COURSES AT OBERLIN
CHRIS HOWELL
"If you are a political person and do not study history, your politics will provoke chaos, anarchy and repression. If you are a political person and study history, your politics will provoke disillusion, apathy and cynicism. So the question is: whether to ignore history and be jailed or learn its lessons and be impotent. What a choice!"
Jules Feiffer"It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren't, then I'd be a teacher"
Linda Evangelista [Supermodel]
What follows is a list of courses, with brief descriptions, that I teach at Oberlin College. They are not all taught every year. Clicking on the title will take you to the current or most recent syllabus with a longer course description, requirements, class schedule and readings. Most of the information for courses I am currently teaching can be found on Blackboard. There you can find another copy of the syllabus, announcements and alerts for changes in the course, assignments, and links to some useful web sites. Readings for my classes are either on ERes (electronic reserve), where you will need a password to access material that has been scanned into portable document format (PDF), or on Blackboard. I am currently trying to migrate all my course readings to Blackboard. For both the documents in Blackboard and the readings on ERes, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. You can get it free from Adobe. Lastly, clicking here will take you to an annotated list of links that are often useful supplements to my courses.
Politics 114. Political Change in Western Europe
This course provides an introduction to the politics of Western Europe with particular emphasis upon changes in the contours of party politics. It is both a survey of major political institutions (parliaments, electoral systems, and so on) and political developments, and an examination of the theme of change in European party systems. In most West European countries, the stability of party systems began to break down in the 1960s, and in some cases (most notably Italy) party systems have been transformed since the end of the 1970s. This shift has involved several elements: a decline in democratic participation; a decline in the traditional parties of the Left and Right; and the rise of new kinds of parties on both the Left and the Right. These parties are organized around new social groups and new sets of issues, like immigration and ecological politics. The transformation of party politics has also involved the emergence, or rediscovery, of new forms and practices of politics, including extra-parliamentary protest and the formation of new social movements.
The dual purpose of this course – both survey and exploration of the transformation of party systems – means that the syllabus proceeds country by country, first examining the main political institutions in Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and then using those countries to illustrate significant developments in their respective party systems: the British case focuses upon neoliberalism and "Third Way" politics; the French case focuses upon Mediterranean socialism and the rise of the far-right; the Italian case focuses upon Eurocommunism and regional separatist parties; and the German case focuses upon new social movements in the form of the Green Party. There is also a brief discussion of social democracy in Sweden, and an examination of extra-parliamentary movements, against nuclear weapons and highway building, in Britain.
The last part of the course shifts gears to look at the process of European integration which has gathered pace in the last fifteen years, leading to a single European market, free movement of goods and people within the European Union, and, from January 2002, a single currency. We will examine why European integration has taken the form that it has, and what its implications are for European politics and party systems.
Limit: 50. No prerequisite. Three credit hours. Next taught: 2007-2008.
Politics 111. Colloquium: What's Left? Left Governments In Power in Europe And North America
During the long postwar boom, roughly from 1945 to 1975, parties of the Left were frequently in power in Western Europe and North America. These "social democratic," or "labor" parties could even be considered the natural parties of government in many countries, and in a very real sense, they constructed the postwar settlement in democratic capitalist societies. They tended to have broadly similar constituencies and programs. Their members and voters came primarily from the working class, and the parties often had ties to organized labor. Broadly speaking, this type of Left was ambivalent about the benefits of capitalist markets and sought to intervene to protect disadvantaged groups. By the early 1980s, however, the social democratic or labor Left was in crisis. In country after country it had been ousted from power by newly-resurgent Right-wing governments. More importantly, key elements of its ideology no longer seemed viable (economically or electorally) in a more globalized world economy. And its core constituency of the manual working class was both shrinking and defecting to parties of the Right. Under these circumstances, democratic parties of the Left, have everywhere engaged in a reconsideration of their ideology and program. Most of these parties have undergone something of a transformation, adopting more market-oriented policies, emerging as "responsible" economic managers, offering "modernization," and appealing to more middle class groups.
By the end of the 1990s, parties of the Left were back in power across most of North America and Western Europe. This course examines these newly modernized Left parties, which self-consciously describe themselves as New Democrats, New Labour, Die Neue Mitte, and the Third Way. The focus of the course is the practice of the contemporary Left in power, with particular attention paid to the French Socialist governments of the past two decades, the two terms of the Clinton Presidency in the United States, and the first term of the Blair government in Britain. We will investigate how these parties evolved in the directions that they did, how they have governed, and how they have performed. Throughout, the course will examine and evaluate what it means to be a Left government at this point in history – after the fall of communism and during a period of intense international economic integration – and how this contemporary Left compares to its predecessors.
Limit: 15. No prerequisite. Three credit hours. Next taught: unknown.
Politics 213. The Political Economy of Gender in Advanced Capitalism
Political economy is a discipline whose object of enquiry is the relationship between the state, politics and power, on the one hand, and economic relations and the market, on the other. It is concerned with the ways in which politics affects the structure and performance of the economy, and the economy affects the structures, institutions and practices of politics. At its broadest, then, political economy examines the manner in which power is implicated in economic relationships. As such, any political economy needs to pay attention to gender. Gender is one of the central sources of power and politics in capitalist societies, and economic resources and outcomes systematically vary on the basis of gender. Across the advanced capitalist world, women in the labor force are paid less than men, and occupations tend to be heavily gender segregated. Notions of masculinity and femininity are constitutive of who fills particular jobs, and how those jobs are valued in market societies. Just as political economy as a discipline seeks to break down the boundary between the political and the economic, and to identify how each influences the other, so a gendered political economy examines the permeable boundary between the public sphere of the state and the private sphere of gender relations, the public economy and the household economy, and the manner in which they influence each other.
This course looks selectively at a set of important topics in the political economy of gender. It begins with an examination of the main theoretical approaches to integrating gender into political economy, including neo-classical economics, Marxism, and a range of feminist accounts. We ask how each of these theoretical approaches explain the gender differences that we see in the political economy, and also whether we can identify a distinctive queer political economy. This course is also comparative. It examines a range of concrete forms of political economy among advanced capitalist societies. Just as it is true that some economic outcomes vary systematically on the basis of gender, it is also true that there are substantial differences in the role of women in contemporary capitalist societies, and in the distribution of economic rewards. This suggests that a political economy of gender needs to move beyond general theory to examine the role of political and social movements, state policies and political-economic institutions which explain gender differences across countries. The final part of the course looks at the successes and failures of policies and practices which attempt to address gender difference in the political economy, including state policies such as affirmative action and pay equity, and collective action on the part of labor unions. Discussion of the topics covered in this course is further complicated by the fact that contemporary capitalism is in a period of rapid change that is transforming the structure of national economies in ways which contribute to a shift in the power and influence of different social groups. Globalization, which is something of a catch-all phrase for the changes taking place, is itself gendered.
Limit: 30. No prerequisite. Three credit hours. Next taught: Spring 2006.
Politics 216. The Political Economy of Advanced Capitalism
Political economy is, broadly speaking, the study of the relationship between the state and the market. It is concerned with the ways in which politics affects the structure and performance of the economy, and the economy affects the structures, institutions and practices of politics. Defined in such a way, a course in the political economy of advanced capitalism is ambitious because practically every aspect of the politics of the industrialized world is deeply influenced by the state of the economy. That is why the primary concern of governments, after national security, is the "management" of their economies, and national security itself is heavily constrained by the economy. Political economy, in short, concerns the capacity of states to carry out their political programs, and hence the degree to which political choice matters in capitalist democracies.
This course will look selectively at a set of important topics in political economy. A central argument of the course is that there is no one "ideal" model of how a market economy should operate. Actually existing political economies diverge in countless ways from the models found in economic textbooks, and there is no clear relationship between market conformity and economic success. Thus, the study of political economy must be comparative; that is to say, it must examine the range of concrete forms of political economy among capitalist societies. As a result, almost half of the course will be taken up with the study of three types of contemporary political economy, each illustrated by two countries. These three types are laissez faire political economies (Britain and the United States), organized or coordinated political economies (Sweden and Germany), and state-led political economies (France and Japan – though Japan is a hybrid of this and the previous type).
The remainder of the course will focus upon a number of important themes such as the welfare state, urban political economy, and the globalization of the world economy. In this part of the course there will be heavy emphasis upon recent and evolving trends in political economy in order to give some sense of the political-economic landscape facing advanced capitalist societies early in the 21st century.
Limit: 30. No prerequisite. Three credit hours. Next taught: 2007-2008.
Politics 219. Work, Workers and Trade Unions in Advanced Capitalist Societies
Within advanced capitalist societies, the world of work has undergone a quite remarkable transformation in the course of the past two decades. Some elements of work itself have changed as the workplace has seen the erosion of standard, assembly line mass production by full-time "blue-collar" workers, and its replacement with "white-collar" and service sector jobs, and "flexible" production, performed by an increasingly insecure part-time and temporary workforce. Workers today are much less likely to be male and white, as women, minorities and immigrants enter the paid workforce in much larger numbers. And trade unions, which have been the primary class organizations representing and defending workers in the 20th century, have gone into eclipse everywhere. As union membership declines, employers have developed new forms of individual and collective representation for workers, and union themselves have sought new strategies for survival.
This course explores the transformation of work, workers, and trade unions in advanced capitalist societies since the Second World War. Given the scope of the subject-matter, this course is something of a sampler, offering an introduction to a large range of topics, with some left out, and many more only briefly covered. The first half of the semester is broadly theoretical. We begin with a discussion of the nature of work, power relations in the workplace, and the potential for collective action. We then go on to examine the main changes in the economic environment -- globalization, flexibility, post-Fordism -- which now face workers, and the relationship of race and gender to work. Most of the second half of the semester involves an examination of comparative industrial relations. We look at Britain, France, Sweden, Germany, Japan and the United States to see the differences in the way in which workers are organized, the relative success workers and unions have achieved, the different role played by the state, and to understand the reasons why particular national models of industrial relations develop. Each country is chosen because it illustrates some distinctive feature, such as Conservative anti-unionism in Britain and co-determination in Germany. The final part of the semester is devoted to looking forward, and asking how unions are responding to the challenges facing them, and whether we have come to the end of labor's century.
Limit: 30. No prerequisite. Three credit hours. Next taught: 2007-08.
Politics 317. Seminar: The Transformation of the Welfare State
The contemporary welfare state is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Between the last quarter of the 19th century and the middle of the 1970s already industrialized and industrializing societies throughout Western Europe and North America created a panoply of social programs which became known as welfare states. The generosity, scope and coverage of these programs varied from one country to another, but by the 1960s, across the advanced capitalist world, the state had taken responsibility for a wide range of activities that had previously been provided either by the market or by unpaid labor within the family (usually performed by women). These elements of the welfare state tended to include unemployment payments, family benefits, healthcare, pensions, childcare, and so on.
Beginning in the 1970s, welfare states everywhere found themselves threatened by ideological criticism from both the Right and the Left, and a raft of economic and social challenges, including the aging of the population, globalization, feminization of the labor force, and deindustrialization. The question of the compatibility of welfare states and market capitalism was again raised for the first time since the 1930s. Initially, the response of governments tended to be to curtail the generosity of welfare programs and generally ratchet down the scope and scale of social spending. But in the last decade or so, a more fundamental transformation has begun to become apparent. Welfare spending has shrunk in some areas, while expanding in others, tax-credits have replaced state programs, and the balance of state, market and family provision of welfare has changed in important ways. This course investigates this process of transformation. It looks at the scholarly debates which seek to explain the causes and trajectory of change, and evaluates arguments about the extent of divergence of welfare states across advanced capitalist societies. The impact of gender and race upon the fate of the welfare state is one topic of discussion, and particular attention will be paid to changes to welfare and healthcare programs.
Engaging in a significant research project is a major aim of this research seminar. Part of the semester will be taken up with discussion of student research papers, as students present their papers, and other students and the instructor offer comments and constructive criticism.
Limit: 15. Prerequisite: consent of the instructors. Three credit hours. Next taught: Spring 2006.
Politics 315. Seminar: The Future of Organized Labor
This course asks a straightforward question: what is the future of organized labor? Or, perhaps more apocalyptically: does organized labor have a future? Its concern is with organized labor rather than simply workers because historically it is when workers have been able to act collectively that they have made economic, social and political gains. The course examines the ways in which the form, strategy and practice of workers' organizations, primarily trade unions, are evolving in response to a variety of economic, social, and political challenges. Its focus is the labor movement in the United States, though there will be some discussion of developments within Western European trade unions.
Labor today is faced with a range of serious challenges: the changing nature of work, the changing composition of the workforce, greater workplace flexibility, international economic integration, political hostility, and so on. All of these pose a threat to the organizational structures, strategies, and tactics employed by labor in the past. The result has been a decline in the strength and influence of organized labor, especially profound in the United States, but not limited to that region, that has raised questions about the continued survival of collective forms of labor organization and industrial action. This course grapples with the question of whether there are new structures, strategies, and tactics which will enable labor to mount an effective defense of its interests. Topics include collective action and internal union democracy, union responses to globalization and "flexible" production, new organizing strategies, and the effectiveness of strike action.
Engaging in a significant research project is a major aim of this research seminar. Part of the semester will be taken up with discussion of student research papers, as students present their papers, and other students and the instructor offer comments and constructive criticism.
Limit: 15. Prerequisite: consent of the instructor. Three credit hours. Next taught: 2007-2008.
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