Political Science 855
Michael Schatzberg, 415 North Hall
Office Hours: Thursdays, 9:00-11:00
Or by appointment, phones: 263-2392 (w); 278-1460 (h);
email: schatzberg@polisci.wisc.edu
Spring 2015
Syllabus
POLITICS AND CULTURE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
A. Goals and Motives:
Although this course will study political culture, as conventionally defined within the discipline
of political science, it will also go considerably further afield by considering different political
realities and the definitions of the political arena which may flow from them. Does the study of
the connections between the realm of politics and the realm of culture hold some hope for the
development of mid-range theory, or is it yet another dead end? Does culture have a serious
impact on politics and public policy, or is it merely another academic irrelevancy? This course
will expose students to several of the major scholarly approaches and orientations which have
attempted to link cultural phenomena to the study of politics. Broadly comparative in scope, we
shall transcend narrow geographic concerns by attempting to incorporate theoretical patterns of
politics and culture in several of the world’s major regions. Frankly exploratory and eclectic in
design, the course will seek to discern patterns of systematic linkages between the realms of
politics and culture, evaluate the best ways of studying them, and attempt to assess their
importance in the contemporary world.
The various theoretical strands of political economy, social class analysis, ethnicity and cultural
pluralism, and state-society relations have all contributed importantly to our understanding of
political phenomena. Each has much to offer the serious student of politics. Nevertheless, in
recent years I have become increasingly dissatisfied with these approaches because none of them
addresses adequately certain fundamental questions. First, what constitutes a politically
legitimate order? The question of political legitimacy should not be taken for granted. We
should not facilely assume that the construction of democracy and the construction of political
legitimacy are necessarily identical processes. Nor should we assume that we even know what
factors are likely to contribute to the construction of political legitimacy in any given society.
Moreover, we need to ask whether notions of political legitimacy are universal or if they may
vary from culture to culture. Such questions are especially important and relevant in those parts
of the globe undergoing rapid political change in the wake of the end of the Cold War.
Second, I have also become increasingly concerned about the validity of several of the usually
unstated assumptions of the social sciences. For example, are the concepts we habitually employ
(e.g., power, social class, gender, state, civil society, political causation) truly universal, or is
there important cultural variation in their meanings? Do our cultural assumptions and implicit
cultural models, usually unstated and often subjacent, structure our views of both political
legitimacy and “the universal”? Finally, and perhaps even more fundamental, are our tacit
understandings of what constitutes “the political” actually culturally specific? Answers to these
questions have serious implications for the social sciences. For some time, therefore, I have been
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 2
exploring certain cultural pathways while trying to answer these questions, at least to my own
satisfaction. This course thus constitutes an on-going attempt to examine some of the
comparative and theoretical materials which might prove relevant and useful in this task. If,
along the way, our weekly readings and discussions also contribute to the fund of knowledge on
which students may draw when writing the preliminary examination in comparative politics, so
much the better. And that is the third motive for offering this course.
In addition, the final goal of this course is to provide a transition from graduate-level courses to
the normal rigors and demands of professional life. Since quality publications are a professional
necessity, students should actively think of their completed and revised papers for this course as
the first drafts of articles which, after suitable subsequent revision, they might well submit to
relevant scholarly journals. Advanced graduate students must begin thinking seriously about
publishing their better work because both the competitive nature of the job market and the always
implacable tenure clock demand it. (Look at it this way. How many times have you read
something and said to yourself, “Yech, that’s bad. I can do better than that”? Think of this as a
challenge to “do better than that.”)
B. Requirements:
Since I do not dispense Truth, the course will be run as a seminar. Although I might occasionally
have something to impart which will require a “mini-lecture,” these will be few and far between.
This format obviously places a great burden on the students to attend regularly, read diligently,
and participate actively in class discussions.
To facilitate this participation, each week one student will act as discussion leader. Discussion
leaders will have two tasks. First, they will present a critical, theoretical analysis of the week’s
major reading(s). These presentations should be delivered from an outline, not read verbatim,
and ought to take from 10 to 15 minutes. Be prepared to field questions from both the instructor
and the class after your talk. Under no circumstances, however, will any presentation be allotted
more than 15 minutes. Second, discussion leaders should use their acquired expertise on the
subject matter in question to enliven and stimulate our collective deliberations. (It may thus be
incumbent upon them to go considerably beyond the required readings.) Part of this latter task
will be to suggest questions, or avenues of inquiry, the readings raise which might be
incorporated into original papers or even doctoral research. Indeed, all students should read with
this in mind and come to each class armed with concrete suggestions.
In addition, and also with the aim of facilitating our collective deliberations, all students must
submit one-page reaction papers throughout the semester. Reaction papers should be just that,
and no more. They should indicate your reactions to, questions of, and observations about the
week’s major required readings. In them you should feel free to raise points of agreement or
disagreement you might have with the various authors. The key to this exercise is coming to
class prepared with a reaction to some aspect of the week’s readings. These exercises are
required, but will not be graded individually. Hard copy should appear in my North Hall mailbox
no later than 9:00 a.m. each Wednesday. In addition, at the same time all students should post
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 3
their papers to the class list via email attachment (polisci855-1-s15@lists.wisc.edu) so that we all
have access to them. Note that no reaction paper is required the first week, the week you are a
discussion leader, the week when critical comments are due, or when your final papers are
presented.
The only other requirement will be a 30 page seminar paper. Note that a complete draft of that
paper will be due on Wednesday, 8 April 2015. This may be a rough draft, but it should be
reasonably complete. Please post the paper to the classlist, but also have two hard copies when
you come to class — one for the instructor and one for one of the other seminar participants.
Each draft essay will thus receive at least two sets of critical, constructive comments before the
submission of the final version. Comments will be due the following week, on Wednesday, 15
April 2015. The final paper is due on the last day of class, Wednesday, 6 May 2015 but will, of
course, be welcomed earlier should inspiration strike you before then. The final class session
will be devoted to a detailed presentation and discussion of your work. Students should
determine the subject of their seminar paper in consultation with the instructor as early in the
semester as possible.
C. Grading Criteria:
Overall Class Participation
(discussions, reaction papers, oral presentations)
Final Paper
30%
70%
Incompletes are the bane of graduate students and will be granted only under the most
exceptional circumstances.
D. Readings:
All of the books listed below are required will be used extensively. In theory, the University
Book Store and the reserve reading room of the College Library in Helen C. White Hall should
have copies available. Obviously, some may wish to purchase certain titles through the internet
and, depending on the publisher, there may be relatively inexpensive e-editions available for
some titles. Please note that in this context required means that you must read them; it does not
mean that you must buy them. The list is lengthy (and expensive), so pick and choose; form
anarcho-syndicalist book-buying communes; make use of the reserve reading room; scan and
xerox.
George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton, Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our
Work, Wages, and Well-being (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1967).
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 4
Gabrielle Lynch, I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (University of Chicago
Press, 2011).
Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines
Community (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.)
Andre S. Markovits and Lars Rensmann, Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global
Politics and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Anne Norton, 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004).
Jemima Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Lawrence Rosen, Law as Culture: An Introduction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
Michael G. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
In the course outline which follows, some readings are required (*); others are recommended (#)
for those wishing to pursue a subject further. Required books readings should be on three-hour
reserve in the College Library at Helen C. White Hall. In addition, some of the recommended
articles may be accessed through the following web link:
http://users.polisci.wisc.edu/schatzberg/ps855, henceforth abbreviated as [web]. Others may also
be accessed directly through MadCat. You may need to access these from a UW email or web
address, but the relevant journal articles should then be accessible. To facilitate easy access, I
will send electronic copies of this syllabus (in WordPerfect, Word, and Adobe pdf) to the
classlist. A copy of the syllabus will also be located at [web].
E. Course Outline:
Please note that the weekly headings, and occasional sub-headings, are not mutually exclusive
topics. Perceptive students will find that there is much overlap among them, and that titles listed
under one heading are almost certainly applicable to others. In addition, at the end of the
syllabus students will find a bibliographic listing of relevant title broken down roughly by subject
matter.
1–Organization and Introduction
21 January 2015
#Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (various editions).
#Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, 2d ed., with a new preface by Margaret Mead (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1959).
#Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
#Richard A. Shweder, Thinking Through Cultures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 5
#Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1965).
#Lucian W. Pye, “Political Culture,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New
York: Macmillan, 1968), 12:218-25.
#Raymond Williams, The Sociology of Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
2–Theoretical Baseline, 1: Webs of Significance
28 January 2015
*Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, chapters 1, 4-8, 11-12, 14-15.
#Herbert A. Simon, “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political
Science,” American Political Science Review (APSR) 79:2 (1985): 293-304. [web]
#Aaron Wildavsky, “Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of
Preference Formation,” APSR 81:1 (1987): 3-21. [web]
#Stephen Chilton, “Defining Political Culture,” Western Political Quarterly 41:3 (September
1988): 419-45. [web]
#Harry Eckstein, “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” APSR 82:3 (September 1988): 789804. [web]
#Harry Eckstein, “A Theory of Stable Democracy,” Appendix B of Division and Cohesion in
Democracy: A Study of Norway (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 225-88.
#Timothy W. Luke, “Political Science and the Discourses of Power: Developing a Genealogy of
the Political Culture Concept,” History of Political Thought 10:1 (Spring 1989): 125-49.
#Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1990).
#Michael Brint, A Genealogy of Political Culture (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991).
#Bennett M. Berger, An Essay on Culture: Symbolic Structure and Social Structure (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995).
#Richard E. Lee, Life and Times of Cultural Studies: The Politics and Transformation of the
Structures of Knowledge (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
#James Johnson, “Conceptual Problems as Obstacles to Progress in Political Science: Four
Decades of Political Culture Research,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 15 (2003): 87-115.
[web]
3–Theoretical Baseline, 2: Constructed Reality
4 February 2015
*Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge, entire.
#Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
#Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York:
Basic Books, 1983).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 6
#Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-century Bali (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980).
#W. J. M. Mackenzie, Political Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978).
#Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1959).
#Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1967).
#James M. Glass, Delusion: The Internal Dimensions of Political Life (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985).
#Maurice Natanson, ed. Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, 2 vols. (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973).
#Leon Festinger, et al., When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern
Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1956).
#Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
4–Different Realities, Different Assumptions?
11 February 2015
*Michael G. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food, entire.
#Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, “Religion and Politics: Taking African Epistemologies
Seriously,” Journal of Modern African Studies 45:3 (September 2007): 385-401. [web]
#D. A. Masolo, Self and Community in a Changing World (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2010.)
#John Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
Sorcery
#Harry G. West, Ethnographic Sorcery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
#Adam Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005).
#Adam Ashforth, Madumo: A Man Bewitched (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
#Simon Bockie, Death and the Invisible Powers: The World of Kongo Belief (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1993).
#Wyatt MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).
#Anthony Ephirim-Donkor, African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors (Trenton: Africa World
Press, 1997).
#Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 7
#Marshall Sahlins, How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, For Example (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995).
#Robin Horton, Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Selected Theoretical Papers in
Magic, Religion, and Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
#Suzanne Preston Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994).
#Margaret J. Wiener, Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and Colonial Conquest in
Bali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
#Michael Kunze, High Road to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987).
#James Siegel, Naming the Witch (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
#Harry G. West, Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005).
#Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice
in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
#Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000).
#Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension
of an African Civil War (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
#Peter Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997).
#Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes, In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the
Songhay of Niger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
#David D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
#David Lan, Guns & Rain: Guerrillas & Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985).
#E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1976).
#Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays (New York:
Doubleday, 1954).
#Christina D. Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (De Kalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).
#Bruce Kapferer, The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997).
#Alan Kilpatrick, The Night has a Naked Soul: Witchcraft and Sorcery among the Western
Cherokee (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
Salem
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 8
#Elisabeth Reis, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1997).
#Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, c. 1650-c. 1750 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
#Peter Charles Hofer, The Devil’s Disciples: Makers of the Salem Witchcraft Trials (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
#John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
#Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
5–Cultural Assumptions, 1: Statistics
18 February 2015
*Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public,
entire.
Language and Cognitive Models
#Frederic C. Schaffer, Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar
Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
#Benedict R. Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1990).
#Evelyn Fox Keller, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995).
#Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn, eds., Cultural Models in Language and Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
#Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
#Evelyn Fox Keller, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models,
Metaphors, and Machines (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
#David E. Campbell, Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life
(Princeton University Press, 2006).
#George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002).
#George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987).
#George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1980).
#Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1974).
#Yuri M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 9
#George Lakoff and Marc Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
#Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).
#Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s
Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
#David C. Barker, Rushed to Judgment: Talk Radio, Persuasion, and American Political
Behavior (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
#Oyeronke Oyewumi, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender
Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
#Corey Brettschneider, “The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach,” American Political
Science Review 101:1 (February 2007): 19-31. [web]
#David C. Barker and James D. Tinnick, “Competing Visions of Parental Roles and Ideological
Constraint,” American Political Science Review 100:2 (May 2006): 249-263. [web]
6–Cultural Assumptions, 2: Law
25 February 2015
*Lawrence Rosen, Law as Culture: An Introduction, entire.
#Daniel P. Franklin and Michael J. Baun, eds., Political Culture and Constitutionalism: A
Comparative Approach (M.E. Sharpe, 1995).
#Marc Howard Ross, The Culture of Conflict: Interpretations and Interests in Comparative
Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
#Richard W. Wilson, Compliance Ideologies: Rethinking Political Culture (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992).
#James F. Hamill, Ethno-Logic: The Anthropology of Human Reasoning (University of Illinois
Press, 1990).
7–Cultural Assumptions, 3: Economics
4 March 2015
*Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines
Community, entire.
#Johannes Fabian, Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1998).
#James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990).
#James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985).
#E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1963).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 10
8–Identity, 1: Economics
11 March 2015
*George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton, Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our
Work, Wages, and Well-being, entire.
#Kenneth Prewitt, What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify
Americans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
9–Identity, 2: Ethnicity
18 March 2015
*Gabrielle Lynch, I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya, entire.
#Jean-Francois Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity (London: C. Hurst, 2005).
#Dorinne K. Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese
Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
#Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
#Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Culture Troubles: Politics and the Interpretation of
Meaning (London: C. Hurst, 2005).
#Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in
Nigeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
#Donald L. Donham, Violence in a Time of Liberation: Murder and Ethnicity at a South African
Gold Mine, 1994 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
#Peter P. Ekeh, “Colonialism and the Two Publics: A Theoretical Statement,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 17:1 (1975): 91-112. [web]
#Jean-François Bayart, “L’énonciation du politique,” Revue française de science politique 35:3
(juin 1985): 343-73.
#Richard W. Wilson, “The Many Voices of Political Culture: Assessing Different Approaches,”
World Politics 52:2 (January 2000): 246-73. [web]
#Sheri Berman, “Ideas, Norms, and Culture in Political Analysis,” Comparative Politics 33:2
(January 2001): 231-250. [web]
#Lisa Wedeen, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political
Science Review 96:4 (December 2002): 713-728. [web]
#Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston and Rose McDermott, “Identity as a
Variable,” Perspectives on Politics 4:4 (December 2006): 695-711. [web]
10–Identity, 3: Race in the U.S.
25 March 2015
*Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege, entire.
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 11
#Sherry B. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject, by
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
#Michael Hanchard, Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006).
#Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black
Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2004).
#Paul A. Silverstein, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004).
#James McBride, The Color of Water (New York: Riverhead Press, 1996).
#Richard M. Merelman, Representing Black Culture: Racial Conflict and Cultural Politics in the
United States (New York: Routledge, 1995).
#Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage, 1972).
#Richard J. Ellis, American Political Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
#Anne Norton, Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993).
#Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, eds. Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary
Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
#Robin Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
#Craig Reinarman, American States of Mind: Political Beliefs and Behavior among Private and
Public Workers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
#Richard M. Merelman, On Making Something of Ourselves: On Culture and Politics in the
United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
#Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical
Essays in American History, 1880-1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1983).
#Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does
(New York: Free Press, 1962).
Spring Break
11–Identity, 4: Race in Ghana
8 April 2015
***DRAFT ESSAYS DUE***
*Jemima Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race,
entire.
#Natasha Barnes, Cultural Conundrums: Gender, Race, Nation, and the Making of Caribbean
Cultural Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 12
#Paul Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race (London: Routledge,
2004).
#Richard D. E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1997).
#Kwasi Wiredu, Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996).
#Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992).
#Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1993).
#Paul Gilroy, Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures (London: Serpent’s Tail,
1993).
#Paul Gilroy, ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of ‘Race’ and
Nation (London: Hutchinson Education, 1987).
12–Critical Comments
15 April 2015
***CRITICAL COMMENTS ON DRAFT ESSAYS DUE***
13–Sports, Culture, and Identity
22 April 2015
*Andre S. Markovits and Lars Rensmann, Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global
Politics and Culture, entire.
*Michael G. Schatzberg, “Soccer, Science, and Sorcery: Causation and African Football,” Afrika
Spectrum 41:3 (2006): 351-369. [web]
#Andrei S. Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
#Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow (London: Verso, 2003).
#Ellyn Kestnbaum, Culture on Ice: Figure Skating & Cultural Meaning (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 2003).
#C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1963).
14–Final Thoughts
29 April 2015
*Anne Norton, 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method, entire.
#Kirstie M. McClure, “Reading 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method,” Perspectives on
Politics 4:2 (June 2006): 343-351. [web]
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 13
#Katherine Cramer Walsh, “Applying Norton's Challenge to the Study of Political Behavior:
Focus on Process, the Particular, and the Ordinary,” Perspectives on Politics 4:2 (June 2006):
353-359. [web]
#Mary Douglas, Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (London: Routledge, 1992).
#Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
#Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical
and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
#Richard J. Ellis and Fred Thompson, “Culture and the Environment in the Pacific Northwest,”
APSR 91:4 (December 1997): 885-97.
#Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
#Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993).
15–Research Results
***FINAL PAPERS DUE:
PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION OF FINAL PAPERS***
6 May 2015
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 14
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS:
Measured Realities
#Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in
Five Nations (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1989).
#Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited (Newbury Park, CA:
SAGE, 1989).
#Richard M. Merelman, Partial Visions: Culture and Politics in Britain, Canada, and the United
States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
#Daniel H. Levine, Religion and Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela
and Colombia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
#John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995).
#Mark Tessler, “Islam and Democracy in the Middle East: The Impact of Religious Orientations
on Attitudes toward Democracy in Four Arab Countries,” Comparative Politics 34:3 (April
2002): 337-354.
#Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993).
#Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New
York: Simon & Shuster, 2000).
#Robert D. Putnam, “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in
America,” PS: Political Science & Politics 28:4 (December 1995): 664-83.
#Pippa Norris, “Does Television Erode Social Capital? A Reply to Putnam,” PS: Political
Science and Politics 29:3 (September 1996): 474-80.
#M. Steven Fish, “Islam and Authoritarianism,” World Politics 55:1 (October 2002): 4-37. [web]
#David D. Laitin, “The Civic Culture at 30,” APSR 89:1 (March 1995): 168-73.
#Ellis Goldberg, “Thinking About How Democracy Works,” Politics & Society 24:1 (March
1996): 7-18.
#Filippo Sabetti, “Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons from Italy about
Interpreting Social Experiments,” Politics & Society 24:1 (March 1996): 19-44.
#Margaret Levi, “Social and Unsocial Capital: A Review Essay of Robert Putnam’s Making
Democracy Work,” Politics & Society 24:1 (March 1996): 45-55.
#Sidney Tarrow, “Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on
Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work,” APSR 90:2 (June 1996): 389-97.
#Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The
Human Development Sequence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
#Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
#Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around
the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
#Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political
Change in 43 Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 15
#Ronald Inglehart, Miguel Basanez, and Alejandro Moreno, Human Values and Beliefs: A Cross
Cultural Sourcebook (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
#Ronald F. Inglehart, Neil Nevitte, Miguel Basanez, The North American Trajectory: Cultural,
Economic, and Political Ties among the United States, Canada, and Mexico (Hawthorne,
NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1996).
#Paul R. Abramson and Ronald Inglehart, Value Change in Global Perspective (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1995).
#Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990).
#Mitchell A. Seligson, “The Renaissance of Political Culture or the Renaissance of the
Ecological Fallacy,” Comparative Politics 34:3 (April 2002): 273-292.
#S. C. Flanagan and A. R. Lee, “The New Politics, Culture Wars, And The AuthoritarianLibertarian Value Change In Advanced Industrial Democracies,” Comparative Political
Studies 36: 3 (April 2003): 235-270. [web]
#Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, “Political Culture and Democracy: Analyzing CrossLevel Linkages,” Comparative Politics 36:1 (October 2003): 61-79.
#Ronald Inglehart, Mansoor Moaddel and Mark Tessler, “Xenophobia and In-Group Solidarity in
Iraq: A Natural Experiment on the Impact of Insecurity,” Perspectives on Politics 4:3
(September 2006): 495-505. [web]
#J. Judd Owen, “The Struggle between “Religion and Nonreligion: Jefferson, Backus, and the
Dissonance of America's Founding Principles,” American Political Science Review 101:3
(August 2007): 493-503. [web]
#Daniel Philpott, “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion,” American Political
Science Review 101:3 (August 2007): 505-525. [web]
#Andrew F. March, “Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in non-Muslim Liberal
Democracies,” American Political Science Review 101:2 (May 2007): 235-252. [web]
Children
#Robert Coles, The Political Life of Children (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986).
#M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young
Adults and Their Parents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
#Urie Bronfenbrunner, Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R. (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1970).
#Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage,
1962).
#Erik H. Erickson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950).
Gender
#Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
#Peter F. Murphy, Studs, Tools, and the Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2001).
#R. W. Connell, The Men and the Boys (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 16
#Carol Delaney, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998).
#Roger N. Lancaster, Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
#Maryam Babangida, The Home Front: Nigerian Army Officers and Their Wives (Ibadan:
Fountain Publications, 1988).
#Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
#Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980).
#Stephen T. Leonard and Joan C. Tronto, “The Genders of Citizenship,” American Political
Science Review 101:1 (February 2007): 33-46. [web]
#Aili Mari Tripp and Alice Kang, “The Global Impact of Quotas: On the Fast Track to Increased
Female Legislative Representation,” Comparative Political Studies 41:3 (March 2008): 338361. [web]
#Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese
Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
#David Leheny, Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003).
#Robin M. LeBlanc, Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999).
#Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
Japan
#Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar
Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
#Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Morn
Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
#Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
#Susan J. Pharr, Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990).
#Robert N. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan (Glencoe: Free
Press, 1957).
#Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (New York:
World Publishing, 1946).
Latin America
#Heather Levi, The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
#Matthew C. Gutmann, The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary
Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 17
#Matthew C. Gutmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996).
#Larissa Adler Lomnitz, Chile’s Political Culture and Parties: An Anthropological Exploration
(South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000).
#Eric Zolov, Refried Elvis: The Rise of The Mexican Counterculture (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999).
#Eva P. Bueno and Terry Caesar, eds., Imagination Beyond Nation: Latin American Popular
Culture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999).
#Brian H. Smith, Religious Politics in Latin America: Pentecostal vs. Catholic (South Bend:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1998).
#Anthony Gill, Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
#Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997).
#Michael Taussig, The Magic of the State (New York: Routledge, 1997).
#Claudio Veliz, The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish
America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
#Daniel H. Levine, ed. Constructing Culture and Power in Latin America (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1993).
#Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
#Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
China
#Lucian W. Pye, The Mandarin and the Cadre (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies,
University of Michigan, 1988).
#Lucian W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, 1985).
#Andrew G. Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
#Thomas A. Metzger, Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving
Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
#Richard Solomon, Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1971).
Religion
#L. Carl Brown, Religion and the State: The Muslim Approach to Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000).
#Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric and Symbols in Contemporary
Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
#Allen Douglas and Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass
Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 18
#Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan
Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
#Fatma Muge Gocek, ed., Political Cartoons in the Middle East: Cultural Representations in the
Middle East (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1997).
#Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
#Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
#Steven C. Caton, “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni
Tribe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
#Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986).
#Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
#Michael Gilsenan, Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern Arab World (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1983).
#Michael L. Ross, “Oil, Islam, and Women,” American Political Science Review 102:1 (February
2008):107-123. [web]
#Eva Bellin, “Faith in Politics: New Trends in the Study of Religion and Politics,” World Politics
60:2 (January 2008): 315-347. [web]
Aliens
#Jodi Dean, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures From Outerspace to Cyberspace (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1998).
#Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler, Charles B. Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a
Modern Myth (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003).
#Jodi Dean, Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy: (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2002).
#Jodi Dean, ed., Cultural Studies and Political Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).
#Robert Alan Goldberg, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
#Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
#Toby Smith, Little Gray Men: Roswell and the Rise of a Popular Culture (University of New
Mexico Press, 2000).
#Camille Bacon-Smith, Science Fiction Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2000).
#Jeffrey A. Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (University Press of
Mississippi, 2000).
#Howard E. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1997).
#Lincoln Geraghty, Living With Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe (New
York: I.B. Tauris, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 19
Russia
#Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Post-socialist Change
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
#Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in
Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
#Nancy Ries, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1997).
#Ernest Gellner, State and Society in Soviet Thought (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).
#Christel Lane, Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society—The Soviet Case (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981).
#Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics (London: Macmillan, 1979).
#James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New
York: Knopf, 1966).
Africa
#Caroline H. Bledsoe, Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time, and Aging in West Africa (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002).
#Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Past: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996).
#Angelique Haugerud, The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
#David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and
the Sociology of Power in Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1992).
#Achille Mbembe, De la postcolonie: Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique
contemporaine (Paris: Karthala, 2000).
#David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into
the Death of the Hon. Minister Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990 (Athens, OH: Ohio University
Press, 2004).
#Karin Barber, Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2006).
Music
#Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 2007).
#Tejumola Olaniyan, Arrest the Music! Fela and his Rebel Art and Politics (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004).
#Don Cusic, Baseball and Country Music (Madison: Popular Press/University of Wisconsin
Press, 2004).
#Kelly M. Askew, Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
#Bill C. Malone, Don’t Get Above Your Raisin: Country Music and the Southern Working Class
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
#Barbara Ching, Wrong’s What I do Best: Hard Country Music and Contemporary Culture (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 20
Film, Television, Fiction
#Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary
Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
#Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1988).
#S. Paige Baty, American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995).
#Laura Stempel Mumford, Love and Ideology in the Afternoon: Soap Opera, Women, and
Television Genre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
#Peter Davis, In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of Cinema’s South Africa (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1996).
#Terry Christensen, Reel Politics: American Political Movies from Birth of a Nation to Platoon
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
#Michael Paul Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie; and Other Episodes in Political Demonology
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
#Karl G. Heider, Indonesian Cinema: Popular Culture on Screen (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1991).
#Jack Boozer, Career Movies: American Business and the Success Mystique, by Jack Boozer
(Austin: University of Texas Press; 2003).
#Lila Abu-Lughod, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Symbols
#Cédric Jourde, “‘The President is Coming to Visit!’ Dramas and the Hijack of Democratization
in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania,” Comparative Politics 37:4 (July 2005): 421-440.
#Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
#David I. Kertzer, Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of
Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
#Murray Edelman, From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
#Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1988).
#Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, with a new Afterword (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1985).
#Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon, 1982).
#Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1967).
#Joseph R. Gusfield, The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
#Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance
Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
PS 855 / Politics and Culture in Comparative Perspective / Syllabus / Spring 2015 / 21
#Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1987).
#Lorett Treese, Valley Forge: Making and Remaking a National Symbol (Penn State Press,
1995).
#Robert H. Wiebe, Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1995).
#James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious
Freedom in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
#Robert Fuller, Naming the Anti-Christ: The History of an American Obsession (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995).
#Priscilla Wald, Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1995).
#David W. Conroy, In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial
Massachusetts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
#David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
#George Armstrong Kelley, Politics and Religious Consciousness in America (New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1984).
#Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1979).
#Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 1967).
Myths and Mythologies
#Michael Herzfeld, The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of
Western Bureaucracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
#Nachman Ben-Yehuda, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel
(Madison; University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).
#Adam Ashforth, The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford
University Press, 1990).
#Leonard Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1985).
#Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).