Culture and Identity in World Politics: Professor Marc Lynch

PSCI 325 Culture and Identity in World Politics

Professor Marc Lynch

Office: Stetson G-10, phone x-2010. Office Hours: By appointment.
E-mail: mlynch@williams.edu. This is always the best way to contact me.

September 11 brought a new popular appreciation of the importance of culture, identity, religion, and ideas in world politics. Where international relations theory had for decades been dominated by Realist theories (which highlighted material power) and Liberal theories (which emphasized institutions, domestic political systems, and rational exchange), the new challenge posed by al-Qaeda pointed instead to the importance of religious faith, non-state actors, and anti-American sentiments. This put new demands on the Constructivist trend in IR theory, which had previously focused more on "good" (i.e. liberal or cosmopolitan) identity movements or campaigns (human rights, anti-globalization). This course takes up the challenge posed by the post-9/11 turn to cultural, ideational, and religious concerns in world politics. Rather than simply make the case that identity matters, the course attempts to take a deeper look at the global politics of identity: how do identity, culture, or religion matter? When do they matter? Compared to what? The course explores a wide range of methodological approaches to these questions: normative, quantitative, rational choice, and constructivist.

The course uses a range of issues to get the role of identity, including the debate over the clash of civilizations, the motivations of suicide bombers, ethnic conflict (with a focus on the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia), political Islam, American national identity, and Iraq. It uses the cases to break apart the assumptions, logic, and evidence — whether stated or unstated — of arguments about these identity conflicts. What does it mean for politics to be defined by "identity" rather than "strategy" or "interests"? How important is identity for explaining outcomes at all? How would we know, and what is at stake in defining politics in those terms? The importance of thinking rigorously and creatively about the causal logic embedded in ordinary discourse goes beyond the concerns of social science: determining whether al-Qaeda, say, is pursuing a rational strategy or manifesting civilizational hatreds matters deeply for crafting effective counter-terrorism strategies; understanding whether the contestants in an escalating civil war are driven by ancient ethnic rivalries, mutual fear, ambitious politicians, or an interest in controlling oil wealth matters enormously for determining how to respond.

Assignments

Paper #1: Select a press account of an 'identity' or 'culture'-driven conflict (in consultation with the professor) and subject it to rigorous methodological scrutiny. First, identify the precise causal claims being made: how exactly does identity or culture allegedly produce the outcome? Second, identify potential competing explanations: economic explanations or power-seeking explanations, for instance. Finally, show what kinds of evidence could, in principle, demonstrate which of these competing explanations is more accurate — though this paper does not need to actually provide that evidence. Maximum 1200 words; due Friday, September 22. 25%.

Paper #2: Write a contribution to the Foreign Affairs roundtable on Iraq, focusing on Biddle's claim that the problem should be conceptualized as a communal conflict rather than as a nationalist insurgency. Maximum 1000 words; emulate the style of the contributors to the roundtable (no footnotes, focus on the argument and evidence, etc.). Due Friday, October 20. 25%.

Paper #3: final paper, on topic of your choice in consultation with professor. After selecting a topic in consultation with the professor, a research proposal which lays out the hypotheses to test and maps the specific identity issues of the chosen case is due November 10. The final paper, maximum 3000 words (roughly 12 pages), is due Monday December 11. 50%.

Note on participation: This is a seminar, and active and constructive participation is essential. There is no formal participation grade, but I reserve the right to raise or lower the final grade in light of significantly superior or inferior class participation.

Reading

All assigned reading is collected in a series of course packets.

Films

Two movies will be shown in the evening followed by discussion (each screening replaces a regularly scheduled class session); if you can not make those evening classes, consult with me about alternative arrangements.

Schedule

Sept 8 Syllabus and overview

Sept 11 Theoretical Overture: The Clash of Civilizations

• Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" (1993)
• Samuel Huntington, "If not civilizations, then what?" (1993)
• Samuel Huntington, "The West: Unique, Not Universal" (1996)

Sept 13

• Stephen Walt, "Building Up New Bogeymen" (1997)
• Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, chap. 1 (2005)
• Osama bin Laden, "Crusader Wars" (2001)
• Lisa Wedeen, "Beyond the Crusades" (2003)
• Giacomo Chiozza, "Is there a clash of civilizations?" (2002)

Sept 18 Theorizing identity for political science

• Rogers Smith, "Identities, Interests, and the Future of Political Science" (2004)
• Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond Identity" (2000)
• Ashutosh Varney, "Nationalism, ethnic conflict, and rationality" (2003)
• Rawi Abdelal, et al, "Identity as a variable" (2005)

Sept 20 Identity vs Strategy: suicide terrorism

• Robert Pape, "The strategic logic of suicide terrorism" (2003)
• Scott Atran, "The moral logic and growth of suicide terrorism" (2006)
• Mohammed Hafez, "Rationality, culture, and structure in the making of suicide bombers" (2006)

Paper #1 Due Friday, September 22

Sept 25 The former Yugsolavia and theories of ethnic violence

• Michael Ignatieff, "Narcissism of small differences" (1998)
• VP Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War, chaps. 1 + 2 (2004)
• Russell Hardin, "One for all" (1995)
• David Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear" (1996)
• James Fearon and David Laitin, "Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war" (2003)

Sept 27 Reading theories in graphic narrative

• Joe Sacco, Safe Area Gorazde, excerpts (2000)

MOVIE: Vukovar (evening of October 2: takes the place of October 2 class)

Oct 4 Violence, rationality, and identity

• Stuart Kaufman, Modern Hatreds, chaps 1+2 (2001)
• James Fearon and David Laitin, "Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity" (2000)
• Stuart Kaufman, "Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice" (2006)

[Oct 9 - fall break]

Oct 11 Partition as a solution to ethnic war

• Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic War" (1996)
• Radha Kumar, "The troubled history of partition" (1997)

Oct 16 Iraq

• Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, chap 8 (2002)
• Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, "Democracy in Iraq" (2003)
• Ahmed Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, chap 2 (2005)
• Yahia Said, "Iraq in the shadow of civil war" (2005)
• Vali Nasr, "When the Shiites Rise" (2006)

Oct 18 Foreign Affairs Roundtable: Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon

• Stephen Biddle, "Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon" (2006) and responses by Diamond, Kaufmann, Dobbins, Gelb, Lynch, Hitchens, Drum, and Kaplan.

Assignment #2 due Friday, October 20.

Oct 23 Identity in International Relations Theory

• Alex Wendt, "Collective identity formation and the international state" (1994)
• Jack Snyder, "Anarchy and culture" (2002)

Oct 25 American identity as a security issue

• Samuel Huntington, "The erosion of American national interests" (1997)
• Samuel Huntington, Who are We? (2004), excerpts
• David Campbell, Writing Security (1991), chaps 1+2

Oct 30 Religion

• Scott Thomas, Global Resurgence of Religion (2005), chaps. 1+2
• Timothy Shah and Monica Toft, "Why God is Winning" (2006)
• Daniel Philpott, "The challenge of September 11 to Secularism" (2002)

Nov 1 How central is "Islam" to politics?

• Bernard Lewis, "Roots of Muslim rage" (1990)
• Daniel Brumberg, "Islam is not the solution (or the problem)" (2005/6)
• Salwa Ismail, "Being Muslim" (2004)
• Michael Doran, "The pragmatic fanaticism of al-Qaeda" (2002)
• David Lake, "Rational extremism" (2002)

Nov 6 No Reading: Discussion of Research Proposal and Methods

FILM: Closed Doors — takes place of Nov 20 class

• Read: Walter Armbrust, "Islamists in Egyptian cinema"

Nov 8 Al-Qaeda: culture, identity, power

• Fawaz Gerges, The Far Enemy (excerpts)

Paper proposal due Friday, November 10.

Nov 13

• Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam, (2005), excerpts

Nov 15

• Faisal Devji, Landscapes of Jihad (2005), excerpts

[Nov 20 + Nov 22 — no class]

Topics and Readings for last four classes TBD based on student interest

Nov 27 ** Nov 29 ** Dec 4 ** Dec 6