FALL 1999
This information effective for Fall 1999.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes..
FALL 1999
This information effective for Fall 1999.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes..
Politics 5 meets twice a week. There will be an hour lecture followed by a 45 minute discussion. In addition there will be an hour and ten minute discussion section of 15 to 20 students. There are no exams (I don't believe in them) and three papers. You will be asked to do a one page response paper prior to section meetings.
Below is a tentative reading list. If a pressing political issue emerges during the term we will try to incorporate it into the readings. You must read the required text. If you do not the course will not be worthwhile and the sections will be a pain. I make a promise to put all of my energy, intelligence and thought into my lectures and I expect you to do the same with the course materials and papers.
Introductory lecture: What Does Politics Have To Do With Freedom?
Tentative reading list
Dostoevsky, The Legend of the Grand
Inquisitor *
De Tocquevile, Democracy in America
(Selections)
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Morrison, Beloved
Arendt, The Revolutionary Tradition and Its
Lost Treasure *
King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail
*
Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet
*
Bell, Racial ??????
Marx, The Communist Manifesto *
Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness (Selected
Chapters)
MacKinnon, Difference and
Dominance
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Selected
Chapters)
Plato, The Apology of Socrates, The
Crito
Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (Selected
Chapters)
Schell, Introduction to Adam Michnik's Letters
from prison
Wolin, Politics without Citizenship
*
Jaimes, Federal Indian Identification
Policy *
* will be available in a reader at the UCSC
copy center
(Special fín de siecle edition)
Fall Quarter 1999
Instructor: Ronnie D. Lipschutz
M-W, 5:-6:45 PM; W 7-10 PM
The objective of this topical course is to analyze the relation-ship
between pol-itics and popular culture, the ways in which var-ious
U.S. foreign policy is-sues and how some of the major issues in
politics, such as power, justice, war, peace and identity have been
ad-dressed in the film and fiction of the Cold War and what has
followed. What kinds of themes do authors, screen-writers, directors,
and publishers try to sell in the "marketplace" of popular culture?
Where do those themes come from? How do they reflect relations of
power both inside and outside of a society? And what do those
cultural products reveal about our society, its politics, and its
place in the world in relation to other peoples and states? Trying to
answer these, and other questions, can tell us a great deal about
both domestic politics and the politics of foreign policy in what is
imagined to be a threatening and sometimes chaotic world. The books
and films that are the focus of this course are all, in some way,
about these two questions and the ways in which they have been
answered, sometimes in very indirect ways.
The class meets for lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays, and for film viewing on Wednesday nights. Students will be evaluated on the basis of five short (2 pp.) writ-ten analyses of readings and lectures on the films or novels discussed, plus one five-page analytical essay on two of the films or novels.
Films will include:
Crimson Tide; Rambo II; The Big Lift; The Third Man; Red Planet Mars; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Kiss Me Deadly; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Red Dawn; Testament; Dr. Strangelove; Red Planet Mars; Invasion of the Bodysnatchers; State of Siege; Apocalypse Now; Go Tell the Spartans; Falling Down; Them!; Independence Day; Deep Impact.
Texts will include: George Orwell, 1984; Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate; John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Walter Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz; Eugene Burdick & Harvey Wheeler, Fail-Safe (Copy Center); Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers; William Lederer & Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American; Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers.
Fall, 1998: T.,Th. 4:00-5:45
Instructor: Michael Urban (office hours: T.,Th. 2:15-3:45,
282 Stevenson; email:
urban47@cats.ucsc.edu;
phone - 3153)
Teaching Assistant: Jeffrey Smith
Scope and Objectives. The subject matter of this course is
bound up with the phenomenon of transition; namely, the one currently
under way among the states of East Europe and the former Soviet Union
whose futures seem sufficienfly uncertain as to deprive us of any
designation for them other than one that simply negates their
past-hence, the hollow term "post-communist". As
such, the first objective of the course is to build an understanding
of that past, what is, here, taken to be a unique socio-political
formation known as "state socialism". This objective can be broken
down further into a number of sub-topics that comprise the first part
of the course: Marxist revolutionary theory, Leninist revolutionary
practice, Stalinist state construction and the maturation and decay
of state socialist systems. The problem of the political role of
intellectuals within the specific historical contexts peculiar to
East Europe and Russia is singled out for special attention in this
regard.
The second part of the course focuses on reforms within, and revolts
against, the state socialist order that have occurred in East Europe
and the former Soviet Union. On the basis of the analysis presented
in the first part, it locates a number of crisis tendencies specific
to state socialist systems that have led to movements for reform and
revolution and examines how new directions taken in one place and
time often have reverberated later in the politics of other states
within the region. Moreover, the specific incidences of mass
resistance to state socialism modified it in one place or another,
lending different characters to state socialist regimes that would
determine the particular paths of transition that they would
follow.
Part three concerns the collapse of communism in East Europe and the
former USSR. The significance of that moment has only begun to be
measured in historical terms, yet its implications are already
staggering enough: the unhinging of the capitalist/communist
dichotomy that has dominated politics, nationally and globally, for
the second half of this century, thus throwing into question
established identities, arrangements and alliances. The collapse of
one system and the formation of another allows us to glimpse the
political magma, usually obscured, assumed or unremarked in the study
(and practice) of "normal" politics. Therefore, we devote particular
attention in this section to social, cultural and economic issues,
exploring the ways in which they have shaped the politics of post-
coiuinunist transitions.
The final section examines a set of major political questions
embedded in the post-communist transition. Is this transition all of
a piece or are there quite distinct patterns evident among
those societies that are undergoing it? If the latter is true, how
can differences be explained? Should post-columunist transitions be
regarded as a variant of a broader phenomenon, the transition from
authoritarian to democratic government, or are they fundamentally
different, thus constituting an entirely separate set of cases? Do
post-communist systems have a democratic future at all and, if so, on
what does it depend? Does the category "post- communist" represent a
transitory phenomenon or something that will occupy a new historical
epoch? How have new combinations of political and economic power been
spun out of their state socialist predecessors and how might they be
characterized? Finally, if communism has been liberal-capitalism's
global competitor in this century, can we expect an alternative
competitive system to emerge in (some) post-communist states, posing
a new challenge to the liberal-capitalist world order?
Course Requirements. In addition to meeting standard
expectations-attending lectures, completing all reading assignments
prior to the respective class and discussion sessions at which they
are to be considered, sitting for two examinations (a mid-term and a
final) -each student is required to write two papers. The first, due
at mid-term, involves a short essay (3- 4 typed pages) on a
particular question chosen by the student from a list provided by the
instructor. The second, due at the last session of the course, is a
conventional term paper drawing on outside sources (expected length:
about 10 pages) on a topic chosen by the student and approved by the
instructor or teaching assistant. For the second paper, all the usual
rules of term-paper writing apply (e.g., organization, proper
citation form, adequate bibliography).
Texts.
Joseph Rothschild, Return to Diversity. 2nd ed.; New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Ken Jowitt, The New World Disorder. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992.
Jon Elster, Claus Offe and Ulrich Preuss, Institutional Design in
Post-Communist Societies.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Grzegorz Ekiert, The State Against Society. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996.
The textbook(s) for this class will be available from both the
Baytree Bookstore and Slug Books. Slug Books is a student/alumni run
co-op discount textbook store. Slug Books offers a limited number of
copies of the textbook(s) for this class at the guaranteed lowest
price. Payment may be made by cash, check or credit card. Slug Books
is located at 224 Cardiff Place, by 7-11 and just two blocks from the
base of campus. Hours are from 10:00am to 6:00pm Monday to Saturday.
For more information please contact Slug Books at 469-SLUG, info@slugbooks.com,
or http://www.slugbooks.com.
Topics and Readings. (All readings in addition to those in
textbooks have been marked, here, with an asterisk. They are
available at the reserve desk in McHenry.)
Part I What Is a Communist System?
1. Communism as a Project.
*Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist
Party.
*Vladimir Lenin, What Is to Be Done? (selections).
*Alvin Gouldner, Against Fragmentation, pp.12-27.
2. Pre-Communist East Europe.
Rothschild, pp.3-75.
*John Feffer, Shock Waves (Boston: South End Press, 1992),
pp.1-31.
*zygrnuflt Bauman, t1lntellectuals in East-Central Europe", East
European Politics and Societies, Vol. 1(1987), pp. 162-186.
3. Communism as a System. Rothsch~d, pp.76-123. Jowitt, pp. 1-87.
*Feffer, pp.33-47.
Part 11 Transformation and Stasis in Communist Systems.
1. Reform and Rebellion.
Rothschild, pp. 125-190. Ekiert, pp. ix-xvi, 3-120. Jowitt,
pp.88-219.
*Vaclav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless", part 1, pp.23-41.
*Feffer, pp.49-59.
2. Opposition Within and Without. Rothschild, pp.191-225. Ekiert, pp.
121-213.
*Feffer, pp.59-67.
*Havel, part 2, pp.41-78.
3. Late Communism and the Question of "Civil Society". Ekiert,
pp.215-304.
*Havel, part 3, pp.78-96.
*Jadwiga Staniszl:is, "Forms of Reasoning as Ideology", Telos,
No.66 (Winter,
1985-86), pp.67-80.
*Katherifle Verdery, What Was Socialism. and What Comes Next?
(Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 19-38.
Part III Post-Communist Transitions.
1. Overview.
Jowitt, pp.220-248.
Ekiert, pp.305-330.
Elster et 4., pp.1-62.
2. Po]itical Steps. Rothschild, pp.226-262. Elster ~et 4.,
pp.63-155.
3. Economic and Social Change. Elster ~et 4., pp.156-246.
*Verdery, pp.168-203.
4. Identities and Ideologies. Elster et 4, pp.247-270.
*Jirina Sikiova, "Why We Resist Western-Style Feminism", and Slavenka
Drakulic,
"What We Learned From Western Feminists", Transitions, Vol.5
(Jan.1998), pp.
30-35, 42-47.
Part IV What's Next?
Jowitt, pp.249-331. E]ster et 4., pp.271-308.
*Verdery, pp.204-228.
Instructor: Isebill V. Gruhn
Text:
The course addresses a range of contemporary issues, both historical
and contemporary, which help us understand Africa's political and
economic crises today. The course readings will include: Karl Maier,
Into the House of the Ancestors; Crawford Young, The
African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective; Sara Berry,
No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change
in Sub-Saharan Africa; Marina Ottaway, Africa's New Leaders:
Democracy or State Reconstruction? In addition each student will
select one African country for individual study and will be asked to
read a minimum of 250 pages of self-selected materials relevant to
the students' country and topic.
Written Work:
Written work will include one midterm, one short 3-5 page assigned
essay and one 10-page paper. For the 10-page paper the instructor
will ask a broad question which will allow each student to integrate
lecture materials, course readings, and individual country readings
in a focused fashion. A draft of the 10-page paper will be due in
week seven of the course and the final essay will be due on the last
class meeting of the course.
Instructor: Isebill V. Gruhn
Text:
William Slomanson, Fundamental Perspectives on International
Law, third edition.
Both the course and the text blends cases, narrative commentary and
problems. Topics to be covered include: what is international law?
states, international organizations, individuals and corporations in
international law. Extraterritorial jurisdiction, sovereignty,
diplomatic relations, treaty systems, arbitration and adjudication,
the use of force by states and organizations. Topics such as the
environment and human rights (genocide, refugees, torture, violation
of civil and religious rights, etc.) and international economic
relations.
Written Work:
Students will have both in-class and take-home examinations covering
readings, case materials and class materials. Students are also
expected to follow one international law issue on a daily basis in
the New York Times and to integrate this knowledge into a five-page
take-home essay assigned towards the end of the course. Students can
expect to submit a total of 20-25 pages on written assignment.
Fall 1998, MWF 12-1:10
Instructor: Ronnie Lipschutz
In this senior seminar we will examine various "problematics" in
world politics through the lenses of international rela-tions (IR)
theories and world political prac-tices. IR is ordinarily represented
as a body of theory and data that purport to tell us some-thing about
how nation-states act under so-called normal conditions. These
"normal" conditions are captured in three words: anarchy,
sovereignty, territory. Each of these terms is thought to mean
something fairly precise, yet each falls apart under close
inspection. Indeed, it might be said that the conception and practice
embodied in each term are under challenge by various forces extent in
world politics today.
The seminar is centered around an investigation of these three terms, and the social science that has developed to explain and rationalize them, as applied to specific "problematics" such as war & peace; world order & disorder; wealth & poverty; human oppression & human rights; environmental degradation communication, information & action, and so on. We will not, how-ever, try to rationalize the conditions that we find associated with these problematics by simple reference to IR theory. Rather, our purpose is, first, to understand the relationship between international relations, as a practice, and International Relations, as a social science; second, to discover how IR came to be constituted as such (its "practical," political, and academic origins); and, finally, to disassemble the construct of international relations, as theory and practice, and try to imagine how the pieces might come back together, especially in light of changes in world politics and the approach of the 21st century.
The reading load for the course is substantial as is the writing requirement. A premium is placed, therefore, on participation in the seminar. Each student is required to write three, fairly brief, well-written, critical essays on readings drawn from the syllabus or seminar, as well as a final research paper that links these essays to a specific problematic. There will be a set of assigned texts as well as assigned readings on reserve. Students are expected to have done the readings before a seminar meeting, and will be asked to discuss them in class. For this purpose, each student will also keep a journal of the readings. This will involve keeping note of the main themes and arguments put forth in each reading.