3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This undergraduate seminar in political theory asks students to examine the intersections between politics, morality, identity and economics from a pluralistic perspective. Pluralists generally analyze politics in terms of struggles for power between groups motivated by a range of differences including class interests, national, racial, gender, ethnic, or sexual identities, and religious beliefs. While many tend to think of the economy as a matter for technical management based on calculations of rational interests and impersonal market forces, recent scholarship in a number of fields seeks to politicize and pluralize economic questions, bringing up issues of gender, race and religion in the functioning of markets, for instance through a focus on the power dynamics of credit and debt. In this course we will explore the theoretical roots of pluralism, draw on this foundation to analyze power relationships of identity and difference at work in the political economy of capitalism both past and present, and consider the implications of this analysis for contemporary understandings of democracy and democratic activism. This course will be taught through extensive classroom discussion, student-led presentations of assigned readings, short papers, and will include at least one guest lecture by an invited speaker. Readings will include works by William James, Robert Dahl, Max Weber, Michel Foucault, William Connolly, Marieke De Goede, Saidiya Hartman, Eddie Glaude, Jr. and Miranda Joseph.