Mar 28, 2024  
2013-2014 Academic Catalog 
    
2013-2014 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

POL 295-01 - Special Topic: Contesting Citizenship in India

1 credits (Fall)
Cross-listed as: SOC 295-01 . This three-week short course, taught by a Visiting Political Scientist from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, will introduce students to the conflicts over citizenship in independent India. Three major dimensions will be explored: citizenship as legal status; citizenship as rights and entitlements; and citizenship as identity and belonging. The first section of this module will encourage students to engage with questions of immigration, alienage and emigration, and the rights implications of these. The second section of the module will consider the rights of citizenship, and especially the historically embattled quest for social and economic rights. It will focus on the idea of social citizenship, and the new generation of rights to work, education and food security that have found support in civil society and the judiciary, before being enacted as law. The third section of the module, finally, will examine the Indian debate, traversing a century, between universal and group-differentiated notions of citizenship. Does group-differentiated citizenship satisfactorily resolve the problems of discrimination and disadvantage? Is it compatible with the construction of a civic community? Do the claims of cultural and social citizenship conflict?

Prerequisite: One course in the social studies division (Anthropology, Education, History, Economics, Sociology, Social Studies or Political Science) and second-year standing.
Note: Dates: September 10 to September 26. Short course deadlines apply.
Instructor: Staff