David Peritz

Faculty in Political Science at Sarah Lawrence College

Current Courses

For a course description and syllabus for a specific course, click on the name of the course.

Democracy and Diversity (POLI 3552 R)

Semester: Year / Level: Intermediate

Does democracy work only in homogeneous societies that overcome by assimilating sources of difference and diversity? Only in this way, it has long been maintained, can a people be sufficiently similar to form shared political understanding and projects. Absent some ethnic and ethical commonality, democracy deteriorates into the tyranny of the majority or a war of all against all. But we are in the midst of a subtle yet dramatic shift in democratic politics: democratic societies are increasingly multicultural and diverse; and citizens in democratic societies are less willing to "forget" their ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, and other differences in order to integrate into a dominant national culture. This line of development raises the question: Is it possible to achieve a consensus on fundamental political issues in a diverse society? Can the character of political community or the nation be fundamentally reconceived and reformed? If not, is democracy doomed? This course will explore these questions by examining three issues. In the first term, we will first study exemplary statements of the idea of democracy as they appear in the history of Western political thought, prior to the emergence of ideas of multiculturalism. Then we will examine the nature of social and cultural diversity, focusing specifically on the variety of dimensions of difference that appear in contemporary politics in America and elsewhere. Do race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, culture, values, religion, ability, and the like—in short the many ways in which difference is currently marked—represent real axes of inequality and/or deep, conflicting, and potentially incommensurable sources of identity? Or do they form a looser and more fluid matrix of cross-cutting distinctions? In the second term, we bring these themes together by surveying a number of recent attempts to rearticulate the ideal of democracy in light of experiences with difference, multiculturalism, and an increase in social conflict. We will consider a number of concrete case studies, including the best way to organize public education, to secure the general validity of law, and to regulate immigration in increasingly diverse societies. In the first term, the approach will be highly interdisciplinary, while in the second, the emphasis will be on sustained readings from recent works in political theory.

Intermediate. Some relevant prior course work and instructor's approval required.

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Modern Political Theory (POLI 3502 R)

Semester: Year / Level: Open

The discourse of political theory centers on such issues as the nature of political power; the conditions for its just and unjust use; the rights of individuals, minorities, and majorities; and the nature and bounds of political community. Rather than tackling pressing political problems one at a time, political theorists seek systematic solutions in overall visions of just societies or comprehensive diagnoses of the roots of oppression and domination in existent political orders. In this course, we focus on writers who shaped the modern Western political imagination, that is, the conscious and unconscious ideas about rights, democracy, community, and the like that we use to make sense of our political lives. Thinkers to be considered include Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, and Weber. In studying their work, we will seek answers to the following questions. What is the nature of political power? What is the content of social justice? Does democracy threaten basic individual rights? Is it more important to respect the individual or the community when the interests of the two conflict? Is a market economy required by or incompatible with democracy? Finally, this course will also pose the issue of the worth or legitimacy of European modernity, that is, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, imperialism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many "new social movements." Which of the ideas that jostle for prominence within this tradition are worth defending? Which should be rejected? Or should we reject them all and instead embrace a new, postmodern political epoch? In answering these questions, we will be forced to test both the internal coherence and the continuing relevance of the political visions that shape modern politics.

Open to any interested student.

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