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(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract:
This course's aims are two-fold: 1) to offer students the theoretical and practical tools to understand how and why cities become torn by ethnic, religious, racial, nationalist, and/or other forms of identity that end up leading to conflict, violence, inequality, and social injustice; and 2) to use this knowledge and insight in the search for solutions. As preparation, students will be required to become familiar with social and political theories of the city and the nation and their relationship to each other. They also will focus on the ways that racial, ethnic, religious, nationalist or other identities grow and manifest themselves in cities or other territorial levels of determination (including the regional or transnational). In the search for remedies, students will be encouraged to consider a variety of policymaking or design points of entry, ranging from the political- institutional (e.g. forms of democratic participation and citizenship) to spatial, infrastructural, and technological interventions.
- Subject:
- Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
- Post-secondary
- Collection:
-
MIT OpenCourseWare
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(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract:
This course will serve as both an introduction to contemporary political philosophy and a way to explore issues of pluralism and multiculturalism. Racial and ethnic groups, national minorities, aboriginals, women, sexual minorities, and other groups have organized to highlight injustice and demand recognition and accommodation on the basis of their differences. In practice, democratic states have granted a variety of group-differentiated rights, such as exemptions from generally applicable laws, special representation rights, language rights, or limited self-government rights, to different types of groups. This course will examine how different theories of citizenship address the challenges raised by different forms of pluralism. We will focus in particular on the following questions: - Does justice require granting group-differentiated rights? - Do group-differentiated rights conflict with liberal and democratic commitments to equality and justice for all citizens? - What, if anything, can hold a multi-religious, multicultural society together? Why should the citizens of such a society want to hold together?
- Subject:
- Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
- Post-secondary
- Collection:
-
MIT OpenCourseWare
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(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract:
Ethnic and racial conflict appear to be the hallmark of the new world order. What accounts for the rise of ethnic/racial and nationalist sentiments and movements? What is the basis of ethnic and racial identity? What are the political claims and goals of such movements and is conflict inevitable? Introduces students to dominant theoretical approaches to race, ethnicity, and nationalism, and considers them in light of current events in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Discerning the ethnic and racial dimensions of politics is considered by some indispensable to understanding contemporary world politics. This course seeks to answer fundamental questions about racial and ethnic politics. To begin, what are the bases of ethnic and racial identities? What accounts for political mobilization based upon such identities? What are the political claims and goals of such mobilization and is conflict between groups and/or with government forces inevitable? How do ethnic and racial identities intersect with other identities, such as gender and class, which are themselves the sources of social, political, and economic cleavages? Finally, how are domestic ethnic/racial politics connected to international human rights? To answer these questions, the course begins with an introduction to dominant theoretical approaches to racial and ethnic identity. The course then considers these approaches in light of current events in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States.
- Subject:
- Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
- Post-secondary
- Collection:
-
MIT OpenCourseWare
