Ethnic Politics I
MIT's graduate seminar surveys major theories linking ethnicity and politics, structured in three parts. The first covers general theory, including the social construction of ethnic identity and the limits of that construction. The second treats ethnicity as a dependent variable, examining forces like modernization and entrepreneurship that shape ethnic identities and their motivating power. The third treats ethnicity as an independent variable, looking at how ethnic identity affects political and economic outcomes such as party formation and prejudice. Weekly one-session topics move quickly across a wide reading list drawn from canonical texts in the field, favoring breadth over depth. It forms the first semester of a two-part sequence, though each course stands alone; the second semester goes deeper on select topics and adds a major research paper. Course materials include syllabus, readings, and assignments as published on MIT OpenCourseWare, free to access with no certificate offered.