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Current Economic and Social Issues Syllabus

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Current Economic and Social Issues Syllabus Current Economic and Social Issues Spring 2014 The Evergreen State College April 14, 2014 Faculty Office Mailbox Phone Email Office Hours Peter Bohmer Lab 2, 2271 Lab 2, 2nd floor x6431 [email protected] Friday 4:00-5:30 Web page: http://blogs.evergreen.edu/bohmerp Sem 2, A3107 Weekly Schedule Tuesday 10:00-4:00 Sem II, A3107 Wednesday 10:00-1:00 Sem II, A3107 Friday 10:00-4:00 Sem II, A3107 On Tuesday and Friday, we will take a one hour lunch break in the middle of class, usually but not always around 1:00 P.M. Program Description The cracks in the United States and the global system it underpins reveal the truth behind the glossy advertising and public relations. These cracks are the political economic and social issues that persist, unsolved, in “good” times and explode as crises in hard times like the current period. We will study five major economic and social problems in this one-quarter program, Current Economic and Social Issues. We will begin by looking at the causes, human impact and social movements challenging contemporary poverty and income inequality in the United States. We will then develop the political economic analysis and tools to analyze the recent financial melt-down, the current economic crisis and related economic and social problems in the United States and globally. We will compare and contrast different frameworks such as neoclassical economics, liberalism, Marxism, etc., and examine causes, consequences and possible solutions for these five major contemporary issues: 1) Poverty and income inequality in the U.S; 2) The criminal justice system. racism and mass incarceration; 3)The injustices of a border- divided world that show up in immigration; 2) Work and low wage labor; and 5) The ecologically unsustainable and unjust global economy with a focus on global warming in the global south. This is our premise: the world we live in generates poverty, inequality and injustice but there are always opportunities to resist, and that solidarity will win out in the end. We will examine opposition to these economic and social injustices looking at social movements that have challenged them as well as examining reform and societal transformation. We will imagine and examine alternatives to the current economic system in the United States and how they might address some of the issues we are addressing, through our reading the essays in the book, Imagine Living in a Socialist U.S.A. We will spend one to two weeks on each of these topics, balancing theoretical assessments of the problem, stories drawn from real-life experience, and potential directions for organizing and social change and for policy changes. Students in small groups will make short presentations to the program on solutions proposed by policy makers, scholars and grass roots organizations to the economic and social problems we are examining. Students will also choose an economic or social problem to research and in their study will examine how these issues are being addressed by social movements and possible solutions to them. This program will combine presentations, films and workshops with an emphasis on discussion of the subject matter facilitated by both students and faculty. There will be seminar-type discussions of the readings and presentations each Tuesday and Friday and usually on Wednesdays. 1 Required Books Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness (new forward by Cornel West), 2012 David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes People Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, and Michael Steven Smith), Imagine: Living in a Socialist U.S.A. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, 10th anniversary edition, 2011 Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, Optional Book, Michael Yates, Naming the System (good basic book on how capitalism functions) Assignments: Note: Papers should be typed. Suggested number of pages for papers is for double spaced, normal font and normal margins. Quality is more important than quantity. 1) Write a two page paper on each of the required books. In your paper you should include ideas from the presentations and related films and a relevant quote which you discuss from the reading (Include page number). Each paper is due at 10 AM on the date where we finish the reading of that book. The due date is marked on the syllabus. For the books by Hedges and Sacco, Alexander, Bacon, Ehrenreich and Parenti, your paper should include the following: 1) Examine the main economic and/or social issues the author is analyzing. This should include the main causes of the problem; the economic and social impact of this issue, e.g., low-wage work; and the short and or longer run solutions being proposed. 2) In your paper, you should include both the author’s perspective and yours and how and why they differ. For your paper on McNally’s, Global Slump, explain the immediate and longer or more systemic causes and impact of the 2008 global financial crisis and of the “Great Recession”. You may want to include analysis from the movie, Inside Job, in this paper. For your paper based on the book, Imagine: Living in a Socialist U.S.A., explain what some of the authors and you mean by socialism, how it would function, how it is different from capitalism; and how it could address a few key issues, e.g., gender and sexual orientation, housing, health, criminal justice, art, welfare, etc. In your conclusion, write very briefly whether it is a possible or desirable alternative to capitalism. Suggested length for paper on this book---three pages. 2) For each of the books except for Imagine, Living in a Socialist U.S.A., students in small groups will make a brief presentation to the program on reforms or more fundamental changes put forward by politicians and policy makers, grass roots organization, and researchers to address major economic and social problem suggested by the reading. The group for the book, Imagine, will discuss ideas from Section 3 on “Getting There: How to Make a Socialist America” and relevant outside readings on strategy. You should also discuss possibility of fundamental change in U.S. From the seven books you read, you are expected to make one presentation in groups of about three, maximum of four. OR 3) Once during the quarter, you should also make a short, five minute presentation to the program on current issue of major importance in the news. I suggest you read The New York Times daily and listen or watch, Democracy Now, www.democracynow.org. Democracy Now is also on KAOS, 89.3 FM from 9-10, A.M., Monday to Friday. It is recommended that you put the article or other form of news on our program Moodle site before your presentation. Note: You should do seven of these assignments total. 2 Recommended: that you write six of the seven short papers; and do one presentation. Alternatively, you can do seven short papers and no presentation, OR make both presentations 2) and 3) above and write five of the seven papers. This is a modification of the original syllabus. 4) Students will choose individually or in groups an economic or social problem to research, including analysis of groups working to end the related injustice and examining possible solutions. You will research this issue over the course of the quarter. On Friday, April 11th, please submit a paragraph or two on the topic you choose and why you have chosen it. Talk to me about ideas, ask me for suggestions on topics, readings. The topic can be one we are analyzing or another major issue that is related but not a focus of this program. You should submit a developed outline in sentence form with a bibliography on Tuesday, May 6th. It should include whether you are doing it individually or in a group and if a group, who is in it, and the form your research will take—paper, short story, video, etc. Recommended length of paper--eight pages. If it is not a paper, you should submit a brief written summary and bibliography. Due: Tuesday, June 3rd. You will also make a presentation of up to 15 minutes to the program on Tuesday, June 3rd, Wednesday, June 4th or Friday, June 6th. The presentation is as important as the paper you write. Please put time and effort into preparing your presentation, don’t just read your paper! 5) On the syllabus, on the Moodle Site, and in class; there will be announcements of lectures and conferences of direct relevance that occur outside of class time. For example, there will be a field trip to Seattle on Thursday May 1st, 2014. It is expected you will attend that. For the other events, it is highly recommended that you go. At the end of each of these events you attend, write no more than one page on: what you learned, its relevance to your learning, and strength and weakness of the event. Please include this in your portfolio. 6) Portfolio—due Friday, June 6th. Please submit a bound portfolio where you include a cover page describing what you have done including which papers you have written; the specific presentations you have done, i.e., from 2) and 3) above; seminars you facilitated; and outside events you attended. There should also be a section with papers you submitted and got back; and a section with the one-page papers on relevant events outside of program time that you attended.
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