Anth. 565 – Race, Faith, Nation, Class: Solidarities and Social Movements
Dr. Jane Adams
1:00-4:00 p.m. Mondays
Race, religion, nationality, and class have all formed bases of collective action, charging peoples’ imaginations. Race calls on assumptions of biologically-based commonalities, religion on shared relationship to the divine, nationality to a common rootedness in territory, and class to a common economic status. These contending theories of governance emerged out of the long history of imperial rule in
Institutionalized religion is frequently – although not always – one foundation of governance, paired with dynastic and military institutions. Erupting in the 16th century various prophetic Protestant leaders and popular movements challenged existing European powers and their theocratic institutions. Many of these new Protestant movements sought to separate government from faith and religious institutions, while others established (or sought to establish) their form of Christianity as the state religion. Virtually all mass social movements have a religious dimension; in the contemporary period, religion has become a powerful source of political solidarities.
Nationalism developed during the Enlightenment. It viewed governmental legitimacy as derived from popular consent. It was rooted in a theory of the sovereign nation-state based on solidarities defined by territory. Two dominant variants emerged: One, developed in
Theories that class formed the basis for establishing governing institutions emerged during the Industrial Revolution. These theories categorized people according to their economic class (e.g., bourgeoisie and proletariat), mobilizing people politically as members of specific classes.
Gender -- specifically, appropriate behaviors identified according to peoples’ sex and/or sexuality -- is a dimension of virtually all social movements, and has occasionally been the basis for sex-specific social movements (e.g., feminism).
In the 20th century, class and nation formed the dominant axes of political action and social identity. In several combinations and variations, these two theories of society justified movements that created empires and dismembered them, built powerful nation states, justified two global wars, underwrote actual and attempted genocide, and motivated a large number social movements and smaller wars.
As we look into the 21st century these forms of political cohesion are being challenged by solidarities based on religious identities that transcend national and class boundaries, as well as “globe-girdling” movements based on re-imagined relationships between humans and nature, men and women, and between and among ethnic groups. These new social movements recall the period when the modern world was first being birthed, when religious enthusiasms burned in western Europe and the
Numerous theories have been advanced to account for eruptions of social movements and other forms of social conflict. We will risk being blinded by (social) science’s cultural norms, in rejecting idealist or teleological explanations. We will, that is, view social movements as the result of forces existing in the material world.
Virtually all theories that attempt to account for the development of social movements look first at changes within the larger social economy. Different theories give different weight to different factors: shifts in economic well-being (“relative deprivation”), encounter with or imposition of new cultural norms (“modes of redemption,” “crisis of meaning,” “legitimation crisis”, “clash of civilizations”), changing structural relationships (“space-time edges”, “articulations” of various aspects of society – “modes of production”, “local vs. state governance”, “local vs. neoliberal – or other – regimes”). In seeking to explain why specific conflicts erupted, analysts have sought explanation in particular historic “conjunctures” and in the relative balance among or dynamics involving different groups or social categories (e.g., in ethnic conflicts, in balances of ethnically distinct groupings; in labor or peasant movements, in specific labor relations; in state “capacity” vs. local or popular “capacities” that allow or prevent governing institutions to dominate or be hegemonic). Some analysts focus more on the creation of subjectivities through which they become agents (or fail to form as agents) (e.g., E. P. Thompson); some create relatively unproblematized “actors” who “choose” according to their “interests” (rational choice theorists, some aspects of resource mobilization analysts); others focus more on structural relationships or on particular putatively causal factors such as demographic changes, market flows, or technological changes.
This course will study relevant theories of social solidarity and of social movements. It will also address empirical case studies of conflicts that have erupted or are erupting in the contemporary period.
This course has four major aims:
· Develop familiarity with different theoretical approaches used by social scientists to understand social and millenarian movements.
· Become acquainted with selected examples of such movements, with the aim of more adequately understanding the social conflagrations occurring in the contemporary world.
· Undertake a piece of original research.
· Develop professional skills through presenting this research in a variety of professional formats and discussing and critiquing co-participants’ work.
We particularly seek to understand the contexts within which people feel impelled to create new social identities and solidarities. We further seek to understand the processes through which they create such identities and solidarities.
Note further that social scientific canons of coherence explicitly eschew moral, that is, prescriptive, explanations or aims, although many (all?) scholars are to some degree motivated by such aims, and all social research potentially shapes normative orders. Nor does social science include aesthetics as a necessary dimension of creating a satisfying explanation, although the notion of “satisfying” entails aesthetic judgments. Therefore, while our readings remain firmly inside the canons of social science, we will probe its limits and seek more inclusive, less reductive forms of explanation and/or representation.
This course is structured as a working seminar. Participants will be responsible for readings assigned on a weekly basis. Each participant will undertake a substantial piece of original research, write a 20-30 page paper based on that research, critique other participants’ work, and present a brief version of this research in a public symposium. The precise content of the course will, therefore, be determined by the participants, within the framework established here. We will generally discuss readings the first 90 minutes, and discuss work in progress the second 90 minutes.
Assignments:
1. Stay abreast of readings and participate in discussions. The first half of the course is structured around assigned readings. Some everyone in the class will read; others will be assigned to individuals who will write a one-page summary and be responsible for leading the general discussion. This means that everyone must be familiar with all the readings and be able to place their article in the context of the general issues being discussed.
2. Turn in abstract of research paper, Week 3.
3. Prepare semi-annotated bibliography, due in class Week 5. The bibliography should be as comprehensive as possible, and key references should be annotated. With a few inevitable additions, this should be your working bibliography for your paper. It should include both theoretical and topical citations.
4. First draft of paper due after spring break, Week 10. Distribute to all members of class. One person will be assigned responsibility for writing and presenting formal comments on it.
5. Short (15-20 minute version, 8 to 10 manuscript pages) of paper to be presented at panel presentation during last week of classes.
6. Polished manuscript submitted to the
Make copies of all writing assignments for
Readings
The list of readings below is provisional, subject to change based on interests of participants in the seminar. Specific topics may be extended or truncated if interest warrants.
BUY: Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, edited by Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman.
Kenhelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities. Basil Blackwell [OP available used]
[hold off on this one] Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War.
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