|
|
|
||
|
The course is taught by professor Jan Kubik (visiting from Rutgers University/UCL), in bloc format (see syllabus below) and is offered to graduate students (MA and PhD programs) only. Have you ever wondered if a theater performance can change the course of history? Or why inter-religious conflicts are sometimes so vicious? Or why revolutions often include religious-like rituals? Or how poetry (or an opera) can challenge the power of an autocrat? Or why racial and gender stereotypes are so pernicious? Or how people’s self-image can influence social or political processes? Or where popular attitudes come from? These and similar topics are explored in this course. Have you ever wondered if a theater performance can change the course of history? Or why inter-religious conflicts are sometimes so vicious? Or why revolutions often include religious-like rituals? Or how poetry (or an opera) can challenge the power of an autocrat? Or why racial and gender stereotypes are so pernicious? Or how people’s self-image can influence social or political processes? Or where popular attitudes come from? These and similar topics are explored in this course. We will begin by defining culture and discussing its place in human evolution and proceed to review several key concepts that should help to study the relationship between politics (particularly power) and culture. An assumption on which our investigations will be based does not seem to be controversial: humans not only compete for resources and power but also for the “proper” interpretation of the world. In this process they create, disseminate, and interpret meanings, values, and norms they believe are “correct,” thus endowing the world with meaning is rarely politically innocent; it often is a component (dimension) of power games and competition for resources. In other words, power comes not only from achieving political authority or economic domination, but also from establishing thought control. I want to keep this realization squarely at the center of our analyses. We will work to isolate and analyze the cultural dimension in such momentous processes as the fall of state socialism and democratization, the rise of populisms of various colors, globalization and the re-definition of modern state. The link between politics and culture belongs to the classical themes studied in social sciences. During the behavioral revolution of the post-World War II era, social scientists explored the usefulness of grand theory to explain political change. Political culture was part of that quest, and the systematic study of culture understood as an aggregate of attitudes commenced. Researchers focused on the (politically relevant) attitudes, beliefs and values of people in different polities, from “primitive” communities to large, industrial societies. Methodological difficulties and debates over theoretical perspective soon cast doubt on the validity of grand theory. Mid-range theories that focused, inter alia, on political participation, dependency in international configurations of power, and the state as an actor gained ground in its stead. In the discipline of political science, political culture studies increasingly concentrated on the United States or Western Europe where findings from comprehensive, longitudinal surveys were readily available. Cultural analyses of other societies were assigned a lower priority but remained a major focus for political anthropologists or cultural sociologists. During the 1970’s and early 1980’s, the political culture approach (in political science) – as it was then practiced – faced strong criticism and its popularity within the discipline of political science diminished sharply (e.g., Almond and Verba, eds. 1980). At the same time these were the years when major conceptual breakthroughs changed the study of the relationship between politics and culture in anthropology and sociology. Eventually, this fresh theorizing made its way to political science and the condition of the study of political culture, once described as “moribund,” improved. Many researchers engaged in the far-reaching reconsideration of culture’s role in such areas as the social science theory, psychological anthropology, game theory, economics, and the study of globalization. I will argue that the best conceptualization of culture sees it as a communicative phenomenon and as a regulative mechanism without which human societies are inconceivable. It is thus important to understand that culture is simultaneously a semiotic phenomenon (we extract its components from texts by engaging in “interpretation”) and a psycho-social phenomenon (as we extract its elements from human minds by asking questions, for example in surveys). Also, if culture is best understood through the concept of communication, it has both creators (senders of messages) and consumers (recipients of messages). Finally, if we treat culture as a regulatory mechanism, we see that a certain meaning or value can function as a constraint imposed on economic or political behavior, or as a resource encouraging a certain economic or political behavior. Poslední úprava: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (12.02.2025)
|
|
||
|
Upon successful completion of the course, you should be able to:
Poslední úprava: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (04.02.2025)
|
|
||
|
All readings are required and should be completed before class.
Before each class (by 8:00 pm on Saturdays before our Monday sessions), you’ll submit a memo (about 1-2 pages). Its goal is to help you organize your thoughts on the readings and give me an idea of how you are working. You are expected to complete at least 5 of these (so you can skip one of weeks if needed).
Your memo should have three parts: · Summary of the argument: o What are the main ideas/points of the readings?) o What types of questions are being asked in this reading? o What conception of culture is the author using? o What types of explanations and concepts are being offered as responses to the authors’ questions? o What form of evidence or assumptions about what counts as evidence is the author using (if any)? · Questions: o What did you find unclear or confusing? o What needs to be developed? · Criticisms or praise: o On what points and why you disagree with the author? o In what ways did the readings challenge your thinking?
I’ll provide an overview of the readings and the theme for the week at the beginning of class and the rest of the class will be discussion that everyone is expected to contribute to. I’ll also have you all help lead a session by providing some organizing thoughts readings, developing discussion questions to start the conversation, and potentially suggesting some activities to aid in understanding and analysis. Poslední úprava: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (04.02.2025)
|
|
||
|
Students’ performance will be assessed on the basis of: (1) attendance and active participation in class discussions, (2) preparation of short weekly reading summaries for at least FIVE sessions, (3) a research design outline for the final paper (due: May 5, 2025), and (4) the final paper. The paper must analyze the role of “culture” (in one of the meanings discussed in class) in a political event, phenomenon or process. It must utilize at least one theoretical approach. The outline of the papers MUST specify the problem to be investigated and discuss at least TWO approaches that will be used. Poslední úprava: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (04.02.2025)
|
|
||
|
Schedule of classes (Selected Mondays 18:30-19:50). Required readings.
Session 1 (February 17): Introduction (will take place online - link will be distributed to enrolled students)
(1) Aronoff, Myron and Jan Kubik. 2013. “Beyond Political Culture.” In Anthropology and Political Science. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pages 60-85. In-person teaching (Room C321):
Session 2 (April 7): Semiotic dimension: culture as texts.
(1) Geertz, Clifford. 1972. “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight,” in Paul Rabinow and William Sullivan (eds.), Interpretive Social Science: A Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 181-223. Also in The Interpretation of Cultures 1973, pages 421-53. (2) Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review, 51 (April): 273-86. (3) Laitin, David. 1988. “Political Culture and Political Preferences,” and Aaron Wildavsky’s “Reply,” American Political Science Review 82, 2 (June): 589-97.
Session 3 (April 14): Psycho-social dimension: culture as attitudes. World Values Survey. Cultural prerequisites of democracy
(1) Almond, Gabriel A. 1989 (1980). “The Intellectual History of the Civic Culture Concept,” in Almond, Gabriel A. and Sidney Verba, eds. The Civic Culture Revisited. Newbury Park: Sage, pages. 1-36. (2) Inglehart, Ronald. 2000. “Modernization, Cultural Change and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review, 65 (February): 19-51. (3) Welzel, Christian. 2020. “The Cultural Pre-Requisites of Democracy'”, in Robert Rohrschneider, and Jacques Thomassen (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies, Oxford Handbooks (2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 6 Aug. 2020).
Session 4 (April 28): Three faces of power. Culturalist view of power and politics.
(1) Lukes, Stephen. 1974 (2005) Power: A Radical View. London: McMillan (New edition 2005, Basingstoke, Palgrave McMillan). (2) Gaventa, John. 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valle. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pages 1-33.
Session 5 (May 5): Legitimacy and Collective Memory.
(1) Lipset, Martin Seymour. 1960. The Political Man. New York: Doubleday, pages 77-96. (2) Kubik, Jan and Michael Bernhard. 2014. “A Theory of the Politics of Memory.” In Bernhard, M. and J. Kubik, eds. Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration. Oxford University Press, pages 7-34.
Session 6: (May 12): Cultural factors as movers of history. Culture and globalization.
(1) Kubik, Jan. 2019. “Cultural Approaches.” In Merkel, W., Kollmorgen, R. and H-J Wagener, eds. Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 84-94. (2) Fujii, Lee Ann. 2021. Show Time. The Logic and Power of Violent Display. Editor: Martha Finnemore. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pages 1-18.
Poslední úprava: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (19.02.2025)
|