Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session
Course Overview
This course will serve as both an introduction to contemporary political philosophy and a way to explore issues of pluralism and multiculturalism. Racial and ethnic groups, national minorities, aboriginals, women, sexual minorities, and other groups have organized to highlight injustice and demand recognition and accommodation on the basis of their differences. In practice, democratic states have granted a variety of group-differentiated rights, such as exemptions from generally applicable laws, special representation rights, language rights, or limited self-government rights, to different types of groups. This course will examine how different theories of citizenship address the challenges raised by different forms of pluralism. We will focus in particular on the following questions:
- Does justice require granting group-differentiated rights?
- Do group-differentiated rights conflict with liberal and democratic commitments to equality and justice for all citizens?
- What, if anything, can hold a multi-religious, multicultural society together? Why should the citizens of such a society want to hold together?
Books Used in the Course
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Verso, 1991.
Barry, Brian. Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism. Harvard, 2001.
Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford, 1995.
Kymlicka, Will, ed. The Rights of Minority Cultures. Oxford, 1995.
Okin, Susan. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, 1999.
Parekh, Bhiku. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Harvard, 2002.
Taylor, Charles. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, 1994.
Course Requirements and Grading
- Discussion (20% of course grade): Students are expected to read all of the week's assigned readings and participate in discussions every week.
- First Paper, 8-10 pages (40% of course grade): Topics will be given in class, and papers will be due five days after lecture 8.
- Second Paper, 8-10 pages (40% of course grade): Topics will be given in class, and papers will be due two days after lecture 14.
Instead of writing two papers, students have the option of writing one long paper on a topic of their own choosing. This paper will count for 80% of the course grade. Those choosing this option must submit a one-page proposal for a paper latest, five days after lecture 8. This paper will be due two days after lecture 14.