Introduction
This course addresses the fundamental issue of who human beings are within groups, how groups behave, and how their boundaries form and change over time. The course will look at academic definitions and theories of group formation and development and will then address specific debates among specialists, using specific case studies to help draw out the most important points.
This course is for you if you have an interest in politics, and if you want to gain a better understanding of how societies organize themselves and how individuals wield power in those societies. You probably should not take this course if you cannot devote a reasonable amount of time and energy to reading carefully, thinking deeply, and writing well.
Goals
The course is designed to help you achieve the following seven objectives:
- To acquire some additional facts about the world in which we live.
- To understand the basic concepts that political scientists use to study the world.
- To be able to apply the concepts you learn in class to understand what is happening in the world.
- To write well. This includes both a clear, engaging writing style and organization that gets to the point yet does not oversimplify.
- To express yourself well in front of others. This includes the ability to engage in meaningful discussion and to make clear, intelligent presentations to groups.
- To think and work with others. This means using the full potential of various kinds of in-person and electronic conversations to learn more than you could on your own.
- To learn how to learn. This includes an ability to research a topic and find out what you need to know from all available sources, direct or indirect, printed or electronic.
Methods
Every class period will demand full participation. Occasionally I may offer brief lectures to clarify points that you cannot be expected to know, but even then I will rely heavily on you to connect the dots and draw the necessary conclusions that you can share with the class. The writing assignments will challenge you to think more deeply about particular topics covered in the course and to apply what you have learned to new situations. They will also help you develop your ability to conduct research, construct cogent arguments and write with clarity and precision, and to work together with people (and machines) to achieve those goals.
Assignments
The following list of assignments and expectations should give you an idea of what you will need to do in this course and how I will evaluate your work:
| Category | Method of evaluation | Assignment Details | Due | Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Each | Sum | ||||
| Application, Writing, and Research | Papers I will grade papers for responsiveness to question, quality of thesis statement, argument, evidence, organization, and grammar and syntax! See more on how I grade. |
Diagnostic Paper (2 pages) | Wednesday, September 12 | 5% | 80% |
| Three of Four
Take Home Exam Questions (5-7 pages each) |
Questions A and
B due on Wednesday, October 31;
Questions C and D due on Wednesday, December 19 |
3x 20% | |||
| Debate Paper (5-7 pages) | During the semester (specific dates to be decided) | 15% | |||
| Research and Collaboration | Web
Collaboration I will grade the final collaborative product for thoroughness and usability. All students will receive the same grade for this assignment. |
Web Collaboration | Wednesday, December 19 | 5% | |
| Expression | Research
Presentation I will grade presentations individually, though individuals will need help from the other members of the triad. I will grade the presentation on the basis of clarity, organization and argument. |
Debate Presentation | During the semester (specific dates to be decided, same as for Debate Paper above). | 5% | |
| Classroom
Participation I will evaluate your responsiveness classroom discussion. I will expect you to be capable at any time of voicing intelligent opinions based on prior reading |
Throughout the semester | 10% | |||
| Presence | Attendance
and Required Assignments More than two unexcused/ unexplained absences may lower your grade by a full grade. Failure to complete any of the required assignments (those above as well as the initial contact, map quiz and webquest) will result in a grade of F. |
All semester long | Sine qua non |
||
| Overall | 100% | ||||
The following paragraphs should help to clarify my expectations in these categories:
Papers. Good writing is good thinking. Writing is one of the most important things you can learn while you are at Wayne State. Although this is a large class you will still have two good opportunities to practice and refine your writing. These will determine fully half of your grade.
Content and Style. Good writing is good thinking. Writing is one of the most important things you can learn at university. Therefore, papers will be marked and graded as if this were an English class. If you are having problems, please take the opportunity to talk with me about possible remedies and I will do whatever I can to help. You can find on-line guides to writing in the English language at the Grammar and Style resources website and at Wayne's Academic Success Center on the second floor of the Undergraduate Library. There is also a very good website called "The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing" which is a companion to Michael Harvey's book of the same name, and has excellent coverage on a variety of writing questions including paper arguments, style, organization and plagiarism. Another set of resources (one that is in some ways even better) can be found in the links bookmarked by Jo Guldi on del.icio.us (in particular see those from poynter and askoxford). I have also received the permission from a few former students to post some examples well-written student essays that I have received in the past at Wayne, in the hope that these may offer some guidance.
If your ambition extends beyond writing correctly to writing well (and I hope it does), you cannot ask for better guides than the following two authors:
- William Zinsser, On Writing Well, Chapters 2 through 4.
- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language
Citing your sources. In our information-based society, ideas are as precious as the gold of earlier eras. Stealing someone else's ideas is no more acceptable than stealing someone else's possessions, and it will get you in a lot of trouble. But why steal something that is already free? The only cost to you as a student for using somebody else's ideas is that you must give them appropriate credit and that is very easy to do. If you get any idea from any source, you must cite that source, even if you do not use the same wording. In other words, you must cite the source even if you rewrite it in your own words. Furthermore, if you use an author's specific wording for more than three words in sequence ("In the beginning...", you must put the words in quotation marks. For more guidance, I have adapted guidelines written Dr. Noel Parker of the University of Surrey on when and why to cite others' words. In general, please simply follow the adage: 'when in doubt, cite your source'" (Cason 1998). The previous sentence is a case in point. I found the quotation on the web-site of Prof. Jeffrey Cason at Middlebury College. If this syllabus had a section for Literature Cited, it would contain the following entry:
Cason, Jeffrey. 1998. Course Requirements. Available WWW:
http://cweb.middlebury.edu/ps103a-s98/requirements.html [Accessed 17 August 1999].For the sake of clarity, I will ask you to follow a particular format for citations. My choice is the author-date method as defined in the Chicago Manual of Style, which I have used in the example above. The format consists of a parenthetical reference within the text (Author Year of Publication, Page Number) and a full elaboration of the reference in a Literature Cited section at the end of your paper. I have put full guidelines for citation on-line, but I would also be happy to give you a printed copy.
If you have any questions or doubts about what to cite, you must contact me before you hand in a paper with questionable references. Do not risk your grade--perhaps even your college career--by needlessly using somebody else's ideas and failing to credit them. Of course the most serious problems with citation are not accidental omissions but intentional efforts to save thought and effort by simply copying what somebody else has already done.
The consequence of plagiarism is automatic failure
The paper assignments in this course cannot be answered by anything you can buy or copy whole from the internet or fellow students, and I have become extremely adept at identifying the sources of plagiarism. Unfortunately, there have been enough attempts (none successful) that I must now subject papers to a random screening process involving test-based search engines and the surprisingly discerning services of the university's web-based plagiarism detector. In the unlikely event that a student still finds it necessary to plagiarize, I will deal with such incidents in accordance with the provisions of the Student Due Process Statue specified in the university's Academic Integrity statement, which you can obtain online at: http://www2.lisp.wayne.edu/services/integrityjuly06.pdf.
Format. Unless you have prior approval from me, you must prepare your papers and take-home exams on a word processor in one of four formats: text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), Microsoft Word (.doc) or Word Perfect (.wpd). Please do not submit papers in MicrosoftWorks (.wks), Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf) or MicrosoftWord 2007 (.docx). Papers must be double spaced, with reasonable font size (10-12) and margins (1 inch), and within the specified length guidelines. All these guidelines are there for your benefit as well as for mine. A paper that is too long bears evidence of inability to be concise and organized. A paper that is too short suggests that something is missing. Finally, think for at least a moment about aesthetics. Before submitting a paper that is messy, crammed together or otherwise unreadable, think about how it will affect the mood of your instructor (upon whose cheerfulness depends your grade.)
Electronic Paper Submission. Papers are due by 11:59:59 p.m. on the specified due date. Unless you have discussed alternatives with me, you should submit each paper electronically through the Digital Drop Box that is available under the "Tools" section of the course page on Blackboard (http://blackboard.wayne.edu). This will provide a formal record of the paper's submission including a time and date stamp. It also allows you to submit your papers from home or work. Unless we have agreed ahead of time I will not accept papers sent solely by email because there is no way to verify claims that papers have been sent.
Electronic Research and Writing Tools: In order to help you become familiar with the tools that you will need for your future careers, I will invite you to make active use of the following:
- Endnotes bibliography software
- del.icio.us/tag/5740 (for creating public bookmarks. Tag with 'nationalism' and 'ps5740' to create a collaborative knowledge base)
- The course wiki page (for various signups and for the collaborative web assignment): http://ps5740.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
- Electronic journals and other electronic scholarship resources
Paper Deadlines. Deadlines are firm. Each day of lateness will cost you one-third of a letter grade (dropping an A- to a B+, for example). There will be no exceptions, barring written evidence of trauma or tragedy. It is particularly important to understand that your classmates depend on your prompt submission of the text analyses so that they have sufficient time to write a response. Lateness on these papers be result in a grade of E. Be forewarned also that papers handed in late may not be handed back to you as promptly as those handed in on time.
Evaluation. An excellent paper must demonstrate a strong argument expressed in a coherent thesis statement and developed in an organized fashion using appropriate argument and evidence. Grammar and syntax are also crucial. I will grade papers as if this were an English class. An abundance of grammatical and usage errors can have a severely negative effect on your grade. If you have questions, I have prepared an extremely detailed account of how I grade written work.
Web Collaboration. Graduate school training for the academically-inclined is finally coming around to understanding that some research is best done by groups working closely together. The Collaboration assignment will require you to combine three skills that look to be important for the coming decades: collective intelligence (using the "wisdom of crowds," or in this case, groups) and distributed processing (successfully combining the diverse skills of individuals and the particular skills of machines to solve a problem). Since identifying the worth of individual contributions to such collaborations is impossible, the final grade for each individual student will reflect the quality of the overall class product. This will raise interesting problems of coordination that you will need to resolve as a class.
Research Presentation. It is essential that you acquire the ability to talk about what you have learned without putting others to sleep, bewildering them, or insulting them. Those of you who have spent any time in the business and academic worlds will know that this skill is insufficiently widespread. As part of this course, I will therefore require you to give at least one formal presentations. Your presentation should follow the model used in business and academic settings. If you are not familiar with that format, do not worry. We will discuss it at great length. As with the web collaboration, this assignment will also require you to work closely with a small team that can together learn and process more than any single individual.
Other Required Assignments
Initial Contact and Web Presence. In order to make sure that we can remain in contact, I will ask you to send me an email during the first week of class that contains your most-used email address, any websites/blogs/pages that you maintain (and care to share), and your del.icio.us login name (one which you will quickly need to create if you do not have one already).
Map Test. You cannot speak intelligently about "nations" unless you know where they are. In the second week of class I will ask you to take a map quiz in which you locate 20 countries on a blank map of the world. I will keep giving the quiz until every student in class can locate 19 out of 20. The list of countries is as follows:
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Click here for a world maps identical to the blank map you will be using in .pdf format (566KB searchable) or jpg format (154KB, not searchable) or a slightly different set of maps including including, another world map in .jpg format (50KB, not searchable) and more detailed maps of Africa and Europe, Asia and North and South America. There are also several helpful on-line geography quizzes to be found online that will test your knowledge well beyond the limited list of countries below.
Webquest. This in-class assignment will challenge you to use Wayne's extremely broad range of electronic databases to identify academic resources to answer a particular research question.
Participation
While you are in class, I expect you to be fully
engaged. This means that you must have a willingness to
respond to my questions (which will be constant) and to ask questions
of your own. Unprepared rambling, stony silence, or regular
absence can reduce your grade. You must also demonstrate a respect for
the comments and questions of others.
Attendance. Class attendance is mandatory. More than two absences can result in a penalty of one full letter grade. Habitual lateness is indistinguishable from absence and will incur the same penalty.
Final Grades. These depend on you, but you should know that I am a difficult grader and award grades of "A" only to work that could be regarded as exceptional in any university in the country. I regard grades of A- and B+ as appropriate for work that is very good but not exceptional. No student can receive a passing grade without completing all required assignments; it is not enough simply to do well on most assignments and leave one or two undone.
Accessibility
Every student should have the best possible chance to engage in learning. If you are registered with the Educational Accessibility Services (EAS) office, please see me during the first week of class so that we can determine how I can help you. Please bring your paperwork from EAS to our meeting.
Books and materials
We will be reading a variety of types of writing in this course. Most is available on-line (for free!) but some is not. The table below offers links to the articles, but there are two books you must purchase. I have ordered these books through Marwill's Bookstore (313-832-3078) on Cass and Warren but they are not yet available and may not be available for several weeks. Since these are all quite popular books with multiple past editions, those wishing to save money want to find used versions at local used book stores such as John K. King's Bookstore, 901 W. Lafayette, (313-961-0622). I have also included links to relevant pages on Half.com, Powells.com and the 'used' section of Amazon.com.
| Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, 2005. Edited by Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman. New Bruswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. | Malcom, Noel. 1994. Bosnia: A Short HIstory. New York: New York University Press. | ||
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We will make as much use as possible of electronic resources. Many readings below, therefore, will require you to follow links to internal- or external- sites containing the relevant text. In some cases, furthermore, I will ask you to use on-line databases such as JSTOR and Project Muse to which Wayne State subscribes. These are available from any on-campus computer and with off-campus computers that are correctly configured using Wayne State's Virtual Private Network. You may find useful public resources at The Nationalism Project.
If you would like to print any materials out for free using the computers in the Political Science Department's computer lab, you need only let me know and have a sufficient supply of paper. Wherever you may decide to read or print the on-line material, you are responsible for downloading material at least one week before so that you are not caught out by a dead link or other error. If you have problems with downloading any material, contact me immediately so that I can find some way to get you a copy that you can read before class.
While it is not technically part of the course, I will also ask you to follow contemporary political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. To keep you up to date, you may find it helpful to subscribe to the New York Times Online and to The Economist weekly political review. These are free and they represent a better way spend your precious media-time than attending to most newspapers, and commercial radio and television networks. (In fact there are few human activities less useful than watching TV news).
The Class Schedule
This list represents a minimum set of readings for the course. I reserve the privilege of making additions over time, but I promise to inform you about any such changes well in advance.
| Theme | Week | Date | Readings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introductions | 1 | Sept. 5 |
Introductions Send: Initial Contact email by Tuesday, Sept. 11. |
| 2 | Sept. 12 | Ethnicity
and Nation: Read: The Nationalism Project entries by Anderson, Gellner, Hroch, Renan Read: Spencer and Wollman, "Introduction" Read Barrington, "'Nation' and 'Nationalism': The Misuse of Key Concepts in Political Science" Read: Eriksen, "Ethnicity and Nationalism" in Spencer and Wollman Read: Smith, "Ethno-symbolism and the study of nationalism," in Spencer and Wollman Tags: ethnicity and nation Hand in: Two-page
diagnostic paper to the Digital Drop Box on
Blackboard by 11:59:59 p.m. |
|
| 3 | Sept. 19 | Nation
and Nationalism: Read: Grossman, Handler, Breuilly, Hechter, Billig Read: Gellner, "Nationalism and Modernity," in Spencer and Wollman Read: Anderson, "Imagined Communities," in Spencer and Wollman Read: Breuilly, "Nationalism and the State," in Spencer and Wollman Read: Hobsbawm, Chapter 1 (missing pp. 12-13--I will try to fix that) Chapter 2, Chapter 6 Tags: nation and nationalism Study for: Map Test |
|
| 4 | Sept. 25 | Tools
of the Trade: Tag: Research Meet in Technology
Resource Center, Purdy-Kresge
Library |
|
| Controversies | 5 | Oct. 3 | Controversy
I: Ancient or Modern Read: The Nationalism Project, all entries under sidebar "Ancient or Modern" except Gellner Read: Smith and Gellner in The Warwick Debate Read Hastings, "The Construction of Nationhood," in Spencer and Wollman Read: Billig, "Banal Nationalism," in Spencer and Wollman Tags: primordialist and modernist Debate 1 |
| 6 | Oct. 10 | Controversy
II: Civic or Ethnic Read: Smith, "Civic and Ethnic Nationalism" in Spencer and Wollman Read: Spencer and Wollman, "Good and Bad Nationalisms," in Spencer and Wollman Read: Vincent, "Liberal Nationalism--An Irresponsible Compound?" in Spencer and Wollman Read: Auer, "Nationalism in Central Europe--A Chance or a Threat for the Emerging Liberal Democratic Order" Tags: civic_nationalism ethnic_nationalism Debate 2 |
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| 7 | Oct. 17 | Controversy
III: Minority or Majority Rights Read: essays by Kymlicka, Deets, Kemp and Wolf in JEMIE: Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, no. 4 (2002) http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus4-2002_Kymlicka.pdf http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus4-2002_Deets.pdf http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus4-2002_Kemp_Kymlicka.pdf http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus4-2002_Wolff_Kymlicka.pdf For additional guidance (optional) read Csergo and Deegan-Krause Tags: minority_rights Debate 3 |
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| 8 | Oct. 24 |
Controversy IV: Peace or Violence Debate 4 |
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| Application | 9 | Oct. 31 | Bosnia,
Part I Read: Malcom, Bosnia, Chapters 1-8 Read: Fine, "When Ethnicity did not Matter in the Balkans" Read: Andric, Bridge on the Drina, Chapter XI Tag: Bosnia Hand in: Take-Home Exam Questions A and/or B to the Digital Drop Box on Blackboard by 11:59:59 p.m. |
| 10 | Nov. 7 | Bosnia,
Part II Read: Malcom, Bosnia, Chapter 9-16 Read: Bringa, Being Muslim in the Bosnian Way, excerpts (smaller-but-harder-to-read file here) Read: Stokes, "From Nation to Minority: Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia at the Outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars," Tag: Bosnia |
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| 11 | Nov. 14 | Bosnia,
Part III Read: Caspersen "Good Fences Make Good Neighbours? A Comparison of Conflict-Regulation Strategies in Postwar Bosnia" Read: Soberg, "Empowering Local Elites in Bosnia and Hercegovina: The Dayton Decade," Read: Hozic, "Between the Cracks: Balkan Cigarette Smuggling" Read: Weller and Wolff, "Bosnia and Herzegovina Ten Years after Dayton: Lessons for Internationalized State Building" Tag: Bosnia |
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| 12 | Nov. 28 | The
Middle East Read: Al-Asmeh, "Nationalism and the Arabs" Read: Dawisha, "Requiem for Arab Nationalism" Read: Rubin, "Pan-Arab Nationalism: The Ideological Dream as Compelling Force" Read: Naber, "Ambiguous insiders: an investigation of Arab American invisibility" See also: Bibliography Tag: ethnic_identity Visit: time and availabilty permitting, the Arab American National Museum, 13624 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn, MI 48126, 313-582-2266 |
|
| 13 | Dec. 5 | The
United States Read: Ashbee, "Being American: Representations of National Identity" Read: Davis and Brown, "The Antipathy of Black Nationalism: Behavioral and Attitudinal Implications of an African American Ideology" Read: Smith, "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America" Read Lieven "In the Mirror of Europe: The Perils of American Nationalism" Read: Schopflin, "Dilemas of Identity" (emailed to students if available) Read: Pei, "The Paradoxes of American Nationalism" (emailed to students) Tag: ethnic_identity Visit: time and availabilty permitting, the African-American History Museum, 315 E Warren Ave, Detroit, MI, (313) 494-5800 |
|
| And Beyond | 14 | Dec. 12 | Beyond
Nations, Part I Read: Barber, Jihad v. McWorld Read: Mann, "Has Globalization Ended the Rise and Rise of the Nation-State" in Spencer and Wollman Read: Castles, "Citizenship and the other in the age of Migration" in Spencer and Wollman Read: Culture and Political Community--National, Global and Cosmopolitan," In Spencer and Wollman Tag: globalization and immigration Engage in: Debates 5 and 6 |
| Final | Dec. 19 | Beyond
Nations? Part II Engage in: Debates 7 and 8 Hand in: Take-Home Exam Questions C and/or D to the Digital Drop Box on Blackboard by 11:59:59 p.m. Complete: Web Collaboration on the Course Wiki by 11:59:59 p.m. |