Spring 2006 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Spring 2006. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Politics

[POLI-43] [POLI-160C] [POLI-251]

43. Eurasian Politics

Instructor: Michael Urban
E-mail: urban47@ucsc.edu
Phone: 459-3153
Office: 273 Stevenson
Office hours: 3:15-4:30, M/W
Teaching Assistant: Jonah Steinberg

Course Description

The focus of this course falls primarily on six nation-states recently established on the Eurasian land mass: Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikstan and Turkmenistan. The central questions that it poses are: How and by what means has state building progressed in these new polities?  How have their respective populations been integrated, or not, into new political communities?  These questions are explored from a number of angles, using one or more of the states in question to illustrate concretely and in detail conditions and processes common to all of them. Accordingly, consideration of the disintegration of the repressive capacities of the state apparatus that has taken place in Russia instructs us generally about that same process transpiring in the other states and informs our subsequent consideration of chaos in Kazakhstan. Likewise, consideration of chaos in Kazakhstan tells us something about post-socialist societies elsewhere in the region and provides a background for understanding such things as militant Islam in Central Asia and the impact of global capitalism on these states.

In the final sections of the course, we examine two, not unrelated, aspects of Eurasian politics. The first concerns “Eurasia” as a place, indeed a very dangerous place, wherein all manner of international issues come to a head: access to vast energy deposits and the contest to control them and related transportation routes; social conflict within and across borders exacerbated by the rise of militant Islam; the development of local economies supplying global markets with illegal drugs, arms and women. The second involves “Eurasia” as an idea. That is, “Eurasia” has come to represent for certain political forces in Russia and elsewhere in the region an imagined alternative to the status quo, one that challenges US global hegemony and predicts for Russia a return to great power status by means of reconstructing its own hegemony in Eurasia.

Course Requirements

In addition to attending lectures and sitting for two exams (a mid-term and a final), each student is required to submit a comparative book review (5-7 pages in length).  In it, the student compares and contrasts two or more books on Eurasian politics (approved by the instructor or teaching assistant) that deal with the same or similar subject matter.  As such, these books might concern a single topic as it appears in two or more states (say, for instance, the make-up, conduct and importance of executive institutions or the continuation and revival of traditional practices related to politics), or concern exclusively a single state.  The purpose of the review is, of course, to demonstrate one’s knowledge of both the books themselves and the general subject matter that they address, so pulling relevant course readings into this paper as commentary on the topic under discussion is a preferred approach.  This paper is due on February 18.

Texts

Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

Joma Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan (London: Pluto, 2002).

Boris Rumer (ed), Central Asia: A Gathering Storm? (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002).

Valery Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

Topics and Readings

• lecture

• Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992, chapter 1.

Soviet Union: Nations Made and Unmade

• Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism”, Slavic Review, Vol. 53 (Summer, 1994), pop. 414-452.
• Ronald Suny, “State, Civil Society, and Ethnic Cultural Consolidation in the USSR—Roots of the National Question”, G. Lapidus and V. Zaslavsky (eds.), From Union to Commonwealth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 22-44. (ERes title: “Roots of the National Question”).

The Birth of the Russian Nation-State

• Michael Urban, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 172-200, 234-254. 

Capitalism, Violence and State Formation in Russia

• Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs (all).

Russian Social and Political Identities

• Olga Shevchenko, “‘Between the Holes’: Emerging Identities and Hybrid Patterns of Consumption in Post-Socialist Russia”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54, no. 6 (2002), pp. 842-866.
• Tomila Lankina, “Local Administration and Ethno-social Consensus in Russia”, ibid., Vol. 54, no. 7 (2002), pp. 1037-1053. (ERes title: “Local Administration…in Russia”).

The Chechen Wars

• Valery Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (all)

State Building in Central Asia

• Joma Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos, pp. 1-126.
• Andrew March, “From Leninism to Karimovism: Hegemony, Ideology and Authoritarian Legitimation”, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 19, no. 4 (2003), pp.307-336.

Social and Political Conflict in Central Asia

• Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos, pp.127-175.
• Joseph Fletcher and Boris Sergeyev, “Islam and Intolerance in Central Asia: The Case of Kyrgyzstan”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54, no. 2 (2002), pp. 251-275.
• Chapters by Abdullaev and Babadzhanov in Rumer (ed.), Central Asia: A Gathering Storm?, pp. 245-330.

Central Asia in the Global Economy

• Chapters by Zhukov and by Trushin and Trushin in Rumer (ed.), pp. 333-428.
• Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos, pp. 176-194.
• Douglas Blum, “Domestic Politics and Russia’s Caspian Policy”, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 14, no. 2 (1998), pp. 137-164.

Central Asia and International Security

• Rumer (ed.), Central Asia, pp. 3-207.
• Pauline Luong and Erika Weinthal, “New Friends, New Fears in Central Asia”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81 (March/April 2002), pp. 61-70.
  

Politics 43: Eurasian Politics
Winter, 2005
Final Exam

Write 1000 words (4-5 double-spaced, typed pages) on one of the following topics.  Cite briefly the readings on which you rely.

1. According to Joma Nazpary, “chaos” can be added to the usual categories of hegemony and coercion as a factor promoting the rule of some over others.  Compare and contrast his book on Kazakhstan with that of Valery Tishkov on Chechnya, focusing on the relative roles of these three factors in each setting.  Be sure to include the responses of the ruled as well as the actions of the rulers.
   
   
2. In what ways might the arrival of global capitalism in Central Asia be linked to the emergence there of militant Islamic movements?  Include in your answer the following themes: chaos, its origins and effects; social relations and types of social networks; post-Soviet identities.  What factors conduce to the spread of militant Islam in the region?  What factors impeded the development of a transnational Islamic movement in the region?

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160C. Security, Conflict, Violence, War

Instructor: Ronnie Lipschutz
Instruction: MWF, 9:30-10:40 a.m.

Course Description

This course is about the politics of security, war and peace. Why is a war undertaken? How could it be avoided? What about decisions to arm and deploy weapons, or send troops abroad? Is the ‘war on terrorism’ a war in an ordinary sense? How can US use of ‘force and statecraft’ in the Iraq imbroglio be understood? More generally, how is deliberate, organized violence, by states or by groups, to be understood? What are the politics between two states contemplating war? And what about the place of internal politics?

Does democracy make for peace? Authoritarianism for war? Is someone--some particular person or group--responsible for a war? or is it the result of an impersonal force sweeping citizens and officeholders willy-nilly in its way? And what of the politics of ending a war? Finally, studying the politics of war presents an occasion to ask ‘what is politics’? We will show that differing views about war--and about particular wars--are closely associated with distinct views of ‘politics’.
A course syllabus will, eventually, be posted at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol160C/syllabus.html
Meanwhile, you can consult an earlier version of the course syllabus at: http://www.learnworld.com/COURSES/P160C/P160C.Syllabus.html.

Enrollment will be strictly limited to 100 students.

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251. Discourse

Instructor: Michael Urban
E-mail: urban47@ucsc.edu
Phone: 459-3153

Course Description

“Discourse” has made substantial inroads in the social sciences over the past three decades, radically altering conventional social ontology for those employing the concept in any of its various formulations.  Each of the forms of analysis inspired by this concept represents a paradigmatic shift away from positivist facticity and toward explorations of linguistically externalized subjectivity and the internalization of the structuration that discourse supplies.  In both respects, discourse appears as a critical concept, challenging everyday notions about subjectivity, objectivity and communication that are still widespread in the social sciences—especially, it might be said, in political science.  Moreover, discourse analysis is critical in another respect: it refuses to recognize social communication as a process from which power is absent.  Indeed, the thrust of work done in this area has been to focus on the ways in which power is encoded in communication.  Rather than something standing outside of those subject to it, power is apprehended as integral to those dominated by it, coursing through the language centers of their brains, flowing out of their very mouths.

In perhaps the briefest encapsulation, a discursive approach to the socio-political world eschews the study of information—the core of positivist social science—in order to study meaning. The field is enriched by the variety of academic disciplines engaged in this enterprise: linguistics, philosophy of language, semiotics, literary criticism, sociology, anthropology and (at last) politics.  In this respect it presupposes that very interdisciplinarity that has been so much discussed, but so little practiced, in social sciences over the past 40 years.  And for this reason it is a demanding enterprise; its practitioners must educate themselves about theories and methods considerably beyond the confines of their respective disciplines and, in most cases, outside of their own professional training.  Thus, discourse analysis is not an easy skill to acquire.  But its acquisition is likely to alter profoundly one’s take on the political. 

The overall objectives of this seminar are to familiarize the student with the field of discourse analysis and to cultivate his or her abilities to apply discourse analytic technique to actual texts.  To those ends, each student will participate in leading the seminar on one occasion, will submit a couple of short exercises on text analysis and will write a paper that will be presented in seminar late in the quarter.  The content of this paper can include: (1) the analysis of a given text relying on methods and techniques acquired from course readings; or (2) a critical exegesis on some concept, scholar or school of discourse analysis.  (Suggestions for a third way are most welcome.)  Each student will also serve as a discussant, commenting on another student’s paper.  Consequently, some days prior to presentation in the seminar, each student must deliver a copy of his/her paper to both the instructor and the discussant.

Topics and Readings

• Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972)
• Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988
• Nelson Phillips and Cynthia Hardy, Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social Construction (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2002)

• Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Harper and Row, 1972)
  Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1975), part 2
  
• The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2: Lifeworld and System (Boston: Beacon, 1987), pp. 43-63, 77-152, 332-373 (ERes title: “The Authority of the Sacred”)
  
• Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Oxford: Polity, 1991), esp. pp. 37-89.

Narrative Structure

• A.J. Greimas, Structural Semantics (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 197-215
  
• Frederic Jameson, The Prison-House of Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 122-129, 163-169 (ERes title: “The Structuralist Projection”)
  
• The Political Unconscious (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 46-49, 120-126
  
• Michael Urban, “The Structure of Signification in the General Secretary’s Address: A Semiotic Approach to Soviet Political Discourse”, Coexistence, Vol. 24 (1987), pp. 187-210
  
• “Political Language and Political Change in the USSR: Notes on the Gorbachev Leadership”, P. Potichnyj (ed.), The Soviet Union: Party and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988), pp. 87-106
  
• “Stages of Political Identity Formation in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia”, V. Bonnell (ed.), Identities in Transition: Eastern Europe and Russia After the Collapse of Communism (Berkeley: International and Area Studies, University of California, 1996), pp. 140-154.
  

Discourse Theory

• Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (2nd ed.; London: Verso, 2001), pp. vii-xix, 1-7, 65-75, 93-148  (ERes title: “Beyond the Positivity of the Social”)
  
• Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), pp. 36-46 (ERes   title: “Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter…?”)
  
• Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal (London: Verso, 1988), pp.134-173
  
• David Howarth et al. (eds.), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), esp., chapters 1,2,5,9 and 10 

Critical Discourse Analysis

• Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Longman, 1995)
  
• Lilie Chouliaraki and Norman Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999)
  
• Gilbert Weiss and Ruth Wodak, “Introduction: Theory, Interdisciplinarity and Critical Discourse Analysis” in their Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 1-32
  
• Eve Chiapello and Norman Fairclough, “Understanding the New Management Ideology: A Transdisciplinary Contribution from Critical Discourse Analysis and New Sociology of Capitalism”, Discourse and Society, Vol. 13, no. 2 (2002), pp. 185-207
  
• Paul Chilton and Christina Schaffner, “Discourse and Politics,” T. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997), pp. 206-230
  
• Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress, Language as Ideology (2nd ed.; London: Routledge, 1993), esp. pp. 1-37, 153-212

Iurii Lotman: Cultural Studies

• Ju. M. Lotman and B.A. Uspenskij, The Semiotics of Russian Culture (Ann   Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), esp. pp. 3-35
  
• Yurii M. Lotman , Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture(London: I. B. Tauris, 1990)
  
• Michael Urban, “The Politics of Identity in Russia’s Postcommunist Transition: The Nation against Itself”, Slavic Review, Vol. 53 (fall, 1994), pp. 733-765
  
• “Post-Soviet Political Discourse and the Creation of Political Communities”, A. Schonle and Amy Malkinger (eds.), Lotman and Cultural Studies: Encounters and Extensions (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, forthcoming)

Outside Language

• Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (new York: Hill and Wang, 1977), pp. 15-68, 179-189 (ERes  titles: “Photographic Message” and “The Grain of the Voice”)
  
• Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)
  
• Susan McClary, Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) 

Beyond Discourse?

• Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994)
  
• The Illusion of the End (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)

Presentation of seminar papers

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