POLI 435
Winter 2015
Tue, Thur 4:05 - 5:25 p.m.
Birks 203
Narendra Subramanian
Office: Leacock 318
Phone: 398-44400/ Extn. 094400
Office Hours: Tue, Thur 11:50 a.m. – 12:50 p.m.
or by appointment
Email: narendra.subramanian@mcgill.ca
IDENTITY AND INEQUALITY
Course Description
Deep social and economic inequalities persist between certain ethnic and racial groups. This is
particularly the case with the relations between the major racial groups of the Americas, southern
Africa and other former European settler colonies, and between caste groups in South Asia. This
course explores various aspects of the formation of patterns of social, economic and political
inequality between these groups, the efforts of disadvantaged groups to gain greater political
power and reduce these inequalities, and important changes in the relations between these groups
over the past fifty years. We consider race relations in the United States and caste relations in
India in greatest detail, but also discuss other similar phenomena elsewhere.
Readings
Extensive readings are drawn from the following books, which are available for purchase at the
bookstore:
Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley & LA: University of California Press, 1998)
Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000)
Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States,
and Brazil (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Oliver Mendelsohn & Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the
State in Modern India (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
A reader containing all required readings which are not from the above books is also available
for purchase at the bookstore. All required readings should also be on reserve at McLennan.
Course Requirements
Students will be expected to take a midterm exam and a final exam, write a research paper and
attend classes. The midterm and the final exams will be based on the required readings and
lecture material. The midterm exam will cover the first half of the course. The final exam will
be cumulative in scope, with an emphasis on material covered in the second half of the course.
The research paper should explore issues central to the course in depth, using both required
readings and additional pertinent materials. The paper should focus on explaining particular
political outcomes, and in the process discuss political processes crucial to these outcomes. It
should contain both theoretical and empirical discussion, and the theoretical and empirical
aspects should be related to each other. The paper should be about twenty pages long (doublespaced and typewritten) and will be due in class on Thursday, April 2.
McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the
meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code
of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see http://www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more
information). L'université McGill attache une haute importance à l’honnêteté académique. Il
incombe par conséquent à tous les étudiants de comprendre ce que l'on entend par tricherie,
plagiat et autres infractions académiques, ainsi que les conséquences que peuvent avoir de telles
actions, selon le Code de conduite de l'étudiant et des procédures disciplinaires (pour de plus
amples renseignements, veuillez consulter le site http://www.mcgill.ca/integrity).
Grading
The course grade will be determined in the following way:
Midterm Exam
Paper
Final Exam
25%
40%
35%
Students must write the midterm and final exams as well as the paper to pass the course. A
supplemental final exam will be offered, and will be worth 35% of the total course grade. The
deadline for the paper is firm. Extensions will not be given unless there are serious documented
problems preventing the student from completing the paper on time. There is penalty of 3 marks
per weekday that the paper is late unless an extension is given. No papers will be accepted after
April 16, the day of the last class, unless the student is given an incomplete. A student will be
given an incomplete only if he or she has serious problems.
Jan 6: No class
Part A: The Formation of Group Relations
I Groups, Inequalities
Jan 8, 13: Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley & LA: University of California Press,
2002): 1-15, 74-146, 193-204, 212-228
Jan 15: Margaret R. Somers, “Genealogies of Katrina: The Unnatural Disasters of Market
Fundamentalism, Racial Exclusion, and Statelessness.” in Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets,
Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008): 63-117.
Jan 20: George M. Fredrickson, “Race and Racism in Historical Perspective: Comparing the
United States, South Africa and Brazil” in Charles V. Hamilton et. al., eds., Beyond Racism:
Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner,
2001): 1-26 .
Jan 22, 27: Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984): 7-17.
Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern
Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 306-341. (Skim)
David Mosse, "A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power." The Journal
of Development Studies 46, no. 7 (2010): 1156-1178.
II Classification
Jan 29, Feb 3: Langston Hughes, "Passing" in The Ways of White Folks (New York: Vintage
Classics, 1990): 51-56.
Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000): 1-84, 179-184.
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy
of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998): 1-14, 274-280.
Feb 5: Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001): 3-18, 43-52, 198-227.
Part B: Race and Race Relations, with primary reference to the United States
I Pivotal Moments
Feb 10, 17: Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the
United States, and Brazil (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 1-64,
77-79, 81-83, 120-157, 217-249, 267-278
Feb 12: No Class
Feb 19: Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 1999): 117-180, 230-234.
Feb 24: Midterm Exam
Feb 26, March 10: Richard M. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black
Enfranchisement (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004): 1-22, 173-250
March 2-6: Reading Week
II After Franchise and Civil Rights
March 12, 17: Paul Frymer, Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999): 1-23, 87-119.
Linda Faye Williams, The Constraint of Race: Legacies of White Skin Privilege in America
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003): 341-365
Part C: Caste and Caste Relations in India
I Understandings
March 19, 24: Oliver Mendelsohn & Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination,
Poverty and the State in Modern India (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998): 1-21, 29-43.
Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2009): 1-27.
Rupa Viswanath, The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2014): 1-20, 240-258.
II Formation
March 26: Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the
Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 144-186, 233-265.
III Mobilization and Change
March 31: Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009): 81-117.
April 2: Papers Due
April 2, 7: Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North
India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003): 1-31, 89-114, 492-496
Kanchan Chandra, "Elite Incorporation in Multi-Ethnic Societies", Asian Survey, XL: 5 (October
2000): 836-855
Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 143-158, 172-221.
April 9: Oliver Mendelsohn & Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: 118-175, 258-271.