Politics 70 Syllabus

Politics 70:
Global Politics
Winter 2007 (Last update: 3/15/07)
MWF 11-12:10
Classroom Unit 2
Instructor: Ronnie Lipschutz
Co-Instructor: Heather Turcotte (hmturcotte@juno.com )
234 Crown College
Phone: 459-3275
e-mail: rlipsch@ucsc.edu
Office hours: Monday 2-3, Tuesday, 1-2, or by appointment
TAs: Katherine Hamilton (kehamilt@ucsc.edu), Don Kingsbury (dkingsbu@ucsc.edu), Sarah Mak (smak@ucsc.edu)

(Syllabus web site is: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70syl.html)

This course addresses contemporary global problematics and the surrounding politics and economics. We will focus on the substance of these issues but also think about them in broad theoretical terms, and connect them to “life and politics in the 21^st century.” Course requirements include regular attendance, completion of a brief quiz during each class meeting (for enrollment purposes), careful reading of both assigned books and articles, one 5-page paper, two in-class midterm exams, and a final.

Discussion sections are optional. Two honors sections will be offered for highly-committed students on a competitive admission basis (meeting times will be announced). There will also be two or three other regularly scheduled non-required sections. Lower division current or prospective politics majors are strongly encouraged to apply for admission to one of the honors sections. To apply you must write a 2 page essay addressing why you want to participate in an honors section and what you intend to get out of it. These application essays will be due in class on Monday, January 8. More details will be provided in class.

Required texts (available at Baytree Books):
Robert Jackson, Global Issues (Dushkin, 2006).
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).
Walter LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (Norton, 2002, new and expanded edition)

Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (Anchor, 2002).
Please make a point of seeing the film "Blood Diamond"--it will be referred to frequently in class.
You should also make a point of reading The New York Times on a daily basis, either in print or on the web (www.nytimes.com).

Useful internet resources:
Global Issues, at: http://www.globalissues.org/
The World Revolution, at: http://www.worldrevolution.org/
International Affairs Resources, at: http://www2.etown.edu/vl/
The Heritage Foundation, at: http://www.heritage.org/
Center for Security Policy, at: http:// www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org

Course schedule

Part I (1/5-12): Processional

1/5: Introduction to Global Politics

Required reading: Kincaid, A Small Place
Skim the reference web sites listed above

1/8: Problematics of the 21^st century—an overview
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec1.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 1, 4, 5, 6
Norimitsu Onishi, "On Africa's Fluid Borders, My Land is Your Land," New York Times, 4/16/00, at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wa-afr-network/message/502

1/10: Conventional wisdom about the future--fact, fiction or fantasy?
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec2.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 2, 7,8,9, 10
David Held and Anthony McGres, "Globalization," Oxford Companion to Politics, at: http://www.polity.co.uk/global/globalization-oxford.asp

1/12: Locations, intersectionalities, bodies

Required reading:
Cherrie Moraga, "From Inside the First World: Forward, 2001, " pp. xv-xxxiii, in: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Third Woman Press, 2001), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/moraga.pdf

*********************************************************************************************

Part II (1/15-2/11/07): People, poverty and production

1/15: MLK Day--no class

Required Reading: LaFeber, Michael Jordan

1/17: Are people a problem? Malthus, Simon and Marx
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec4.ppt
(see also: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Week%206.html)

Required reading:
Garrett Hardin, "the Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162 (1968): 1243-48, at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/162/3859/1243.pdf?ijkey=W762Xr9TwfD4g

Betsy Hartmann, “Chapter Two, the Malthusian Orthodoxy.” Reproductive Rights & Wrongs and the Global Politics of Population Control. Boston: South End Press, 1995. 13-40., at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/hartmann.pdf

Ed Regis, "The Doomslayer," Wired, Feb. 1997, at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html

Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995., at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Escobar.pdf

Recommended reading:
Eric B. Ross, "The Malthus Factor Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development," The Cornerhouse Briefing #20, 2000, at: http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x=51976; or http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/briefing/20malth.pdf

William O'Keefe, "Are Resources Finite in a World of Unlimited Intelligence?", at: http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/environment/population/okeefe.html

Nicholas Eberstadt, "The Population Implosion," Foreign Policy 123 (2001): 42-53, at:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Eberstadt.pdf (BIG FILE!)

1/19: Globalization and its discontents

Video: "Profit and Nothing But"

1/22: People in the global economy: principles and practices
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec5.ppt
(see also: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Week%208.html)

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 3, 13, 16, 18

Naila Kabeer, "Globalization, Labor Standards, and Women's Rights," Feminist Economics 10, #1 (March 2004): 3-35, at:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Kabeer.pdf

W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, "The Churn--the Paradox of Progress," Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1992, at: http://grift.com/churn.pdf

Sharon LaFraniere, "Africa's World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old's Eyes," New York Times, 10/29/06, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/childlabor.htm

Recommended reading:
Sam Quinone, "From Sweet Success to Bitter Tears," The Standard, 1/21/05, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/donuts1.htm

Michel Chossudovsky, “Global Poverty in the Late 20^th Century,” Telepolis, 5/20/98, at: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6099/1.html;

Mayra Buvinic, "Women in Poverty: A New Global Underclass," Foreign Policy 108 (1997): 38-53, at:: http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org/beijing12/womeninpoverty.pdf

See also: Global Issues, “Causes of Poverty,” at: http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp

1/24: Labor Migrations

Video: "Uprooted"

Required reading:

Katherine Boo, “The Churn: Creative Destruction in a Border Town,” The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, at: http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040329fa_fact;

Katherine Boo, “the Best Job in Town,” The New Yorker, July 5, 2004, at: http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2004/the_best_job_in_town

Cynthia Enloe, “Carmen Miranda on my Mind: International Politics of the Banana”. Bananas, Beaches, & Bases. Berkeley: California UP, 1989. 124-150., at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Enloe.pdf

1/26: Who is doing what labor for whom?

Required reading:
Grace Chang, “Global Exchange: The World Bank, “Welfare Reform,” and the Trade in Migrant Women.” Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000. 123-154, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Chang.pdf

Kamala Kempadoo, "Globalizing Sex Workers' Rights," Canadian Women Studies 22, #3,4 (2003): 143-50, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Kempadoo.pdf

Anna Agathangelou and Lily Ling, Desire Industries: Sex Trafficking, UN Peacekeeping, and the Neo-Liberal World Order,"
Brown Journal of World Affairs 10, #1 (2003): 133-48, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Anthangelou.pdf

Recomennded reading:
Todd Benson, "No Streets of Gold in Sao Paolo," New York Times, 12/2/04, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Streets%20of%20Gold.htm

Peter Coy, “The Future of Work,” Business Week Online, 3/22/04, at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_12/b3875615.htm;

Sandra Polaski, "Job Anxiety is Real--and It's Global," Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief 30, May 2004, at: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Policybrief30.pdf

See also: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Working in the 21^st Century,” at: http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/home.htm

1/29: Life and death on the commodity frontier
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec8.ppt

+Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 39

Harry Flood, "Maufacturing Desire," Adbusters (Winter 2000), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Desire.html

Pankaj Ghemawat and Ken A. Mark, "Walmart--The Price is Rights," Dallas Morning News, 8/13/05, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Walmart.htm

Saul Hansell and Eric A. Taub, "No End in Sight to Supply of Cheap TVs," New York Times 1/4/05, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/TVs.pdf

1/31: Who owns you? What do you own? Information, bodies and property
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec9.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 34, 40, 41

Victoria Shannon, "One Internet, Many Copyright Laws," New York Times, 11/8/04, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/copyright.htm

Sally Brooks, "Biotechnology and the Politics of Truth," Sociologia Ruralis 45, #4 (Oct. 2005): 360-79, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Brooks.pdf

Maurice Cassier, "Private property, collective property, and public property in the age of genomics," International Social Sciences Journal (2002): 83-98, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Cassier.pdf

2/2: First mid-term; it will be given during class

Here is the curve for the midterm:

Grade	Grade range	Number in range
A	86 & above	81
B	73-85	87
C	60-72	84
D	50-60	27
F	less than 50	25

*********************************************************************************************

Part II (February 5-23): Secrets of the Material World

2/5: Do Artifacts have Politics? Thinking and practicing technology
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec10.ppt

Required reading:
Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986, 19-39, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/winner.htm

2/7: Resources and technologies: How oil and autos came to rule the world
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec11.ppt

Required reading:
John Urry, "The System of 'Automobility'," Theory, Culture, Society 21, #4/5 (2004): 25-39, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/urry.pdf

T.C. Barker, "The International History of Motor Transport," Journal of Contemporary History 20, #1 (Jan. 1985): 3-19, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Barker.pdf

Mary Ann Tétreault, “The Political Economy of Middle Eastern Oil,” at:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Tetreault.rtf

2/9: The political economy of petroleum today
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec12.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 24, 25

Michael Klare, "No Escape from Dependency," TomDispatch.com, December 8, 2004, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Klare%20on%20oil.htm;

Nonna Gorilovskaya, “The End of Oil,” Mother Jones, 6/8/2004, at: http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/05/paul_rob_qa.html;

Recommended reading:
Daniel Yergin, “Gulf Oil—How Important is It Anyway?” San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 2003, at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/04/13/IN307923.DTL

“Hubbert Peak of Oil Production,” at: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/ ;

Browse articles at PetroleumWorld.com, http://www.petroleumworld.com/

2/12: What is the “resource curse” and whom does it benefit?

Required reading:

Terry Karl, "The Perils of the Petro-State: Reflections on the Paradox of Plenty," Journal of International Affairs 53, #1 (1999): 31-48, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Karl.pdf

Terisa Turner and Leigh S. Brownhill, "Why women are at war with Chevron: Nigerian subsistence struggles against the international oil industry," Journal of Asian and African Studies 39, #1-2 (2004): 63-93, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/turner.pdf

Jane Perlez & Kirk Johnson, "Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions," New York Times, 10/24/05, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/gold.htm

Recommended reading & viewing:

Climate change power point slides (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Climate%20change1.ppt)

UNEP, "Vital Climate Graphics," at: http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/;

Browse the World Resources Institute Climate Pages, at http://climate.wri.org/

2/19: No class

2/21: Challenges of sustainability II: Water
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec16.ppt

Required reading:

Sandra Postel, Gretchen Daily & Paul Ehrlich, “Human Appropriation of Renewable Fresh Water,” Science 271, #5250 (Feb. 9, 1996): 785-88, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/CLNI%2091/Postel.pdf

Taikan Oki1 and Shinjiro Kanae1, “Global Hydrological Cycles and World Water Resources,” Science 313 (Aug. 25, 2006): 1068-72, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/CLNI%2091/Oki.pdf

Marq de Villiers, "Water Wars of the Near Future," at: http://www.itt.com/waterbook/Wars.asp

Peter Gleick, "The Changing Water Paradigm: A Look at Twenty-first Century Water Resources Development," Water International 25, #1
(March 2000):127-138, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Gleick.pdf

Recommended viewing:
Sustainable Energy and Economy Network website: http://www.seen.org/

Water power point slides (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/water.ppt)

2/23: Challenges of sustainability IV: What are people doing?

Required reading:

Geeta Chowdry and Mark Beeman, "Challenging Child Labor: Transnational Activism and India's Carpet Industry," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 575 (May, 2001): 158-175, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Chowdry.pdf

Ronnie Lipschutz, "Regulation for the Rest of Us? Global Social Activism, Corporate Citizenship, and the Disappearance of the Political," CGIRS Working Paper 2003-1, at: http://www2.ucsc.edu/cgirs/publications/wp/wp2003-1.pdf

Candido Grzybowski, "The World Social Forum: Reinventing Global Politics," Global Governance 12, #1 (2007): 7-13, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Grzybowski.pdf

Recommended reading:
Andil Gosine, "Dying Planet, Deadly People--'Race'-Sex Anxieties and Alternative Globalaizations," Social Justice 32, #4 (2005): 69-86, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Gosine.pdf

*********************************************************************************************

Part III (February 26-March 16): Wars, Peace, Security?

2/26: Causes of war
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec18.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 15, 28, 29

Hedges, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning

Chris Hedges, "On War," New York Review of Books 51, #2 (Dec. 16, 2004) (at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Hedges.htm)

Alexander Nikitin, “Political and Economic Causes of War,” at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Nikitin.war.htm

2/28: Videos: “Camp Arirang” and “Sin City Diary”

Sandra Sturdevant, “Who Benefits? U.S. Military, Prostitution, and Base Conversion.” Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance. Eds. Margerite Waller and Jennifer Rycenga. New York: Taylor and Franics, 2000. 141-157, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Sturdevant.pdf

Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Demilitarizing Security: Women Oppose US Militarism in East Asia”. Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance. Eds. Marguerite Waller and Jennifer Rycenga. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2000. 159-171., at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Kirk.pdf

3/2: Second mid-term; it will be given during class
Here is the curve for the second midterm; here is the answer sheet: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Midterm2.answers.rt f

Midterm 2 curve

A + 100-103 N=7

A 88-99 N=67

B 79-87 N=85

C 68-78 N=83

D 50-67 N=49

F <50 N =11

3/5: Terror, states and insecurity
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec19.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, 30, 31

Ronnie Lipschutz & Heather Turcotte, “Duct Tape or Plastic? The Political Economy of Threats and the Production of Fear,” pp. 25-46, in: Betsy Harmann, Banu Subramaniam, and Charles Zerner (eds.), Making Threats—Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/ducttape.pdf

Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” pp. 169-91, in: Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/warmaking.html

Recommended reading & viewing
Richard L Garwin, “Nuclear and Biological Megaterrorism,” 8/21/02, at: http://www.fas.org/rlg/020821-terrorism.htm

The Terrorism Knowledge Base , http://db.mipt.org/Home.jsp

3/7: Law and the violence of knowledge

Required reading:
Heather Turcotte and Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “States of Terror: Framing Threats and Selling Fears,” Presented at a panel on “Threat Politics III: Frames, Language and Context,” 46^th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Honolulu, HI, March 1-5, 2005, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/terror.pdf

Lucinda Peach, “Is Violence Male? The Law, Gender, and Violence.” In Frontline Feminisms. 57-71., at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Peach.pdf

Andrea Smith, “Chapter 8, U.S. Empire and the War Against Native Sovereignty.” Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge: South End Press, 2005. 177-191., at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Smith.pdf

3/9: Everyday violence and global politics

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 42

Angela Davis, "Prisons and Human Rights Abuses in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," Dec. 28, 2006, at:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/1450208&mode=thread&tid=25

Angela Davis, "Speech at the Boston Social Forum," July 26, 2004, Democracy Now at: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/26/1350259&mode=thread&tid=25

M. Jacui Alexander, “Whose New World Order? Teaching for Justice," pp. 91-116, Pedagogies of Crossing (Duke, 2005), at:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Alexander.pdf

3/12: Human Security
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Pol70.W07.lec20.ppt

Required reading:
Jackson, ch. 32, 33, 36

Philip Zelikow, "The Transformation of National Security," The National Interest, Spring 2003, at:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Zelikow.2003.htm

Caroline Thomas, "Global governance, development and human security: exploring the links," Third World Quarterly 22, #2 (2001): 159-71, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Thomas.pdf

Roland Paris, "Human Security--Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?" International Security 26, #2 (Fall 2001):87-102, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/Paris.pdf