OSUN Theme: Democratic Practice
Ethno-Religious Identity and Politics in the Middle East and South Asia
Term: September 5, 2023 – December 21, 2023Level: 300-Level
Day/Time: T/Th 08:30 AM EDT - 09:50 AM EDT
Instructor: Karen Barkey, Bard College
This course is designed for upper level undergraduates. It is a comparative course intended to bridge areas and disciplines in the social sciences. It brings expertise in sociology, political science and history together, but beyond the fields we also bring together different methodological approaches to the comparisons between regions and cases. Both the Middle East and South Asia are areas of democratization and conflict around issues of ethnic, religious and communal organization. The pull and push of democratic politics and conflict along communal dimensions can be studied from an historical as well as comparative perspective. I suggest to look at India and Pakistan in South Asia and Turkey, and Egypt (as well as Syria and Iraq as the the particular contemporary dynamics necessitate) to understand the historical legacies of communalisms in imperial and colonial contexts, but to also understand the particular impact of religious and ethnic politics as they developed in the post democratic era. Different cleavages have become important in each setting and we will analyze the manner in which these cleavages have both been partly created by and influenced state policies.
Credits: 4 U.S. / 8 ECTS