Professor Julia Paley Social Work Office: 3823 School of Social Work Building Social Work Phone: (734) 615-3367 Anthropology Office: 230D West Hall Anthropology Phone: (734) 615-0413 e-mail: jpaley@umich.edu office hours: TBA

and by appointment When making an appointment, please confirm the location of our meeting class meetings: Thursdays 12pm-3pm Meeting location:

DEMOCRACY: ETHNOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL THEORY SW870.001/ANTHRCUL 658.001

Winter 2007 University of Michigan

As countries throughout the world have undergone transitions to democracy, scholars have often focused their attention on regime shifts, political parties, and formal institutions to explain political change. Yet experience in regions as diverse as Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and countries of the former USSR, tell us that actually existing democracy is more complex than the creation of government institutions and more ambiguous than recent celebrations might suggest. As peoples in many parts of the world live at the intersection of neoliberal economics, development discourses, resurgent nationalisms, and technocratic states, the time is ripe to explore perspectives on democracy that derive from anthropological insights and ethnographic research. Such approaches connect local, national, and international processes; reveal the role of symbols in creating public meanings; critically examine public discourses; and view political processes with attention to the forms of power they enact. This seminar offers new ways of viewing democracy by exploring the intersection of theoretical currents and ethnographic research. Students will read a series of rich ethnographic accounts on themes including participation, international aid organizations, globalization, social movements, and electoral processes. The ethnographies will also generate discussion about engaged research and the work of indigenous intellectuals. We will relate these accounts to theoretical currents including governmentality, hegemony, deliberative democracy, public sphere, civil society, and transnationalism. Readings will cover many parts of the world, and are intended to interest students working in both the United States and internationally. COURSE REQUIREMENTS

(1) Class participation. This is a seminar that relies on your active participation. Please make at least one (and hopefully quite a few) thoughtful comment(s) that are grounded in the readings and contribute to analysis at each session.

(2) On-line commentary. Please post responses to the readings by Wednesday

evening and come to class having read other students comments. Your contribution should include reflections on the readings and questions for class discussion.

(3) Readings. Please do all required reading listed below in time for class

participation and on-line comments. (4) Facilitating discussion. Each week, one student will be responsible for giving a

short analytic overview of the reading, providing necessary background information, and raising questions for discussion (total time: 15 minutes). The following week, the student will post on line a written summary including: his or her comments, a record of the class discussion, ongoing questions for deliberation, and a supplementary bibliography.

(5) Written work. A written assignment will be due at the end of the semester. You

have two options: (1) write a paper in which you use course readings to analyze your own empirical work. Keep in mind that the assignment is primarily about synthesizing and using theory, not collecting primary data, so this project will only work if you already have original research materials related to democracy. (2) If you do not have your own primary data, you can do a take-home exam. The exam will consist of a set of shorter identification/definition questions, plus a number of longer essay questions that ask you to synthesize the readings from the class.

In both assignments, please write in a professional way -- you are honing your skills in using theory and aiming to create a compelling scholarly account. Please keep a photocopy of all written work you submit, and please back up your computer files.

READINGS Obtaining Texts Required books are available for purchase at Shaman Drum bookstore, 734-662-7407. Copies will be on reserve at the School of Social Work library. Articles will be available on CTools. Required Books

- Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life

- Steven Gregory, Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community

- Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

- Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality - Julia Paley, Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-

Dictatorship Chile

READING SCHEDULE 1 January 4 Introduction

2 January 11 Ethnography and Social Theory of Democracy

Required Readings Overview Julia Paley, Toward an Anthropology of Democracy Recommended readings: - Lawrence Whitehead The Vexed Issue of the Meaning of Democracy, Journal of Political Ideologies (Vol. 2, No. 2) 1997. - David Held, Models of Democracy

3 January 18 Public Sphere and Deliberative Democracy

Public Sphere - Jrgen Habermas, The Public Sphere

- Nancy Fraser, Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy

- Michael C. Dawson, A Black Counterpublic?: Economic Earthquakes, Racial Agenda(s), and Black Politics.

Deliberative Democracy:

- Jrgen Habermas, Deliberative Democracy - Jane Mansbridge, Using Power/Fighting Power: The Polity - Iris Marion Young, Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy - Julia Paley, Accountable Democracy: Citizens Impact on Public Decision Making in Postdictatorship Chile

Recommended:

- Geoff Eley, Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century

4 January 25 Hegemony Readings:

- Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life

- Peter Jackson, Maps of Meaning: An Introduction to Cultural Geography (New York: Routledge, 1992). Culture and Ideology, pages 47-59.

- Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks (selections) Recommended: - Raymond Williams, Ideology, Hegemony, and

Structures of Feeling from Marxism and Literature 5 February 1 Gender, Race, Ethnicity

Is Multiculturalism a Solution?

Readings: - Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora - Elizabeth Povinelli, The State of Shame: Australian

Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship

- Charles Hale, Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala

Recommended: - Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases (selections)

6 February 8 Politics and Identity

Steven Gregory, Black Corona

7 February 15 Governmentality and Social Movements Required Readings:

- Nikolas Rose, Governing advanced liberal democracies in Foucault and Political Reason, pp. 37-64. - Colin Gordon, Governmental Rationality: An Introduction in The Foucault Effect. - Susan Brin Hyatt, From Citizen to Volunteer: Neoliberal Governance and the Erasure of Poverty - Arjun Appadurai, Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics Recommended Readings:

- Michel Foucault, Governmentality - Adrienne S. Chambon, Allan Irving, and Laura Epstein (eds), Reading Foucault for Social Work - Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects - Graham Burchell, Liberal Government and

Techniques of The Self OR Peculiar Interests: Civil Society and Governing The System of Natural Liberty

8 February 22 Participation and Community Organizations

Julia Paley, Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile

March 1 no class meeting vacation week 9 March 8 Development Agencies, Democracy Promotion, and

Elections Required Readings:

- Harry G. West and Scott Kloeck-Jenson, Betwixt and Between: Traditional Authority and Democratic Decentralization in Post-War Mozambique - Thomas Carothers, The End of the Transition Paradigm - Steven Sampson, The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania - Ruth Mandel, Seeding Civil Society - Andrew Apter, IBB = 419: Nigerian Democracy and

the Politics of Illusion - Kimberley Coles, Election Day: The Construction of

Democracy through Tecnique Recommended Readings: - Akhil Gupta, Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India - William Miles, Elections in Nigeria: A Grassroots Perspective - William Fisher, "Doing Good? The Politics and Anti-Politics of NGO Practices." Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 26, 1997

10 March 15 Colonialism and Citizenship

- Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

11 March 22 The State and Transnationalism Readings: - Michael Taussig, The Nervous System (selections) - Begoa Aretxaga, A Fictional Reality: Paramilitary

Death Squads and the Construction of State Terror in Spain

- James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, Spatializing States: Toward An Ethnography Of Neoliberal Governmentality

- Michel-Rolph Trouillot, The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization - Katherine Verdery, Transnationalism, Nationalism,

Citizenship, and Property: Eastern Europe Since 1989 - Arjun Appadurai, Disjuncture and Difference in the

Global Cultural Economy 12 March 29 Transnationalism

Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

13 April 5 Toward an Anthropology of Democracy revisited

Readings of manuscript forthcoming from School of American Research Press

14 April 12 Conclusions: Ethnographic Perspectives on Democracy