISTRIBUTED |
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Critique
of liberalism & feminist theory |
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Mar. 10 |
Young, Justice and the Politics
of Difference, “Introduction,” ch. 1-2 |
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(Sat., Mar. 12 |
SECOND SHORT PAPER
DUE BY 9AM) |
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Mar. 17 |
Young, Justice and the Politics
of Difference, ch. 3-4, 7 |
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THIRD SHORT PAPER ASSIGNMENT DISTRIBUTED |
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Civic
republicanism |
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Mar. 24 |
Jeremy Waldron. 2000. “Arendt’s
Constitutional Politics.” In The
Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. Dana Villa, 201-219. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. (e-reserve, print out pdf) |
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Arendt, On Revolution, Ch. 4 “Foundation I” and Ch. 6 “The Revolutionary
Tradition and Its Lost Treasure” (including footnotes, some of which make
important points) |
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Arendt question
on TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DISTRIBUTED |
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Poststructuralism |
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Mar. 31 |
Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, “Introduction” |
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C. G. Prado. 1995. “Genealogical Analytics.” Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, 33-45. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. (e-reserve, print
out pdf) |
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Foucault, The Foucault Reader, “What Is
Enlightenment?” & “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” |
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(Sat., Apr. 2 |
THIRD SHORT PAPER DUE BY
9AM) |
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Apr. 7 |
Peter Digeser. 1992. “The Fourth Face of Power.” Journal of Politics 54, no. 4 (Nov.): 977-98, 1004-5. (JSTOR; print out pdf) |
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Michel Foucault. 1980. “Two Lectures.” Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon, 78-108. New York: Pantheon
Books. (e-reserve, print out pdf) |
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Foucault, The Foucault Reader, “Truth and Power” |
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Foucault question
on TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DISTRIBUTED |
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Marxian
theory |
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Apr. 14 |
Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D.
Wolff. 1987. “A Marxian Theory.” Knowledge
and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy, 1-37, 283-9. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. (CP) |
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Resnick and Wolff, “Marxian
Epistemology,” 38-99, 289-304 (e-reserve, print out pdf) |
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Apr. 21 |
Resnick and Wolff. 1996. “Markets,
Private Property, Socialism, and Capitalism.” In Marxism Today: Essays on Capitalism, Socialism, and Strategies for
Social Change, ed. Chronis Polychroniou and Harry R. Targ, 119-42.
Westport, CT: Praeger. (e-reserve, print out pdf) |
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J. K. Gibson-Graham. 2006.
“Constructing a Language of Economic Diversity.” A Postcapitalist Politics, 53-78, 211-8. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. (e-reserve, print out pdf) |
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George DeMartino. 2003. “Realizing
Class Justice.” Rethinking Marxism
15, no. 1: 1-31. (WestCat; print out pdf) |
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Marxian theory question
on TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DISTRIBUTED |
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(Mon., Apr. 25 |
Arendt and Foucault questions
on TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DUE BY 9AM) |
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(Sun., May 1 |
Marxian theory question
on TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DUE BY 9AM) |
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