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INTL/SOCY
330 Syllabus
Fall 2010
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FOR OUR DISCUSSION TOMORROW (SEPT.1),
PLEASE READ THIS:
August 31, 2010, "The New York Times,
"Passions and Detachment in Journalism," By ANDREW
C. REVKIN
VCU
Statements and Guidelines
We all know that
globalization is rapidly changing our lives. Signs of it are
all around. It is less obvious, though, just how the many dimensions
of the globalization process are coming together to transform
the world and also our relations with other people. That's our
subject this semester -- to explore implications of the changes
that are reshaping societies around the globe and people of
every culture. Most of our readings this semester will be accessible
through the Internet. Assigned articles will be linked to the
course outline, below, at least a week before you need to read
them.
Course
Objectives
I've developed
a structure for this course that aims to give you a useful and
intriguing introduction to the study of sociology that will
build skills that you can use throughout life. Because your
time is valuable, if you put work into a class, it's obvious
that you should enjoy clear and useful results. Here are the
most important benefits that I expect you to gain from the course:
1) You
will develop a better understanding of how key institutions
within society work -- knowledge that will help you in
almost any
career. If you're going to be a biologist, you'll need to know
something about the structure of cells, right? And if you're
going to work with people, groups, and organizations, you'll
need to know something about the structure of society and social
groups. Right.
2) Studying
the readings and lecture material will give you a better sense
of what globalization is all about and how it may affect you
and those you know. What you learn on this subject will be useful
for you in becoming a better informed and thus more effective
citizen. It will also help you to survive in our rapidly changing
world.
3) The course
will give you experience in "learning how to learn"
more effectively. You'll enhance your ability to find information
that has a wide range of applications -- information that will
serve you well in both your career and private life. A great
deal of this information is newly available and is frequently
updated. Much of it is on the Web, and even many specialists
are just now becoming familiar with some of these gold mines.
Knowing how to locate new information is a must, if you're to
keep up with the rapid pace of change in today's world.
4) You will
strengthen your skill in thinking analytically. Refining your
proficiency in analytical thinking requires both a great deal
of practice and a substantial amount of effort. It's worth it,
and fortunately it's often intriguing, too. This is one of those
key skills that will stand you in good stead in just about any
career that you enter -- from business to teaching to lawyering
to government service.
At the end
of the course, I'll ask you how effective I've been in helping
you to realize these benefits.
 How
the course will work
We know
that we're living in a new world, but how it is evolving still
remains something of a mystery. This goes far in explaining
the disorientation and uncertainty that we all sometimes know
-- prominent features of our era. Political institutions everywhere
are being radically restructured before our eyes, along with
the economic and social institutions that they influence. But
if these developments are creating widespread confusion, they're
also full of possibilities. The rules are changing. Exploring
these arrangements and the trends that shape our lives is what
this course is about. We will look at several countries, exploring
key similarities and differences among them -- especially the
U.S., France, Russia, China, Iran, Nigeria and Mexico. Along
the way, we will also examine several groups of countries: the
European Union, Communist regimes, the Third World and the Middle
East.
In the lectures,
we'll generally focus on one or two important books or articles,
all recently published, that address our subject. Your reading
for each day will be tied to the theme of the lecture. I
will be filling out the syllabus, with assigned readings, as
the course progresses. This is so we can examine as much recent
writing as possible on our topics.
The assigned
readings for this course are all available online.
Because
I will be changing this syllabus page frequently, you should
refresh the page each day that you access it.
In addition
to assigned readings, I suggest that you scan The New York
Times or The Washington Post every day, looking for
articles that relate to themes that are important to the subjects
we are taking up in this class. Often, at the begining of class
we'll discuss some of these articles.
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University
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Grading
Your
course grade will be based on the scores you make on three
exams. Each exam will account for 1/3 of your grade.
The
exams will cover
material from class lectures and assigned readings. The
questions will be multiple
choice and true-false.
I'll post study questions on the web to help you prepare
for the exams.
Absences
from lectures will affect your grade only through your
exam performance.
There
will be an extra credit opportunity that I will sketch
out in class.
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User
Name and Password
In
order to post to the message board, you need to enter a user
name and a password.
Your user name will be "fall," and your password will
be "vcu."
Be sure
to identify yourself in the body of your message. Otherwise,
no one will know that the message is from you.
Last
Day to Withdraw with "W"
The last
day to withdraw from a course with a mark of "W" is
November 5..
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to the Top
VCU
Honor Code, Plagiarism/Cheating and Classroom Conduct
Honor
Code
All VCU
students are expected to adhere to the university honor code.
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View
from the Hills above Tbilisi
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If you quote
a sentence or a paragraph from some external source, be sure
to put it in quotation marks and reference it. Otherwise, it's
plagiarism, and the penalties are severe. It is also plagiarism
when a person takes someone's else's ideas without citing the
source -- whether or not the wording is exactly the same as
in the original. The solution is simple. Give credit to
the source. If you quote directly, use quotation marks, and
if you are taking ideas from another person's work, include
a reference to that work. That is careful scholarship -- quite
a different thing from plagiarism.
At VCU,
plagiarism and cheating are taken very seriously. You
can read about the VCU Honor System here. I illustrate plagiarism
and discuss the penalty for honor code violations on the "Citations
and Plagiarism" page. Please read it.
For
more details about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, check
out this page at the University of Indiana web site:
Plagiarism:
What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It
Additional
Matters
Please note
that cell phones and beepers should be turned off while in the
classroom.l
Also, the
VCU University Rules and Procedures prohibit anyone "to
have in his [or her] possession any firearm, other weapon, or
explosive, regardless of whether a license to possess the same
has been issued, without the written authorization of the President
of the university."
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Office
My
office is in Scherer Hall (823 W. Franklin St.), room
111. I'll generally be available for scheduled appointments
on Monday and Wednesday afternoons between 2:00 and 4:00.
Please schedule appointments ahead of time.
You
can e-mail me at ldnelson@vcu.edu
to set up a meeting time. I'll respond to confirm.
You can
also post a message to my
message board "table," and I'll usually
respond within a few hours.
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Up
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I'll
change some details in this outline as the semester progresses
-- substituting new readings, in some cases, for the ones that
are listed here. Be sure to check the syllabus weekly to be
sure that you keep up with the changes. You
should complete each assigned reading before class time
on the date indicated. Readings will be added to the outline
below at least a week before they are due.
You should
complete each required reading before class time on the
date indicated.
Some
useful country sources
Week of
August 23:
Introduction
to global analysis
Reading:
"Why
the World is Flat," Wired, May 2005.
Week
of August
30:
Modern Europe and the European Union
Reading:
TBA.
Video:
Thomas L. Friedman Reporting: Does Europe Hate Us? (Discovery;
50 min.)
Week
of September 17
The
European Union
(continued)
Reading:
Stephanie
Giry, "France
and Its Muslims," Foreign Affairs, Sept-Oct
2006.
Recommended
(not required): James Geary and James Graff, "Restless
Youth," Time, November 13, 2005; James Graff,
"Should
France Ban Head Scarves?" Time, February 1,
2004.
Check
this out:
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/
France -- culture, society, economy
Reading:
TBA
Recommended
(not required): Portals
to the World: France (Library of Congress); BBC
Country Profile: France; Sophie Meunier, "The
French Exception," Foreign Affairs, July-August
2000; Christopher Caldwell, "The
Crescent and the Tricolor" (Muslims in France), The
Atlantic Monthly, November 2000; "Creating
French Culture: Treasures from the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France" (Library of Congress); "An American
in Paris" (interview with Diane Johnson," Atlantic
Unbound, September 10, 2003 (available only online with
a subscription to The Atlantic Monthly).
Video: "Young,
Muslim, and French," Wide Angle
"Young,
Muslim, and French," Interview with Fawaz Gerges
Jocelyne
Cesari, "French
Secularism" (article)
Week
of
September 20:
France (continued)
Week
of
September 27 - week of Octoer 11:
The Communist bloc, the USSR and Russia
Recommended
(not required): Dmitri
Trenin, "Russia
Leaves the West," Foreign Affairs, July-August
2006; James
K. Galbraith, "Shock
without Therapy," The American Prospect vol.
13 no. 15, August 26, 2002. Library
of Congress Country Profile: Russia (updated 2005); Portals
to the World: Russia (Library of Congress); BBC
Country Profile: Russia
Recommended: Fareed
Zakaria: GPS (Russia);
Cathy Young, "The
Tsars Come Out," reasononline, January, 2006;
Richard Pipes, "Flight
From Freedom: What Russians Think and Want," Foreign
Affairs, May-June 2004.
Video:
"How
Putin Came to Power" or "Yeltsin: A Legacy of Change"
Monday,
October 18: Exam
1
Wednesday,
October 7: "A clash of civilizations" or "a flat
world"?
Reading:
Dmitry
Medvedev,
"Go
Russia";
Samuel Huntington, "The
Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, Summer
1993; and Samuel Huntington, "If
Not Civilizations, What?" Foreign Affairs, November/December
1993; Moses Naim, "Think
Again: Globalization," Foreign Policy, March/April
2009.
Review what
people "quarrel about" in each country we have studied
so far.
Monday,
October 12: China
Video: "China Rises: Getting Rich" (45 min;
Discovery) or "China from the Inside: Power and the People"
Wednesday,
October 14: China (continued)
Recommended
(not required): Kishore Mahbubani, "Understanding
China," Foreign Affairs, Sept-Oct 2005.
Monday,
October 19: China (continued)
Recommended
(not required): Library
of Congress Country Profile: China (updated 2005); Portals
to the World: China (Library of Congress); BBC
Country Profile: China; "China:
Lights, Culture, Action," AsiaWeek, April 4,
2001; Ben Barber, "Toward
Individualism - China's Culture at a Crossroads," World
and I, April 2001.
Wednesday,
October 21: China (continued)
Monday,
October 26: India
Reading:
Gucharan
Das, "The
India Model," Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug2006.
Recommended
(not required): Shashi Tharoor, "Why Foreign Policy Matters
- An Indian Perspective," eGov Monitor, September
12, 2009.
Video: Thomas L. Friedman Reporting: "The Other
Side of Outsourcing" (Discovery; 50 min.)
Wednesday,
October 28: India (continued)
Reading:
Roskin,
chapter 29
Video:
"The Story of India" (Michael Wood)
Monday,
November 2: Exam 2
Wednesday,
November 4: India (continued)
Recommended
(not required): "The
Story of God" (BBC)
Monday,
November 9: Mexico
Reading:
M. Delal Baer, "Mexico
at Impasse," Foreign Affairs, January/February
2004; Roskin, chapter 30; Shannon O'Neil, "The
Real War in Mexico," Foreign Affairs,July/August
2009.
Wednesday,
November 11: Nigeria
Recommended
(not required): Nigeria the Next 10 Years," Foreign
Affairs,, May/Jun2009; Jean Herskovits, "Nigeria's
Riggged Democracy, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007.
Recommended Videos (we won't see these in class): Wonders
of the African World (60 min; VCU); Nadine Gordimer (30 min;
PBS; VCU)
Video: "Rebranding
Nigeria" (BBC)
Monday,
November 16: The Middle East
Reading:
L.
Carl Brown, "Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New
Direction for America in the Middle East," Foreign Affairs,
September/October 2009.
Video:
"Searching for the Roots of 9/11" (Discovery; 50 min.)
or "Straddling the Fence" (Discovery; 50 min.) or
"Blood & Tears: The Arab-Israeli Conflict"
Wednesday,
November 18: The Middle East (continued)
Reading:
TBA
Monday,
November 23: Iran
Reading:
Ray
Takeyh, "Time
for Detente with Iran," Foreign Affairs; Mar/Apr2007.
Video: Koppel: Iran - The Most Dangerous Nation (Discovery;
1 hour 30 min.); or "IRAN (is not the problem)"
Monday,
November 30: Iran (continued)
Reading:
Roskin,
chapter 32, pp. 558-569
Wednesday,
December 2: Overview
Reading:
Moisés
Naím, "Think
Again: Globalization," Foreign Policy, March/April
2009.
Monday,
December 7 (4:00):
Final exam
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