Syllabus construction time

by Chris Bertram on October 5, 2006

I’ve not been blogging much of late, partly because I’ve been making the transition between being on leave and getting back to teaching, a transition that involves desperately trying to get one lot of stuff finished whilst hurriedly updating the things that you last had to think about nearly two years ago. One such is “my final-year global justice course”:http://eis.bris.ac.uk/%7Eplcdib/tj.html , which is the usual compromise between things I really think they ought to know about and things that I want to talk about. The main changes have been the inclusion of a lot more material on territory, borders, immigration and the like (weeks 9 and 10), at the expense of things that they should know about already (TJ). (The lecture/seminar distinction, btw, is a little bit artificial on this course and basically distinguishes between teaching hours where I introduce the discussion and ones where students do.) Anyway, it isn’t set in concrete, and I suddenly realized at the last moment that I don’t really know the secession literature at all. So those of you out there that do, or think there’s something else I’m neglecting, feel free to comment.

{ 5 comments }

1

Matt 10.05.06 at 3:22 pm

Kit Wellman at Washington University has several papers on secession (as well as a book which might well recap the papers). I’ve not read this part of his work but he’s a good philosopher in general so I’d be surprised if they were not also useful.

2

ingrid robeyns 10.05.06 at 4:44 pm

You could take a look at the part on Global Justice in Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice. I think it’s problematic because it doesn’t do justice to Pogge’s post-1989 work, and because her list of ten principles of just global institutions begs many questions; but I’ve noted from other comments that many people think differently (many of whom are better qualified than I am in this field).

I wonder whether there wouldn’t be more and better material on gender and global justice. I confess that I have a stake in finding out – I promised to give a talk on gender & global justice by the end of November, but have a hard time finding good material.

3

harry b 10.05.06 at 7:13 pm

Secession — either have them read Allen Buchanan’s 1991ish book Secession (clear, easy to read) or, more ambitiously have them read:
1) The Ethics paper from around the smae time which contains the core of that book
2) subsequent essay by Daniel Philpot also in Ethics, plus subsequent essay by Kit Wellman in PPA (as referred to be Matt) and
3) the fantastically good “Theories of Secession” by Buchanan in the 1998 issue of PPA which contains “Where the Action Is”

Or just the third of those.

4

djw 10.06.06 at 3:37 am

One topic that seems conspicious in its absence is responsibility. Miller’s Ethics piece from last year as well as his JPP piece from 2001 are good, and from a quite different perspective a couple of recent essays from IM Young. I’ve read a few other good things recently too but I can’t recall what they are at the moment.

5

Chris Bertram 10.06.06 at 9:23 am

Thanks all (Harry especially). Djw is probably right about responsibility but as I have only 12 weeks, I’d better touch on it in passing.

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