History 218A Fall, 2016

T 3:00-5:50, HSSB 4041

Professor Alice O’Connor, HSSB 3252

Office Hours: MW 3:30-4:30 and by appointment

e-mail:

Course Description and Objectives

History 218A is a core readings course for students of policy history. It considers policy from several different angles—as an instrument of governance; a reflection of politics and economic interest; an expression of culture, discourse, and socially-constructed knowledge; and as itself an agent in constructing social, political, and economic relations. The course is designed to introduce students to several important concepts, theories, and debates that have helped to shape this as a necessarily interdisciplinary field.

Among the major themes we will explore in this course are several that continue to anchor policy history as a field: the state and, more broadly, institutions of governance and various iterations of “institutionalism” as an approach to analysis; the “mediating” sector between the state (public) and society (private), alternately conceptualized as the public sphere, civil society, or a more loosely defined associational life; ideas, ideology, knowledge and political/social learning; politics, in the more traditional electoral and legislative sense but also as relationships of power that are at once reflected in, and shaped by policy; and political economy, understood as a structural and ideological underpinning as well as a historical “project” of policy. We will also deal with themes, concepts, and approaches that have only more recently, and not always completely, been introduced into the historiography, including the role of historical narrative and memory in justifying policy and in framing key debates; the role of place, identity, culture, and sexuality as “variables” in policy history; and the complexities of “citizenship,” and ideas about what constitutes citizenship, in an increasingly globalized political economy. Students will be reading both theoretical and historical texts, chosen from different time periods, places, and policy domains, and relating these readings to their own particular areas of study in policy history. Weekly discussions will aim to cultivate a conversation that draws on a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, while also encouraging students to look across different historical and cultural experiences and policy domains.

Course Format and Requirements:

The course is an intensive readings seminar, which relies heavily for its success on the full participation and preparedness of all of its members. Regular attendance is a must (please let me know in advance if you need to miss a session), as is careful reading, active participation in class discussion, and readiness to step in with stage-setting questions and observations when called upon.

Additional requirements include:

·  Each week, I will assign 2 students to prepare a set of questions to guide class discussion. These questions should draw out and clarify key concepts and arguments in the readings, but they should also help to steer our discussion toward their implications for the substance and method(s) of policy history.

·  One in-class report on an outside reading. Your report should be a concise (2-page) summary of the contents, including discussion of the central arguments, evidence, and the significance of the assigned reading for policy history, and for the theoretical issues we are discussing in the course. The written summary will be distributed to other members of the seminar.

·  An in-class “mini-seminar” on a policy topic of your choice. Designed to give you an opportunity to apply your own expertise in choosing texts and shaping class discussion, this assignment requires you to prepare a 15-20 minute oral presentation and a selective list of readings (including both primary and secondary sources) that you would assign for a full seminar session on your topic. Your presentation will be the basis of a 4-5 page paper offering a critical review of the texts you have chosen and how they work together to address key issues in policy history.

·  A final 12-15 page paper, due during exam week, that takes either a specific policy or a broad area of policy (preferably one you are already familiar with from your own reading and research) and considers how at least three of the theoretical perspectives we have examined can be used to illuminate questions that have not been adequately explored in the historiography. You should plan on discussing your topic with me in advance.

Required Readings:

John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927)

Gary Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (2015)

William J. Novak, The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (1996)

Jennifer Klein, For All these Rights Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America’s Public-Private Welfare State (2003)

Sherene Seikaly, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (2016)

Alice Davie, Poverty Knowledge in South Africa (2015)

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004)

Margo Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2009)

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998)

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)

Greta Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance (2011)

Journal of American History, 102: 1 (June 2015) Special Issue on Incarceration (select articles)

Various articles and excerpts listed below, to be posted on the course website.

Class Schedule and Reading Assignments

(** indicates PDF posted on website)

Sept 27: Course Introduction: What is Policy History?

Dewey, The Public and Its Problems

**Robert Kelley, “The Idea of Policy History” (TPH 1988)

**Hugh Graham, “The Stunted Career of Policy History” and Donald Critchlow’s response (TPH, 1993)

**Julian Zelizer, “New Directions in Policy History” (JPH 2005)

**Eileen Boris, “On the Importance of Naming” (JPH 2005)

**Paul Pierson, “The Study of Policy Development” (JPH 2005)

**Reuel Schiller, Courts and the Administrative State (JPH 2005)

Oct. 4: Conceptualizing the American State

Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion

**Theda Skocpol, “Neo-Marxist Theories of the State”

**Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State,’ 1921-1928,” Journal of American History (1974)

Oct 11: Law, Policy, and the Early American State

Novak, The People’s Welfare

**Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State (pp. 1-39)

**Risa Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights

Oct 18: Private Capital, Public Power

Seikaly, Men of Capital

Klein, For All these Rights

**Elisabeth S. Clemens, “In the Shadow of the New Deal: Reconfiguring the Roles of Government and Charity, 1928-1940,” and Alice O’Connor, “Bringing the Market Back In,” both in Clemens and Guthrie (eds.) Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America’s Political Past and Present (2012)

Oct. 25: Political Constructions of Citizenship

Canaday, The Straight State

**Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity (2001)

**T.H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class”

**Linda Kerber, “The Meanings of Citizenship” (JAH 1997)

Nov 1: Borders Without Walls

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects

**Cybelle Fox, “Unauthorized Welfare: The Origins of Immigrant Status Restrictions in Social Policy,” JAH (2016)

Nov 8: Knowledge, Policy and the Uses of Expertise

Davie, Poverty Knowledge in South Africa

**Ira Katznelson, “Knowledge About What?” (1996)

**Mary Furner and Michael Lacey, “Social Investigation and the State,” in The State and Social Investigation

**Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, Introduction (2001)

Nov 15: Development “Projects”

Scott, Seeing Like a State

**Cullather, “Damming Afghanistan” JAH (2002)

**Stephan Miescher, “Building the City of the Future,” Journal of African History (2012)

Nov 22: Governing Through Crime

**JAH Special Issue

**Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol (2015)

**Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters,” JAH (Dec. 2010)

Nov 29: Reconstructing Capitalism

Harvey, Neoliberalism

Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis

**Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion (2012)

Final Paper due: Friday, Dec. 9

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