Courses:

Topics covered in this course are available in the calendar below.

This course is designed mainly for political science graduate students conducting or considering conducting research on identity politics. While 17.504 Ethnic Politics I is designed as a primarily theoretical course, Ethnic Politics II switches the focus to methods.

Graduate students specializing in any subfield are encouraged to take this subject, regardless of their previous empirical or theoretical background. Ethnic Politics I and Ethnic Politics II are designed as a year long sequence but need not be taken in order. Each class can stand alone, although it is helpful to take them in sequence.

The course aims to familiarize the student with the current conventional approaches as well as major challenges to them. The course discusses definition and measurement issues as well as briefly addressing survey techniques and modeling.

This subject has three goals:

• introduce students to the classic works on ethnic politics
• familiarize students with new research and methodological innovations in the study of ethnic politics
• help students design and execute original research projects related to ethnic politics

Readings have been drawn from across disciplines, including political science, anthropology, sociology, and economics. Students read across the four subfields within political science.

There will be a variety of short assignments. The major requirement is a 20-30 page research paper. Please see assignments for more detailed information on this paper.

For any use or distribution of these materials, please cite as follows:

Roger Petersen, course materials for 17.506 Ethnic Politics II, Spring 2007. MIT OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Downloaded on [DD Month YYYY].