Thinking Across Borders

This is the syllabus for a course I am teaching at Haverford College in spring 2018, "Thinking Across Borders: Does the West Exist? Comparative and Transnational Studies." The course centers around one question: Does the West--a civilization that sets the standards for all other civilizations and cultures--exist? To answer that, we consider transnational, comparative, and area-focused perspectives on the way we live now, and on the ideas, institutions, processes, and events that shaped it. Feel free to write me with questions about the course at tjdonahueAThaverford.edu. For midterm evaluations of the course, please click here.

So...Does the West Exist?

Raphael, The School of Athens (1509-1511; Wikimedia Commons)

Thinking Across Borders: Does the West Exist? Comparative and Transnational Studies

Prof. Thomas J. Donahue

POLSH 324

Haverford College, Spring 2018

M 1:30-4:00

Classroom: Gest 103

Mailbox: Faculty Mailroom in Hall Building

Office Hours: W, 2-4pm, The Coop

E-mail: tjdonahueAThaverford.edu

In a globalizing world, we need to think across borders. But how to do that? This course seeks to answer this question by considering transnational, comparative, and area-focused perspectives on the way we live now, and on the ideas, institutions, processes, and events that shaped it. Our guiding question is: Does the West--a civilization that sets the standards for all other civilizations and cultures--exist? To answer that question, we consider the difference it makes to see ideas, institutions, and processes in transnational or entangled perspective, looking at how these phenomena were shaped and re-shaped as they were passed around the globe and reinterpreted by various actors. So we will look at the impact the Haitian Revolution had on the Black Atlantic and on White Europe of the nineteenth century, at how various actors in the countries colonized by Europeans shaped and reshaped ideas held by their colonizers, and at whether Egypt and African civilizations had a much greater impact on the civilization of classical Greece and Rome than many of us now like to think. We will consider various comparisons across countries, cultures, and areas, taking note of how and when they show us similarities we had ignored, or differences we had missed. So we will look at comparisons of economic change in China and Europe, at the similarities and differences among secularisms in different areas of the world, and at the similarities among Western communitarian and Islamist critiques of modernity. We then consider the unique perspective gained by considering ideas, institutions, and processes in the context of the area or region in which they occur, attending to the similarities across that region. So we will consider what is common to Latin American constitutionalisms, as well as their similarities and differences with constitutionalism in the US. We will look at the power of unexpected models or analogies, and what insights can be gained by seeing Alexander Hamilton as a Creole revolutionary like Simon Bolivar, or seeing the founding ideas of Pakistan as remarkably like the Zionist ideas that founded the state of Israel. And finally, we consider whether modernity is essentially Western, and whether the best response to European hegemony on the part of non-Europeans is to take the nativist road of playing up the differences between modernity and one’s own culture, or to reinterpret modernity by reworking it and adding one’s own ideas to it.

Course Requirements. To earn full credit, each student must:

(1) Participate in class discussion. I know many people find this daunting. Nevertheless, try. One main aim of the course is to help you improve in argument.

(2) Submit 6 weekly response papers. Each week, you may submit one or two papers, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper may either mount its own argument to refute the thesis, or mount its own argument to defend the thesis. For full credit, you need only submit 6 such papers.

(3) Submit a paper proposal. You are required to submit, at the beginning of class in Week 8, a proposal for your final paper. The proposal should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), give the key reasons by which you will defend the thesis, state two serious objections to your thesis, and state how you will respond to the objections. The proposal should be not more than 800 words long.

(4) Submit a final paper. You are required to submit, on the last day of exams, a final paper. The paper should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), defend the thesis with argument, state two serious objections to your thesis, and respond to the objections. The paper should be not more than 5,000 words long.

Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation: 20%; 6 Response Papers: 36% (6 % each); Paper Proposal: 20%; Argumentative Paper: 24%

Course Objectives. By the end of the course, students should

(1) Have become familiar with and able to carefully use such key concepts in comparative, area, and transnational studies as typologies, models, generalizing comparison, individualizing comparison, entangled history, cultural transmission, or nativism. ;

(2) Have strengthened their skills in applying these concepts to current debates about the history, ethics, politics, and economics of our increasingly entangled societies;

(3) Have honed their ability to specify how and why specific values clash when dealing with these debates;

(4) Have improved their skills in specifying the disagreement over the relevant facts involved in disagreement over these debates;

(5) Have learned how to accurately describe the structure of a theory, specifying its key concepts, its main claims, the basic model underlying it, and the question to which it is an answer;

(6) Have honed their skills in specifying the structures of arguments, breaking them into premises-axioms, middle premises-lemmas, and conclusions-theorems;

(7) Have improved their ability in distinguishing between similar concepts denoted by the same word and spotting equivocations;

(8) Have honed their skills in evaluating and challenging the premises of an argument with rational and well-ordered arguments of their own;

(9) Have worked out for themselves a detailed and developed argument arguing a thesis about one of the questions covered in the course;

E-mail policy. You are welcome to e-mail me with questions about the course. I try to answer e-mails within 48 hours of receipt. Don’t expect an answer before then. Fast usually means shoddy.

Academic Dishonesty: Don’t do it! Here is Haverford College's official language on the subject:

"A Note from Your Professor on Academic Integrity at Haverford:

"In a community that thrives on relationships between students and faculty that are based on trust and respect, it is crucial that students understand a professor’s expectations and what it means to do academic work with integrity. Plagiarism and cheating, even if unintentional, undermine the values of the Honor Code and the ability of all students to benefit from the academic freedom and relationships of trust the Code facilitates. Plagiarism is using someone else's work or ideas and presenting them as your own without attribution. Plagiarism can also occur in more subtle forms, such as inadequate paraphrasing, failure to cite another person’s idea even if not directly quoted, failure to attribute the synthesis of various sources in a review article to that author, or accidental incorporation of another’s words into your own paper as a result of careless note-taking. Cheating is another form of academic dishonesty, and it includes not only copying, but also inappropriate collaboration, exceeding the time allowed, and discussion of the form, content, or degree of difficulty of an exam. Please be conscientious about your work, and check with me if anything is unclear."

I may, at any time, use tools like turnitin.com to detect plagiarism.

Students with Disabilities, Special Needs, or Having Difficulties: Here is the Haverford Office of Access and Disability Services' Statement, which I affirm:

"Haverford College is committed to supporting the learning process for all students. Please contact me as soon as possible if you are having difficulties in the course. There are also many resources on campus available to you as a student, including the Office of Academic Resources (https://www.haverford.edu/oar/) and the Office of Access and Disability Services (https://www.haverford.edu/access-and-disability-services/). If you think you may need accommodations because of a disability, you should contact Access and Disability Services at hc-ads@haverford.edu. If you have already been approved to receive academic accommodations and would like to request accommodations in this course because of a disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester (ideally within the first two weeks) with your verification letter."

Writing response papers: Here are guidelines on what I’m looking for, and what I’m not looking for, but other teachers might be.

Timeline of Events and Ideas: Click here.

How to understand and use theories: Puzzled? You're not alone! Even the professionals find this difficult. Click here for some tips on how to do it.

REQUIRED BOOKS

Roberto Gargarella, The Legal Foundations of Inequality: Constitutionalism in the Americas, 1776-1860 (Cambridge UP, 2010). (Available online through Tri-Co Libraries)

Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton UP, 1999). (Available online through Tri-Co Libraries)

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Wayne Booth et al, The Craft of Research (UChicago Press, 2016). (Available online through Tri-Co Libraries)

SCHEDULE

Session 1. Introduction to the Course: (1) Does the West Exist? (2) Transnational/Entangled, Comparative, and Area Perspectives. (3) A Transnational History: The Story of the Black Jacobins and Their World-Historical Revolution in Haiti

Optional:

Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Culture," 2016 Reith Lectures on Mistaken Identities

Stuart Hall, "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power," in Formations of Modernity, ed. S. Hall (Polity, 1992)

CLR James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (Vintage, 1963)

Session 2. What Racial Blacks Worldwide Learned from the Haitian Revolution, and What Napoleonic-Era Europeans Learned from It (and 20^th-century Europeans Forgot): Two Transnational Histories

Michael O. West and William G. Martin, “Haiti, I’m Sorry: The Haitian Revolution and the Forging of the Black International,” From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution, ed M. West et al (UNC Press, 2009): 72-106

Susan Buck-Morss, “Hegel and Haiti,” Critical Inquiry 26 (2000): 821-865

Optional reading: G. W. F. Hegel, “Lordship and Bondage,” The Phenomenology of Spirit (1806)

Session 3. Economic and Political Change in China, Russia, and Europe: A Cross-Area Comparison, and a Cross-country Comparison across areas

R. Bin Wong, “Introduction,” “Economic Change in Late Imperial China and Early Modern Europe,” “Chinese and European Perspectives on State Formation and Transformation,” China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Cornell UP, 1997): 1-8, 9-32, 71-104

Daniel Little, “Eurasian Historical Comparisons: Conceptual Issues in Comparative Historical Inquiry,” Social Science History 32 (2008): 235-261, READ 235-249 ONLY

Aviezer Tucker, “Restoration and Convergence: Russia and China since 1989,” in The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in World Politics, ed. G. Lawson et al (Cambridge UP, 2010): 157-178

Session 4. Transnational Forces: Diasporas, Their Allegiances, and Their Creations

Nina Glick Schiller, “Long-Distance Nationalism,” in Encyclopedia of Diasporas, ed. M. Ember et al (Springer, 2005) : 570-580

Stephane Dufoix, "Maintaining Connections: Holding On and Letting Go," Diasporas (UCalifornia Press, 2008): 59-79

Paul Gilroy, “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity,” The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Verso, 1993): 1-29 ONLY

Optional reading:

Joseph E. Harris, "The Dynamics of the Global African Diaspora," The African Diaspora (Texas A&M Univ Press, 1996): 7-21

Nicholas Van Hear, “Diasporas Made and Diasporas Unmade,” New Diasporas: The Mass exodus, dispersal, and regrouping of migrant communities (UCL Press, 1998): 195-232

Nicholas Van Hear, “Refugee Diasporas and Refugees in Diaspora,” Encyclopedia of Diasporas, ed. M. Ember et al (Springer, 2005) : 580-590

Session 5. Constitutionalisms Compared Across the Americas. The Uses of Typologies

Selections from Roberto Gargarella, “Introduction,” “Radicalism: Honoring the General Will,” “Conservatism: The Moral Cement of Society,” “Liberalism: Between Tyranny and Anarchy,” The Legal Foundations of Inequality: Constitutionalism in the Americas, 1776-1860 (Cambridge UP, 2010): READ pp. 1-30, 90-130, 153-172 ONLY

Optional reading: Roberto Gargarella, “Towards a typology of Latin American Constitutionalism,” Latin American Research Review 39 (2004): 141-153

FIRST TWO RESPONSE PAPERS DUE

Session 6. Cross-area comparisons: Secularism

Nader Hashemi, “The Multiple Histories of Secularism: Muslim Societies in Comparative Perspective,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 36 (2010): 325-338

Rajeev Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” in The Future of Secularism, ed. T. N. Madan (Oxford UP, 2006): 20-53

Faviola Rivera-Castro, “Laicism: Exclusive or Inclusive?” in Laicidad and Religious Diversity in Latin America, ed. J. Vaggione and J. Moran (Springer, 2017): 43-57

Session 7. Is Modernity Inevitably European and Colonial? Arguments from the Global Periphery for “Yes” and “No”

Walter Mignolo, “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity,” in Modernologies, ed. C. Breitwisser (MACBA, 2009): 39-49

Olufemi Taiwo, “Introduction: Of Subjectivity and Sociocryonics,” “Running Aground on Colonial Shores: The Saga of Modernity and Colonialism,” How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa (Indiana UP, 2010): 1-19, 49-97

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Case for Contamination,” New York Times Magazine (1 January 2006)

SPRING BREAK!

Session 8. Cross-area comparisons: Communitarianisms and their Critique of Modernity as Morality-Destroying and Colonial

Roxanne L. Euben, “A View from Another Side: The Political Theory of Sayyid Qutb,” Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton UP, 1999): 49-92

R. Euben, “Inside the Looking Glass: Views within the West,” Enemy in the Mirror, pp. 123-153

Optional reading: Sayyid Qutb, “Signposts along the Road,” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought, ed. R. Euben and M. Zaman (Princeton UP, 2009): 136-144

PAPER PROPOSAL DUE at beginning of class

Session 9. Models and Analogies as Sources of Comparison: Zionism as a Model for Pakistani Nationalism

Ed Snitkoff, “Secular Zionism,” My Jewish Learning

Hedva Ben-Israel Kidron, "Zionism and European Nationalisms: Comparative Aspects," Israel Studies 8/1 (Spring 2003), 91-104.

Faisal Devji, “Introduction,” “Another Country,” “A People without History,” Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Harvard UP, 2013): 1-12, 13-48, 89-122

Optional reading: Gideon Shimoni, "General Zionism," The Zionist Ideology (UPNE, 1995): 86-126

Session 10. Models and Analogies: The U. S. and Other Countries’ Racial Orders. Which Is a Model for Which?

Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” Theory, Culture and Society 16 (1998): 41-58

Jonathan Warren and Christina Sue, “Comparative racisms: What anti-racists can learn from Latin America,” Ethnicities 11 (2011): 32-58

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “We are all Americans! The Latin Americanization of racial stratification in the USA,” Race and Society 5 (2002): 3-16

DEADLINE TO HAVE SUBMITTED FOUR TOTAL RESPONSE PAPERS FOR SEMESTER

Session 11. (1) Models and Analogies: Alexander Hamilton and Other Creole Revolutionaries of the Americas. (2) How One Model Can Challenge Another: Does Simon's Creole Concept Challenge a Leading Conception of the differences between Latin America and the U. S.?

Joshua Simon, “The Ideology of Creole Revolution,” “Alexander Hamilton in Comparative Perspective,” The Ideology of Creole Revolution: Imperialism and Independence in Latin American Political Thought (Cambridge UP, 2017): 17-77 ONLY

Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, "The Connotations of an Idea: On the basic connotations of the term Latin America," Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea (UChicago Press, 2017): 34-40

Optional:

Selections from George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (Oxford UP, 1981)

Selections from Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge UP, 2008)

Session 12. The Difference Made by Area, Comparative, and Transnational Perspectives: Corruption and the Ethics of Migration

Jon Moran, “Patterns of Corruption and Development in East Asia,” Third World Quarterly 20 (1999): 569-587

Alexander Cooley and J. C. Sharman, “Transnational Corruption and the Globalized Individual,” Perspectives on Politics 15 (2017): 732-753

Alex Sager, “Methodological Nationalism and the ‘Brain Drain’,” in The Ethics and Politics of Immigration: Core Issues and Emerging Trends (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016): 221-240

Optional reading:

Roberta Ann Johnson, “Corruption in Four Countries,” in The Struggle against Corruption: A Comparative Study, ed R. Johnson (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004): 145-166

Devesh Kapur and John McHale, “Should a Cosmopolitan Worry about the ‘Brain Drain’?” Ethics & International Affairs 20 (2006): 305-320

Session 13. (1) Global White Supremacy as a Transnational Phenomenon. (2) Does Looking At Whiteness Comparatively Challenge Our Views of It? (3) Polarizing Nativism as a Response to Colonial Domination: Is Seeing One's Culture As Centered on What Is Most Different from Europe the Best Way of Throwing Off the Chains? Arguments for "Yes" and "No"

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 1-7, 19-40 ONLY

Augusto Salzar Bondy, "The Meaning and Problem of Hispanic American Philosophic Thought," in Latin American Philosophy for the 21st Century, ed. J. Gracia and E. Milan-Zaibert (Prometheus, 2004): 381-398

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Topologies of Nativism,” In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford UP, 1992): 47-72

Optional reading:

Molefi Kete Asante, An Afrocentric Manifesto (Polity, 2007)

Valentin Mudimbe, "African Philosophy as an Ideological Practice: The Case of French-speaking Africa," African Studies Review 26 (1983): 133-154

DEADLINE TO HAVE SUBMITTED SIX TOTAL RESPONSE PAPERS: TUES 24 APRIL 4pm. Hard copies to my mailbox in Hall Building Administrative Office.

Session 14. (1) Polarizing Nativism and Its Comparisons. Grounded Universalism and Its Comparisons. Creolization and Its Making New. (2) The Value in Entangled/Transnational and Comparative Perspectives: What Can We Learn from Entangled History, Individualizing Comparisons, Universalizing Comparisons, Variation-Finding Comparisons, and Encompassing Comparisons?

Ali Mirsepassi, “Modernity beyond Nativism and Universalism,” Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment: Philosophies of Hope and Despair (Cambridge UP, 2011): 67-84

Edouard Glissant, "Creolization in the Making of the Americas," Caribbean Quarterly 54 (2008): 81-89

Sönke Bauck and Thomas Maier. 2015. “Entangled [Transnational] History.” InterAmerican Wiki: Terms - Concepts - Critical Perspectives

Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (Russell Sage, 1984): 80-86, 116-119, 125-129

Optional reading:

Robert Hall, Area Studies: With Special Reference to Their Implications for Research in the Social Sciences (Social Science Research Council, 1948)

Peter J. Katzenstein, “Area Studies, Regional Studies, and International Relations,” Journal of East Asian Studies 2 (2002): 127-137

Martin Bernal, “Article [Black Athena],” http://www.blackathena.com/encyc.php

Gould, Eliga H. 2007. “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 3, pp. 764-786.

Juergen Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” History and Theory 42 (2003): 39-44

FINAL PAPER DUE FRI MAY 18 at 12 NOON (Seniors, May 12, 5pm)