Description

Submitted for your consideration:

1. Nation-states are unnatural, artificial political organizations imposed on unwilling citizenries.
2. Conflict based on primordial ethnic and religious identities is endemic to and inevitable in most parts of the world.
3. Global trade effaces local differences and, for better or worse, homogenizes human societies.

This course is structured around three debates, each on a different facet of globalization. We will strive not merely to understand current events in light of the past, but, more deeply, to reframe our questions and arguments around analysis of nineteenth-century world history.

Each unit will begin with a pair of recent articles on the contemporary phenomenon of globalization. We then turn to the relevant chapters in C.A. Bayly's The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914. Together we will use these discussions to formulate a series of focused questions breaking down the issue at hand. Some students will write short essays ("briefs") adducing evidence to answer these questions. Others will draw on these briefs to prepare for actual oral debates.

Group-work will be intensive: the class will be subdivided into various teams to facilitate caucusing and the exchange of research online for the benefit of all. Since students will write briefs on issues they're not debating (and vice versa), there is a built-in incentive to share information with your classmates. Since you will be graded on your own individual contributions, there is a built-in disincentive to freeload. Active student participation is unusually central to the success of this class, and is graded accordingly.

It is unfortunate that the scholarship on globalization—in both its contemporary and nineteenth-century forms—has a tendency to overlook everyday people, and to neglect issues of women and gender in particular. For that reason, we will pause periodically to read and discuss A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman. The final exam will require you to square Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai's experiences with various historical trends and themes analyzed in Bayly's textbook.

Assignments

• Performance in one debate, on April 26, May 17, or May 31 (20%)
• Two 4-page briefs, one on each of the two issues you're not debating in person, due on the dates indicated below in several (2-3) copies (20% each)
• Attendance, participation, and in-class assignments (15%)
• Take-home final examination due June 13 at 10:00am (25%)

Readings

• C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Blackwell, 2004)
• Kenichi Ohmae, "The Rise of the Region State," Foreign Affairs 72 no. 2 (1993): 78-87
• Robert Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy" Atlantic Monthly 273 no. 2 (February 1994): 44-76
• Benjamin R. Barber, "Jihad vs. McWorld," Atlantic Monthly 269 no. 3 (March 1992): 53-65
• Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72 no. 3 (1993): 22-49
• Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (Anchor Books, 2004), 1-22
• Gurcharan Das, India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age (Anchor Books, 2000), 139-54, 291-309
• Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (Stanford, 1945)

SCHEDULE

R = recitation (discussion guided by me); G = independent group work; D = debate

April 3-5

(R) Introduction

(R) Bayly, 1-21, 27-36, 41-48

Sign up in class on April 5 for the "pro" or "contra" side of one of the three debate issues.

DEBATE #1

April 10-12

(R) Ohmae and Kaplan

(D) Bayly, ch. 6

April 17-19

(R) Bayly, ch. 7

(R) Pruitt, book I; SUB-DEBATE ISSUES & TEAMS FORMED

April 24-26

(G) Caucus: BRIEFS DUE

(D) Debate

DEBATE #2

May 1-3

(R) Huntington and Barber

(D) Bayly, ch. 8

May 8-10

(R) Bayly, ch. 9

(R) Pruitt, book II; SUB-DEBATE ISSUES & TEAMS FORMED

May 15-17

(G) Caucus: BRIEFS DUE

(D) Debate

DEBATE #3

May 22-24

(R) Chua and Das

(R) Bayly, ch. 11 (and review 8); SUB-DEBATE ISSUES & TEAMS FORMED

May 29-31

(G) Caucus: BRIEFS DUE

(G) Debate

June 5-7

(G) Pruitt, book III; Bayly ch. 13

(D) Postmortem, evaluations, exam handed out

June 13

Take-home final examination due at 10:00am in 319 MCK