Download Comparative Studies of Socialization

E53.2025
Spring 2014
Professor Hosay ([email protected])
T.A.: Graefe ([email protected] )
T.A.: Friedman ([email protected])
246 Greene Street, 3
246 Greene Street, 3E
246 Greene Street, 3E
COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF SOCIALIZATION
Books to Be Purchased
Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life
Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order
Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents
Course Schedule and Readings
1/27 Social Institutions and Education
2/3 Educational Reform and Democratization: Promise and Failure in Belarus, Iraq and Afghanistan
Read: NYU Project in Belarus – Miscellaneous Papers; U.S. Inspector General in Iraq “Hard Lessons -The Iraq
Reconstruction Experience,” pp. 1-17, 29-33, 48-63, 138-147, 218-221, 369-386, 467-476, Chapter 27 (pp. 1-18);
Vitali Silitski, “Belarus: Learning from Defeat,” Journal of Democracy (2006); Anna Larson, “Assessing
Democracy Assistance: Afghanistan,” FRIDE Project Report ( January, 2011); Zalmay Khalilzad, “Lessons from
Afghanistan and Iraq,” Journal of Democracy ( July 2010), pp. 41-49.
2/10 Promoting Democracy
Read: Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad, chps. 1-4, 9, 10, 12; Thomas F. Farr, “Diplomacy
in an Age of Faith: Religious Freedom and National Security,” Foreign Affairs (March 2008 - April
2008); Larry Diamond, “Is the Third Wave Over?,” Journal of Democracy (1996); Jacques Barzun, “Is
Democratic Theory for Export?” Society (March/April, 1989); Christoph Zürcher, “Building
Democracy While Building Peace,” Journal of Democracy (January 2011, pp. 81-95; Francis
Fukuyama and Michael McFaul, “Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted,” Washington
Quarterly (2009).
2/17Presidents’ Day - no class
2/24 American Democracy: A Model for the World?
Read: Report of an Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy, “Public Diplomacy: A Strategy for
Reform,” Council of Foreign Relations, October 11, 2002; Thomas O. Melia, “The Democracy
Bureaucracy: The Infrastructure of American Democracy Promotion,” Princeton Project on National
Security (September 2005); Pew Research Center, “Obama’s Challenge in the Muslim World: Arab
Spring Fails to Improve American Image,” May 17, 2011; Charles Dorn and Doris A. Santoro,
“Political Goals and Social Ideals: Dewey, Democracy, and the Emergence of the Turkish Republic,”
Education and Culture, Volume 27, Number 2, 2011, pp. 3-27.
3/3 Social Functions of Knowledge
Read: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, entire.
3/10 Family and Socialization
Read: Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood, pp. 1-155, 176-189, 241-269, 329-419.
E53.2025
Spring 2014
3/17 Spring Break
3/24 Kinship and Social Change
Read: Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love, pp. 1-101, 214-232; Charles Tilly, "Family History, Social
History, and Social Change," Journal of Family History, (1987), 319-330; Maris A. Vinovskis, "Family and
Schooling in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Family History (1987), 19-35; Rineke van
Daalen, “Children and Their Educators: Changing Relations in a Meritocratizing World,” Journal of Social
History (Winter 2008), pp. 403-423
3/31Schooling and Socialization
Read: Martin Carnoy and Joel Samoff, Education and Social Transition in the Third World, chps. 1-3; Michael
Apple, "Ideology, Reproduction and Educational Reform," Comparative Education Review (1978), 367-387;
Nicolas Salem-Gervais and Rosalie Metro, “A Textbook Case of Nation-Building: The Evolution of History
Curricula in Myanmar,” The Journal of Burma Studies (2012), pp. 27–78;
4/7 Education and Nation Building
Read: Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship, chps. 3, 8; John Meyer, David Tyack, Joane P. Nagel,
and Audri Gordon, "Public Education as Nation-Building in America," American Journal of Sociology (1979);
Lloyd Kramer, “Historical Narratives and the Meaning of Nationalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas (1997);
Yesim Bayar, “The Dynamic Nature of Educational Policies and Turkish Nation Building: Where Does Religion
Fit In?,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 29, Number 3, 2009, pp. 360370.
4/14 Class Canceled
4/21 Educational Transfer
Read: Edward Berman, "Foundations, United States Foreign Policy and African Education, 1945-1975," Harvard
Education Review (1979), 145-179; Tsveta Petrova , “A New Generation of Democracy Promoters?: Eastern EU
Approaches to Supporting Democratization Abroad,” Eurasia Program Working Paper Series, SSRC (2012-01);
Gita Steiner‐Khamsi, “The Politics and Economics of Comparison,” Comparative Education Review (August
2010), pp. 323-342; Robert Arnove, "Comparative Education and World Systems Analysis," Comparative
Education Review (1980), 48-62.
4/28 Educational Convergence
Alex Inkeles and Larry Sirowy, "Convergent and Divergent Trends in National Education Systems," Social
Forces (1983); James E. Cronin, “Convergence by conviction: Politics and economics in the emergence of the
Anglo-American model,” Journal of Social History (Summer 2000); Denis Meuret, “French and U.S. Modes of
Educational Regulation Facing Modernity,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (Winter 2005), pp. 285-312;
Shawn F. Dorius and Glenn Firebaugh, “Trends in Global Gender Inequality,” Social Forces (July 2010), pp.
1941-196.
5/5 Clash of Civilizations
Read: Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, chps. 1-3, 10, 12;
Thomas M. Franck, “Is Personal Freedom a Western Value?,” American Journal of International Law (October,
1997); Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Beyond the New Borders,” Journal of Democracy (January 2004); Ann Marie
Murphy, “ Democratization and Indonesian Foreign Policy: Implications for the United States,” Asia Policy
(January 2012), pp. 83-111.
E53.2025
Spring 2014
5/12 Globalization
Read: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, chps 1-2, 9; John W. Meyer, John Boli, George
Thomas, and Francisco Ramirez, “World Society and the Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology (July,
1997); Laura Adams, “Globalization, Universalism, and Cultural Form,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History (2008); Michael McFaul, “Democracy Promotion as a World Value,” The Washington Quarterly (Winter
2004-05); Rob Clark, “Child Labor in the World Polity: Decline and Persistence, 1980-2000,” Social Forces
(March 2011), pp. 1033-1055.
Final Examination - There will be a take-home final examination. It will be distributed on May 5, and
due no later than class on May 12. The final examination must be hand delivered at the office, and
should be deposited in the mail box of your recitation instructor.
Project - You will be divided into groups of 4-5, and each group will be required to analyze a project
that has been undertaken to promote democracy in several different countries. As part of this project
each person will write a research paper that analyzes the ways in which the political and social
institutions, economic conditions, historical traditions, cultural values, and educational levels of the
country you select facilitated and/or prevented the implementation of the specific goals and objectives
of the democracy promotion project. This will involve an analysis of the underlying values and
institutional arrangements that influence the socialization process in the country. Then, as a group you
will write an introductory section and a conclusion that compare the ways in which the project
succeeded and/or failed in all of the countries that you have analyzed and explain how differences and
similarities in the institutional structures and cultural values of these countries account for these
successes and/or failures.
The attraction of comparative analysis is that ideas and institutions assume an otherwise unattainable
clarity when observed in more than one setting or in a setting large enough to display the effect of
varying conditions. But there are two major problems in undertaking a comparative analysis of
socialization. First, there is the problem of connecting everyday behavior, such as child rearing
practices or the inherited ties that bind neighbors together, to large social processes and change, such as
industrialization, urbanization, and migration. Second, there is the problem of establishing categories of
comparison, such as nationality, ethnicity, ideology, occupational function, etc., that can meaningfully
embrace divergence societies and/or cultures. You will have to grapple with both of these issues in
writing your paper and preparing the final project report.
We shall select 10 projects, and distribute a sheet listing the projects at our second class meeting on
February 4. There is a partial list of these organizations under “Democracy Promotion Organizations”
in the resources section of “NYU Classes.” You will be asked to select 3 of the projects, using the
numbers 1-3 to indicate order of preference. You should print your name at the bottom of the sheet, and
return it with your selections to your TA’s mailbox by February 6. We shall make the assignments by
the following class on February 11. The group project will be due on April 28. In addition you will be
required to submit a detailed outline of your individual part of the project on March 24.
Over the past three decades, both Republican and Democratic presidents have made the promotion of
democracy in other countries a significant element of U.S. foreign policy. Democracy promotion has
also become a major focus of the European Union, think tanks and academic oriented institutions,
international organizations sponsored by various governments, and international non-governmental
organizations.
E53.2025
Spring 2014
It has been assumed that the spread of democracy promotes peace, economic prosperity, and is an
effective antidote to terrorism. It has been claimed that established democracies never go to war with
one another, that democracy encourages economic entrepreneurship and investment, and that, by
affording all groups equal access to justice, democracy reduces tensions arising from ethnic, religious,
and racial divisions.
At the same time some have begun to question the benefits of democracy promotion, particularly when
it involves military force or covert action designed to undermine existing authorities. Other obstacles to
democracy promotion that have been cited by critics include support by western democracies of
authoritarian regimes, the failure of western democracies to abide by the rule of law in their own
countries, the absence of a clear definition of democracy, a lack of consensus on what constitutes the
essential elements of a functioning democracy, problems in evaluating the extent to which democracy
projects have succeeded, and the inability of many new democracies to safeguard minorities and
prevent a reversion to authoritarian leadership. Some critics have also argued that in settings that lack
the institutional structures and cultural values needed to support democratic practices, democracy
promotion is destabilizing.
The key elements of the major democracy promotion projects involving education have included
support for the following: civil society, civic education, and elections. It may be helpful for your group
to select a project that focuses on just one of these areas.
With regard to civil society, these projects have been designed to train citizens at the grass-roots level to
organize voluntary associations, identify and analyze issues of importance, plan and manage resources,
raise funds, take collective action to solve complex problems, and become leaders in their own right.
Similarly, civic education projects have involved educational campaigns ranging from re-organizing the
governance, funding, curricula and teaching materials of schools at all levels of education, to promoting
an understanding of rule of law, basic human rights, freedom of the press, and the importance of
governmental transparency and accountability. Projects involving elections have trained political party
officials and candidates, conducted campaigns to bring out the vote, prepared government officials to
administer the electoral process and set up election-related dispute resolution, and developed programs
to help newly-elected legislators draft laws. These are just a few examples of the kinds of projects you
might analyze.
When you undertake your analysis of the individual country, you may wish to examine, in addition to
materials directly related to your project (proposals, reports, etc.), other types of original source
materials, such as political documents (minutes, legislative hearings, ministry reports, etc.), reports of
professional educational organizations, newspapers, and magazine articles. You should also look at
primary documents, in so far as they are available, that will explain the response of the country to the
project, as well as secondary studies of that country’s society and culture.
In assessing the effectiveness of the implementation of the project in the particular country that you are
studying, you may wish to consider some of the following aspects of socialization:
-the attitudes, social mores, values and behavior ascribed to "ideal citizens"
-the types of individuals presented as role models
-the types of labor (agricultural, manual, intellectual, etc.) that are highly regarded
E53.2025
Spring 2014
-the relative importance of the family, peer groups, and tradition in interpersonal relations
-the behavior and attributes of authority figures in the family, at work, in politics, etc.
-the way in which the roles of males and females are differentiated
-the extent to which decision making is the responsibility of the group or of the individual
-the types of individuals who are regarded as cultivated or educated
-the degree to which education for elites and general education for the masses are segregated
-whether the educational system is organized to promote social mobility on the basis of merit
or on the basis of wealth and family background
-the extent to which the educational system is designed to perpetuate tradition or to respond to
contemporary economic needs
-the degree to which assimilation of ethnic minorities is an educational goal
-the underlying theories of historical causality that account for national and/or cultural
development.
-the symbols of nationalism that are used to foster national loyalty
Your individual paper should be 15-20 double-spaced typed pages.
You final grade will be based upon the following: Class Participation in Recitation (10%); Final
Examination (40%); Final Project (Individual Paper - 40%, Group Introduction and Conclusion –
10%)