INTR9060 The Cultural Politics of Religion, Ethnicity and Nationalism

2015

4.5

1 x 2-hour seminar weekly

INTR9049 has been successfully completed

Master of Arts (International Relations); Graduate Diploma in International Relations; Graduate Certificate in International Relations

The topic aims to introduce students to the problematic and ambivalent relationship between religious and ethnic identity, and the impact that each of these can have - separately or together - on politics and national identity. After a consideration of each of these elements in the abstract, along with alternative secular, civic and multicultural construction of national identity and politics, the topic will focus on case studies drawn from contemporary world politics (including Australia) and the history of the twentieth century. They will include both bloody and benign examples of religious and ethnic nationalism operating in authoritarian, democratic, and international environments.

Students will be expected to scrutinise an appropriate case study. They might choose to study a particular state, religion, ethnicity, leader, election, coup, political party or movement, persecution, conflict, war or genocide.

The topic aims to introduce students to the problematic and ambivalent relationship between religious and ethnic identity, and the impact that each of these can have - separately or together - on politics and national identity. After a consideration of each of these elements in the abstract, along with alternative secular, civic and multicultural construction of national identity and politics, the topic will focus on case studies drawn from around the world. Students should emerge from the topic with anuanced understanding of ethnic and religious nationalism and the politics of ethnic and religious identity as they manifest themselves in contemporary world politics.

Students who successfully complete this topic should be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the problematic and ambivalent relationship between religious and ethnic identity, and the impact that each of these can have - separately or together - on politics, and national identity
• Identify and isolate elements of ethnic and religious nationalism in national and international political discourses
• Analyse the problems associated with achieving, sustaining and improving ethnic and racial harmony in a variety of contemporary societies