Citizenship & Globalization

If you are taking this course, you will have to apply, if you have not done so already, for a “passport” to enable you both to gain entry to a country that is not your own and to re-enter the country of your citizenship. The experience of applying for this document can be a strange one. You might wonder: “What right does my country have to regulate my travel? Am I first and foremost a human being, or first and foremost __________?”—space for the “nationality” that happens to be yours. If you have read much political philosophy, you might ask further: “How did it come to be that, though born free, men and women are now everywhere in chains?” These questions can give rise to others, also philosophical in nature: What does it mean to be a “citizen,” and what obligations come with this status? For example, is a citizen obliged to be “patriotic”? But just what is patriotism, and is it really a virtue, or instead a vice? In times of war, some questions of this kind can become pressing: Is a citizen obliged to be willing to die for his or her country? For that matter, is a citizen obliged to serve in the military of his or her country? What if, to complicate matters, you don’t agree with the war in question?

We will examine answers to these and related questions in preparation for your going abroad to live and work in London and Madrid, two of the world’s great cities. While you are abroad, you will have the opportunity to look at your country from a different perspective and to reflect on your bond to it. This will also be the moment for us to think about the phenomenon of “globalization” and how it bears on what it means to be a citizen. Moreover, with any luck, while abroad you will meet people with strong opinions on what it means to be an American. We will anticipate your conversations with these people by reading Judith Shklar’s American Citizenship, which is a work of both philosophy and history. The course ends with a study of contemporary Muslims in the West, especially Europe, and how they are themselves negotiating the questions of citizenship and patriotism.

This course should help you to develop your skills in reflection and critical thinking; problem solving; communication; and independent research. Moreover, going abroad should help you to develop adaptability; tolerance for ambiguity; appreciation of diversity; and respect for the views of others. As a letter writer to The New York Times recently observed, study abroad thus serves the goals of traditional liberal education (see William C. Brown, August 18, 2007, section A, from whom I take this list of skills and virtues).

There will be a midterm exam worth 20 percent of the final grade and a final project plus presentation, to be given Labor Day weekend, worth the same. Attendance/participation for the classes at Villanova will count for 6 percent (one point per class, not counting weeks 7 and 14). Your “postings” while in London and Madrid will count for 54 percent (nine points per week).

The midterm exam will consist of short-answer questions on the readings. The subject of your final project will be yours to choose, though in consultation with me. Subjects might include: the concept of British or Spanish citizenship; who wants it and how to get it; British or Spanish patriotism (whether it exists, what it is, whether and how it is contested); how art, history, or literature figures in British or Spanish national identity; representations of Americans or the United States in British or Spanish media and popular culture; how the British or Spanish today regard Americans or the United States (gathered by interviewing people in your workplace and on the streets); and Islam in London or Madrid.

For most of the time you will be in London or Madrid, I will be in the United States. We will communicate during this period (weeks 8-13) by the web; you will have to make weekly postings online. I expect that your postings will be substantive, grounded, and interactive; frequent (with an optimum score for three postings per week); timely (with an optimum score for two postings by Wednesday); and germane, appropriate, and respectful. Each week, you will be required: 1) to make a posting responding to questions about the reading put by me; and 2) to post either one elaboration of your answers to these questions and one comment on the answers of a peer, or to post two comments on the answers of two of your peers (not two comments on the answers of just one peer). Your initial posting is worth two points; so too your elaboration and comment or comments. So long as your postings seriously engage the material, simply making three in the week will gain you three points. Further, simply making two serious postings before Wednesday will gain you two points.

I will use the following rubric (derived from Dr. Paula Doherty) to evaluate your work:

Requirements

Max.

Points

Posting responding to questions about the reading: substantive and well-grounded = 2

Two subsequent postings (whether elaboration or comments): germane, appropriate, and respectful = 2

Number of postings per week (Monday-Friday)

Number of postings before Wednesday

Total:

Available at the University Shop: Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates, trans. G.M.A. Grube, 3^rd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001); John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C.B. MacPherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980); Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970); Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004)

Available on WebCT: C.C.J. Carpenter et al., “A Call for Unity”; Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”; Aristotle, Politics, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Thomas Jefferson et al., “The Declaration of Independence”; Dred Scott v. Sanford; Fernanda Santos, “After the War, a New Battle to Become Citizens,” New York Times, 24 February 2008; Karl Fleming, “The Homecoming of Chris Mead,” and John McCain, “How the POW’s Fought Back,” in Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1975 (New York: Library of America, 2000), 517-521 and 670-699; John Kifner and Timothy Egan, “Officer Faces Court-Martial for Refusing to Deploy to Iraq,” New York Times, 23 July 2006; Martha Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” in For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 5-17; Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” in Theorizing Nationalism, ed. Ronald Beiner (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995), 209-228; Simon Keller, “Patriotism as Bad Faith,” Ethics 115 (2005): 563-592; William T. Cavanaugh, “The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance to Globalization,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 181-196; Mark Lilla, “The Politics of God,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, August 19, 2007, 30 ff.; Orhan Pamuk, “My First Passport: What Does It Mean to Belong to a Country?” The New Yorker, April 16, 2007, 56-57

Aristotle, Politics, bk. 1, chapters 1-5, pp. 11-17; bk. 3, chapters 1-6, pp. 61-71; Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chapters 1-5, 7, 9, pp. 7-30, 42-51, 65-68

Shklar, American Citizenship, 1-62; Jefferson et al., “The Declaration of Independence”; Dred Scott v. Sanford; Santos, “After the War, a New Battle to Become Citizens” (all three on WebCT)

Walzer, Obligations, ch. 5, “Political Alienation and Military Service,” pp. 99-119; Karl Fleming, “The Homecoming of Chris Mead,” in Reporting Vietnam, 517-521; John Kifner and Timothy Egan, “Officer Faces Court-Martial for Refusing to Deploy to Iraq,” New York Times, 23 July 2006

Walzer, Obligations, ch. 7, “Prisoners of War: Does the Fight Continue after the Battle?” pp. 146-166; John McCain, “How the POW’s Fought Back,” in Reporting Vietnam, 670-699

Martha Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” in For Love of Country, 5-17; Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” in Theorizing Citizenship, 209-228

Cavanaugh, “The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance to Globalization,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 181-188

Cavanaugh, “The World in a Wafer,” 189-194; Lilla, “The Politics of God,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, August 19, 2007, 30 ff.

Roy, Globalized Islam, chapter 3, “Muslims in the West,” pp. 100-147, and chapter 4, “The Triumph of the Religious Self,” pp. 148-200

Roy, Globalized Islam, chapter 6, “The Modernity of an Archaic Way of Thinking: Neofundamentalism,” pp. 232-289, and chapter 8, “Remapping the World: Civilisation, Religion, and Strategy,” pp. 326-340

Pamuk, “My First Passport: What Does It Mean to Belong to a Country?” The New Yorker, April 16, 2007, 56-57