This lecture course provides students with a comprehensive introduction to the international relations of the People’s Republic of China. China’s foreign relations during the Cold War as well as contemporary diplomatic, security and economic issues will be examined to identify and explain China’s foreign policy goals and their implementation since 1949. Throughout, this course will investigate the sources of conflict and cooperation in China’s behavior, assessing competing explanations for key events and policies. Readings will be drawn from political science, history, and international relations theory.

This course explores the leading theoretical and methodological approaches to studying China’s interaction with the international system since 1949. Readings include books and articles that integrate the study of China’s foreign policy with the field of international relations.

China’s rise as a great power raises important questions about how that power might be used in its relations with other states. Nowhere are such questions more salient than in the future trajectory of China’s conflict behavior, including its approach to deterrence, crisis management and the use of force. To explore these important questions in China’s international relations, this seminar examines the evolution of Chinese strategic thought, in primary sources as well as its reflection in the interactions among Chinese states and between China and other states.

This course provides an introduction to the major popular music cultures of the Chinese-speaking world. We will consider a wide variety of genres, from Shanghainese shidaiqu to Cantopop to Taiwanese rap, with the goal of listening beyond the notion of a monolithic “Chinese popular music” to something more dynamic, multivocal, and translocal. We will ask: What, if anything, is so “Chinese” about Chinese popular music? How does popular music participate in the formation of identities for artists and audiences in these areas? How does it enable the articulation of diverging social and political values while also facilitating meaningful connections among disparate communities? We will approach these questions through a diverse array of source materials, including sound recordings, music videos, films, and online multimedia.

This course is the continuation of 21G.105. It is designed to further help students develop sophisticated conversational, reading and writing skills by combining traditional textbook material with their own explorations of Chinese speaking societies, using the human, literary, and electronic resources available at MIT and in the Boston area. Some special features of Chinese society, its culture, its customs and habits, its history, and the psychology of its people are introduced. The class consists of reading, discussion, composition, network exploration, and conversational practice. The course is conducted in Mandarin.

This course is the continuation of 21G.104/108. It is designed to further help students develop sophisticated conversational, reading and writing skills by combining traditional textbook material with their own explorations of Chinese speaking societies, using the human, literary, and electronic resources available at in the Boston area. Some of special features of Chinese society, its culture, its customs and habits, its history, and the psychology of its people are be introduced. The class consists of reading, discussion, composition, network exploration, and conversational practice. The course is conducted in Mandarin.

This course’s aims are two-fold:

to offer students the theoretical and practical tools to understand how and why cities become torn by ethnic, religious, racial, nationalist, and/or other forms of identity that end up leading to conflict, violence, inequality, and social injustice; and
to use this knowledge and insight in the search for solutions

As preparation, students will be required to become familiar with social and political theories of the city and the nation and their relationship to each other. They also will focus on the ways that racial, ethnic, religious, nationalist or other identities grow and manifest themselves in cities or other territorial levels of determination (including the regional or transnational). In the search for remedies, students will be encouraged to consider a variety of policymaking or design points of entry, ranging from the political- institutional (e.g. forms of democratic participation and citizenship) to spatial, infrastructural, and technological interventions.

Citizen participation is everywhere. Invoking it has become de rigueur when discussing cities and regions in the developing world. From the World Bank to the World Social Forum, the virtues of participation are extolled: From its capacity to “deepen democracy” to its ability to improve governance, there is no shortage to the benefits it can bring. While it is clear that participation cannot possibly “do” all that is claimed, it is also clear that citizen participation cannot be dismissed, and that there must be something to it. Figuring out what that something is — whether it is identifying the types of participation or the contexts in which it happens that bring about desirable outcomes — is the goal of the class.

Portraits de femmes engagées pour le bien commun

Short Description:
Série de 31 portraits de femmes engagées pour le bien commun, du XVIIIe siècle à 2014, sur tous les continents.

Long Description:
Ce livre propose les portraits de 31 femmes de différents pays et de différentes époques qui ont un point commun : elles se sont engagées à un moment de leur vie pour transformer la société dans laquelle elles vivaient, dans l’espoir de la rendre plus vivable, plus juste, plus équitable, plus libre. Le cœur du message est que la politique n’est pas l’affaire d’une seule élite, les citoyens et citoyennes doivent et peuvent se la réapproprier. D’Olympe de Gouges, rédactrice de la Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne en 1791 à Laure Waridel, militante environnementaliste québécoise, en passant par Wangari Maathai (Kenya) ou Irena Sendler (Pologne), découvrez ces femmes ordinaires devenues exceptionnelles par leur engagement en faveur du bien commun. Une production de l’Association science et bien commun, au profit d’Accès savoirs, la boutique de science de l’Université Laval qui œuvre à rapprocher les étudiantes et étudiants de la société civile. Pour plus de renseignements, consultez scienceetbiencommun.org et accessavoirs.ulaval.ca.

Word Count: 60160

ISBN: 978-2-9814827-3-0

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Portraits de femmes engagées pour le bien commun

Short Description:
Série de 31 portraits de femmes engagées pour le bien commun, de la Révolution française à 2014, sur tous les continents.

Long Description:
Ce livre propose 31 portraits de femmes engagées pour le bien commun réalisés par les femmes et les hommes inscrits au séminaire « Communication, citoyenneté et démocratie » du Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval à l’automne 2014, dirigé par Florence Piron.

Word Count: 45460

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Comment s’engager dans des actions en faveur de la vie et du bien commun en cette période marquée par des problèmes d’envergure planétaire tels que le réchauffement climatique, la pollution accrue, l’acidification des océans ou les menaces sur la biodiversité? Des gouvernements tentent tant bien que mal de s’entendre pour agir.

This class is intended to introduce students to understandings of the city generated from both social science literature and the field of urban design. The first part of the course examines literature on the history and theory of the city. Among other factors, it pays special attention to the larger territorial settings in which cities emerged and developed (ranging from the global to the national to the regional context) and how these affected the nature, character, and functioning of cities and the lives of their inhabitants. The remaining weeks focus more explicitly on the theory and practice of design visions for the city, the latter in both utopian and realized form. One of our aims will be to assess the conditions under which a variety of design visions were conceived, and to assess them in terms of the varying patterns of territorial “nestedness” (local, regional, national, imperial, and global) examined in the first part of the course. Another will be to encourage students to think about the future prospects of cities (in terms of territorial context or other political functions and social aims) and to offer design visions that might reflect these new dynamics.

Using an inquiry based approach, Michigan high school students will learn about the foundations of American government by studying the Constitution and exploring how it works today.

This course is a service-learning, project-based studio course that focuses on collaborative design of civic media. Students will work in diverse teams with community partners to create civic media projects grounded in real-world community needs. This course covers co-design and lean UX methods, and best practices for including communities in iterative stages of project ideation, design, prototyping, testing, launch, and stewardship. Students should have an interest in collaboration with community-based organizations.

Civics is the study of our national government, constitution, and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Topics include democracy and other forms of government; legislative, executive, and judicial functions; the political process; and foreign and domestic policies. It also includes a summary of Washington State History and local native sovereignty.

This course centers on mechanisms of civilian control of the military. Relying on the influential texts of Lasswell, Huntington, and Finer, the first classes clarify the basic tensions between the military and civilians. A wide-ranging series of case studies follows. These cases are chosen to create a field of variation that includes states with stable civilian rule, states with stable military influence, and states exhibiting fluctuations between military and civilian control. The final three weeks of the course are devoted to the broader relationship between military and society.

In recent years both scholars and policymakers have expressed a remarkable amount of interest in the concepts of social capital and civil society. A growing body of research suggests that the social networks, community norms, and associational activities signified by these concepts can have important effects on social welfare, political stability, economic development, and governmental performance. This discussion based course examines the roles played by these networks, norms, and organizations in outcomes ranging from local public goods provision and the performance of democracies to ethnic conflict and funding for terrorism.

This graduate seminar examines civic engagement in international, national and local environmental governance. We will consider theories pertaining to civil society development, social movement mobilization, and the relations that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have with governments and corporations. During the course of the semester, particular attention will be given to the legitimacy and accountability of NGOs. Case studies of NGO and community responses to specific environmental issues will be used to illustrate theoretical issues and assess the impacts that these actors have on environmental policy and planning.

This course surveys the social science literature on civil war. Students will study the origins of civil war, discuss variables that affect the duration of civil war, and examine the termination of conflict. This course is highly interdisciplinary and covers a wide variety of cases.

The purpose of this collection is to present Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis, and to appraise its validity and shortcomings 25 years after the publication of his landmark article.The notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ is examined from a multidisciplinary perspective. First, the volume examines Huntington’s contribution from a theoretical perspective, focusing on his ideas about politics and the concept of civilization. Second, the individual articles also consider Huntington’s thesis in the light of recent events, including the conflict in Ukraine, the rise of ISIS, China–India relations, the electoral success of far-right movements in Europe, the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and the activity of the International Criminal Court in Africa. In sum, this book offers a vibrant and multifaceted conversation among established and emerging scholars on one of the most important paradigms for the understanding of international politics.