POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
POS 101 Professor J. Crittenden
Fall 2005 Office:
Coor 6754
Wednesday
Coor L1-20 E-mail:
CRIT@ASU.EDU
Office
Hours: W/Th
and
by appointment
Course Manager:
Shannon
Wheatley
Office:
Coor 6779
Office
Hours: M/W 9-11 and by appt.
E-mail: Elizabeth.Wheatley@asu.edu
Phone:
(480) 326-3887
Teaching Assistant:
Crystal
Zoha
Office:
Coor 6767
E-mail: Crystal.Zoha@asu.edu
Tutors:
All tutors are undergraduates who have taken POS 101 with me and have
done brilliantly. They know the material
really well, but are even more remarkable in that they admit when they don’t
know something.
Head
Tutor: Kelly
Barnes
Carrie
Getsinger
Carmen
Ronan
Ericka
Renno
Jessie
Winter
Days and
times of tutoring to be announced. See
the “Announcements” online.
In this
course we shall study the major political movements and ideas that have
affected, if not shaped, the politics of the 20th century. By the end of the course we want you to be
able to explain the principles underlying the ideologies we shall study.
We also
want you to be able to understand the ideological background to the reports on
politics in today's media and to apply ideological principles in analyses of
those reports. Students should also
understand, and therefore be able to explain, how ideologies are not discrete
or disjointed movements, but instead show historical interconnections and
interrelationships among political ideas over time, ideas that inform and turn
into political practices. It is a
startling fact, for example, that the 20th century, more than any other century
in history, produced tyrants not only with the technological means to commit
mass murder, but also with the ideologies that rationalized and required
murder. Such ideologies did not pop up
out of thin air.
Keep in
mind, as the political philosopher Sir Isaiah
“It is
the duty of every man to argue with what he reads.”
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Ball &
Dagger (BD) Political Ideologies and the
Democratic Ideal William
Golding (LF) Lord of the Flies
Edward
Bellamy (LB) Looking Backward
George
Orwell (AF) Animal Farm
Crittenden
Lectures
(CL)
All books
are available at the ASU Bookstore on campus.
Lectures
are available online, as are study guides for each Unit.
COURSE FORMAT:
Exams. Bring Blue books
for all exams.
The topics in the course are divided into 10 units. Each unit will be the topic for one
week. The course will follow the usual
format with one exception. There will be
three one-hour exams and a comprehensive final exam. Each hour exam is worth 100 points. The final is worth 100 points.
If you are satisfied with your course grade
before the final exam, then you do not have to take the final. Thus the final exam is OPTIONAL.
To
be eligible to take the final, you must have taken all three one-hour
exams. If you missed one of them, you
cannot take the final. Thus
ALL STUDENTS MUST TAKE ALL THREE HOUR
EXAMS.
If
you do take the final-exam, and your score on the final is higher than your average going into the final—that is, your
average on the first three exams--then you receive as your final grade your
average on the final.
If your final-exam average is lower than your average going
into the final, then we treat the final average as just another hour exam. In short, in the latter circumstance, the
final is not worth more than any single hour exam, but the total number of
points in the course changes from 300 to 400.
NOTE: Because there is extra-credit work available (see
below), no numerical average will be rounded up. So if you have a 79.9 at the end of the
course, you will receive a grade of C+.
Hour exams, excluding the Final, begin at
The Final exam
begins at
Classes.
Since lectures are part of your
reading, what will go on in class on Wednesdays? Professor Crittenden will hold workshops on
the unit assigned that week. These
workshops are not lectures, nor are they necessarily simply question-and-answer
or review sessions, though that will be part of the workshops. The object is to try to move your
understanding of an ideology to a clearer and deeper level, to discuss the
material once you have argued with it.
The format of these workshops
will primarily be discussion. It is
mandatory that students wishing to attend class on Wednesday have done the
reading. I am not willing to slog
through the material that you were supposed to have read in preparation for
class. So, to avoid wasting my time and
at the risk of incurring my wrath, DO NOT COME TO CLASS IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE
THE READING.
Available online are all of the lectures as well as study
guides for each unit and the syllabus.
We shall also post grades, so check there for your exam scores, if you
do not pick up your exams during class.
CHECK THE MESSAGE BOARD FROM TIME TO TIME, BECAUSE WE
SHALL POST IMPORTANT NOTICES, CHANGES, AND MESSAGES THERE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR KEEPING ABREAST OF
ANY CHANGES IN THE COURSE.
Extra Credit.
SHORT
PAPERS: Students can earn as many as 25 extra-credit points by writing up to 5
papers, each worth a maximum of five
(5) points. A student can write only
once on any individual unit. Only one paper per week can be handed
in.
•Papers are
to be 500-words (or less; but no longer).
•The paper
must focus on a question related to
the ideology under study. The question
should show originality and might well be the sort of essay question you would
see on an exam or in Crittenden's
Wednesday workshops. You should
use your imagination and strive for thought-provoking, unusual, and creative
questions. You want to think of
questions that challenge your understanding of the ideology, questions that
require you to take a stand and use the ideology's tenets or principles to
arrive at an answer. We are looking for
questions that pose problems, make comparisons, and relate to
issues/persons/situations that have not been laid out or brought out in the
course texts or lecture notes. They can
even relate to you personally. After
all, that is what an essay is: the creation of a problem or question, and the
pursuit of a solution or answer, where none existed before.
The purpose
of these questions, in addition to providing extra-credit points, is to test
your creative yet critical thinking--What kinds of questions can you generate?
--and your understanding--that is, your ability to apply what you are learning
to novel situations or circumstances.
For example, rather than asking, "What are the central tenets or
principles of conservatism?" you might ask, "Is George W. Bush really
a Burkean conservative?" Or “Can a
Burkean conservative be compassionate?”
Of course, this demands that you have some accurate knowledge of George
Bush’s politics, as well as knowledge of Burkean conservatism, which, of
course, you will soon have. Or you might
ask, what position (and, of course, why) would Locke take on flag-burning?
So, in your
essay you should:
1) raise an interesting question;
2) explain why it is a good (and/or
interesting) question;
3) answer/respond to the question that you raise by using
the tenets or principles of the ideology to explain or justify your position.
Be sure to include all three. Also, your essay should contain the following
elements:
a) a clear
question
b) reasons or evidence--facts,
historical events, authoritative views, ideological principles/tenets/values,
etc.--that answer the question and/or support your position
c) clear
and logical organization of the information
d) complete
sentences
e) standard
usage of grammar, punctuation, and spelling
f) proper
citation or documentation of all quotations and references.
•Papers
should be typed in 10 or 12 pitch; single-spaced or double-spaced is up to
you. Neatly hand-written papers will be accepted. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THESE PAPERS
EXCEED 500 WORDS.
•TO REPEAT:
A student may do as many as 5 papers, but only one paper per week.
•The
maximum points per paper are 5; minimum points are zero. (Obviously, therefore, you can earn from 5 to
0 points per paper.) These points will
be added to your final point total.
Papers are completely optional; there is no penalty for
writing or not writing papers. WRITING A
PAPER CANNOT HURT YOUR GRADE.
Extra-Credit: Long Paper.
Additionally, you can
write an extra-credit paper that can be substituted for the points you have
earned on one of the hourly exams (but not the comprehensive final). Thus, if you bombed one of the exams, you
could substitute your paper grade, assuming it’s higher, for that exam
score. But, remember, if your final exam
average (units 9&10 exam plus the comprehensive final) is higher than your
hourly (3) exam average, then the final exam average becomes your course grade.
The
extra-credit long paper assignment is the following:
Interview anyone you
know over 30 about her/his political ideology.
Your paper
is to be a presentation and assessment of that
ideology. You should answer such
questions as: Are the political views coherent and consistent? Are there gaps or inconsistencies and
contradictions? Are ideologies mixed
together in a cogent or incomprehensible way?
You are
after how this person makes sense of the world we live in together. How, on this person's view, should/do people
live together?
You can
approach the interview any way you wish.
You might try to elicit ideological positions by asking your subject
about various political issues, such as gun control, abortion, welfare,
healthcare, affirmative action, education, etc.
Or you might ask point-blank about her/his ideology: What does s/he
understand by that term? What is her/his
ideology? What about other ideologies;
what does he or she think about them?
The first
part of the paper should discuss the person being interviewed, who the person
is and what that person said.
The second
part of the paper must be an assessment or analysis of that person's
ideology, whether it even is an ideology.
How does the person's ideological perspective compare with what you have
learned in the course about the nature of that ideology or ideologies? In other words, compare what your interview
subject says about, say, conservatism with what you have learned about
conservative ideology. Be specific here. Your paper should reflect that you have
taken, and learned from, a course in political ideologies. In short,
it should not be a paper that you could have written before this course. Therefore you must discuss the essential
components or principles in the ideologies that serve as the basis of your
assessment.
The
paper cannot be in dialogue form. You
can write in the first person; you can write an essay; you can even write a
short story. But dialogue is out. We are looking for a paper in the
neighborhood of five (5) pages or so, double-spaced in 10 or 12 point type. Handwritten papers are unacceptable,
no matter how neat.
The class
will be divided into 13 groups with 10 students in each group. Each week a different student will take
responsibility for leading his or her group in a 30-minute question-and-answer
session (
To prepare
yourself for this responsibility you will write out answers to the study guide
questions for your unit. A copy of these
answers will be handed in—not e-mailed—to Dr. Crittenden (me) by the end of the
class that covers your unit.
In
addition, each unit leader will hand in to me at the beginning of the following
class that group’s practice tests, so that I can peruse them to make certain
that unit leaders are reading and commenting on them.
Each of these responsibilities carries extra-credit
points. Some of them are required, so
that if you do not fulfill these responsibilities, you LOSE points off your
course total:
Attending class and leading your group: 5 points
Answers to Study Guide for your Unit: Up to 10 points or minus points
SCHEDULE OF TOPICS
AUG. 24: Course
introduction and discussion of the syllabus
AUG. 31: Unit 1: Introduction and Proto-liberalism
Reading:
BD: pp. 1-13; 43-52 (up to Locke)
CL: Unit
1: Introduction and Hobbes
SEP. 7: Unit 2: Classical Liberalism
CL:
Classical Liberalism: John Locke
SEP. 14: Unit 3: Capitalism
CL:
Capitalism
SEP. 21: Unit 4: Conservatism
CL:
Conservatism
LF:
COMPLETE
SEP. 28: FIRST
HOUR EXAM
OCT. 5: Unit 5: Socialism
CL:
Socialism
LB:
ENTIRE
OCT. 12: Unit 6: Modern Liberalism
CL:
Modern Liberalism
OCT. 19: Unit 7: Marxism
CL: Marxism
OCT. 26: SECOND
HOUR EXAM
NOV. 2: Unit 8: Communism
(
(Mao) pp. 155-59
CL:
Communism
NOV. 9: Unit 9: Fascism
CL:
Fascism
AF:
COMPLETE
NOV. 16: Unit 10: Nationalism & Ideologies in
the Present
Reading:
BD:pp.14-15;72-75;76-79;101-10;164-68;
193-97; 252-59
CL:
Nationalism and Ids. in Present
NOV. 23: THIRD
HOUR EXAM
NOV. 30: REVIEW FOR THE OPTIONAL FINAL EXAM
DEC. 14: FINAL
EXAM: