CMCL-C 446: Cultures of Democracy
Class Number: TBA

TuTh, 4:00 PM-5:15 PM, Location: TBA


Instructor: Ilana Gershon
E-Mail: igershon@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier Hall 211
Phone: 856-3728

We are going to look at three ethnographic and philosophical
questions central to democracy.
What does democratic representation entail? How does a nation become
democratic? And lastly, what are a citizen’s obligations to their
nation – what constitutes a model citizen? In this course, we are
going to address all three questions from an ethnographic
perspective, exploring the cultural assumptions that underlie
different countries’ answers to these questions.  We will explore
how and when culture matters, asking whether democracy in Chile can
ever be same as democracy in Uganda or in the United States. In
addition, we will examine how people discuss politics in the United
States to look at what is American about politics here, paying
particular attention to the assumptions lying behind public accounts
of democracy in media, polling, congressional hearings, and so on.