This seminar focuses on the importance of notions of history and social time for political and social theories. Moreover, it explores how time experience is related to ideas of political agency and social identity. Starting with the concept of modernity, we discuss how specific concepts of historical time have shaped political ideas and global politics over the past centuries. We interrogate the idea of progress and discuss its connections to colonial expansion and contemporary global politics. Moreover, we ask whether the idea of emancipatory politics is bound up with concrete notions of the future. Finally, based on our discussion of the roles time measurements, rhythms and speeds have played in industrial and post-industrial societies, we explore ideas about the importance of establishing other time-regimes for more sustainable, caring and democratic societies.

Literatur

Adam, Barbara. 1994. Time and Social Theory.

Allen, Amy. 2016. The End of Progress

Hassan, Robert. 2009. Empires of speed: Time and the acceleration of politics and society

Hutchings, Kimberly. 2008. Time and World Politics: Thinking the Present

The seminar looks at war and other forms of large-scale political violence from a normative point of view. In the first part of the seminar we will discuss standard just war theory and its main opponents (pacifism, realism). In the second part of the seminar, we will learn about more recent developments in just war thinking, including attempts to extend the reach of the normative framework to non-paradigmatic contexts such as terrorism or to technology-driven changes in the nature of warfare.

Literature

Lazar, Seth (2020): War. In: Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition). Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/war/ [Accessed 2 February 2024].

Credits and Assignments

9 CP: term paper and oral presentation (or review essay)

6 CP: term paper

3 CP: oral presentation (or review essay)

After two decades of democratization, some states in Europe have seen a decline in the democratic quality of their political systems. This seminar deals with these processes of democratic backsliding. The research papers to be read will empirically map processes of democratic backsliding and account for these with theories emphasizing different explanatory factors. In addition to research focusing on domestic factors, we will also discuss research that investigates the EU (in-)ability to stop processes of democratic backsliding in EU member states. After having actively attended the seminar, you will be familiar with empirical trends and specific cases of democratic backsliding and with theories that political scientists use to explain these. With the knowledge acquired in the seminar, you should be able to conduct your own research on the topic, for example in your term paper.

This seminar will revive a tradition of integrating academic teaching into ongoing research that has existed both at the universities of Hamburg and Bremen. The “Study Group on Causes of War” still works in this tradition, by establishing both a data set on armed conflict since 1945, writing dense case descriptions and by theorizing on the global development of armed conflict. Students will learn how to write a case study, how armed conflicts are discussed in IR and social sciences more generally, and what theories are invoked in order to explain global war development.
This will be a joint endeavor of students and teachers from both Hamburg and Bremen.
Literatur: Gantzel, K.J. / Schwinghammer, Torsten 2000: Warfare since Second World War, London: Routledge

This course includes a comprehensive examination of educational inequality which combines theoretical and empirical eivdence while taking a global perspective. Students will gain an in-depth understanding of the systemic and individual causes, consequences, and possible solutions to educational inequality. The course will analyze and discuss various factors that contribute to unequal educational opportunities such as socioeconomic status, origin, gender, and geographic location. Through discussion of empirical evidence and the application of systems thinking, students will develop a holistic understanding of the complex nature of educational inequality.
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Dieser Kurs beinhaltet eine umfassende Diskussion der Ungleichheit im Bildungswesen, die theoretische und empirische Erkenntnisse diesbezüglich kombiniert und dabei eine globale Perspektive einnimmt. Die Studierenden erlangen ein vertieftes Verständnis der systemischen und individuellen Ursachen, Folgen und möglichen Lösungen für Bildungsungleichheit. Im Kurs werden verschiedene Faktoren die zu ungleichen Bildungschancen beitragen wie sozioökonomischer Status, Herkunft, Geschlecht und geografische Lage analysiert und diskutiert. Durch die Diskussion empirischer Belege und die Anwendung eines systemischen Denkens werden die Studierenden ein ganzheitliches Verständnis für die komplexe Natur von Bildungsungleichheit entwickeln.

In most parts of the world, political dynamics can no longer be understood as being domestic. To different degrees, political conflict, political forms, and also policy-making is co-determined by transnational dynamics and international actors. This colloquium is a forum for the discussion of such phenomena from different research fields: conflict studies, global social policy, state formation, global political sociology. The colloquium is also intended to bring BA and MA students into contact with PhD candidates and post-doc scholars working on related subjects.

This course aims to introduce students to oTree, a versatile framework based on Python to develop and conduct online experiments in social sciences. oTree is a leading framework used for academic research and has been utilized by organizations such as the World Bank and OECD. This course is suited for absolute beginners and semi-beginners. No prior programming knowledge is required. We will start with basic Python knowledge and then move on to the basics of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. We will not delve into the details of these programming languages but will cover the basics needed for oTree. This course is not a substitute for other programming courses. Most of our lecture hours will be spent programming social experiments. This course assumes a basic understanding of experimental methodology in social sciences, but I will also briefly introduce each experiment at the beginning of each session. Participants will gain the necessary knowledge to program experiments of simple complexity in oTree and to conduct them online. They will also have the opportunity to discuss specific programming issues encountered during the development of their own projects. At the end of the semester, participants are expected to come up with their own idea for an experiment, give a short presentation, and program it in oTree.

Literature

Chen, D. L., Schonger, M., Wickens, C. 2016. oTree—An open-source platform for laboratory, online, and field experiments, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 9: 88-97.

Online Resource: http://www.otree.org/
Online Resource: https://otree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Online Resource: https://www.otreehub.com/projects/?featured=1

Credits and Assignments

6 CP: At the end of the semester, participants are expected to come up with their own idea for an experiment, give a short presentation, and program it in oTree.

For over a decade, the social and behavioral sciences faced a crisis. This stems from an awareness that research and findings are not as reliable as we hope. This lack of reliability stems from institutional benchmarking, for-profit publishing companies, a culture of workaholism, a lack of transparency, stark inequalities within science and a growing mistrust of science by the public. This course introduces students to the crisis of science as it affects the social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, political science, geography, psychology and various interdisciplinary related fields. It covers both problems and solutions to improve science. Some core topics are p-hacking, ethics, HARKing, reproducible workflows, sharing data and public science. The students engage in readings, presentations and exercises. Their final grade will be based on an ‘action project’, where they develop a small project, or project idea, that will have an impact on science. This could be anything, and might include for example a blog post, editing Wikipedia, hosting a public knowledge event, pushing for open science at the university. No special prior methods or theoretical knowledge is necessary. The course will be primarily in English, although German Hausaufgabe und Readings are acceptable.

Relevant disciplines

Political Science, Media & Communication, Psychology, Social Psychology, Economics, Sociology, Geography, Philosophy & any interdisciplinary Social and Behavioral Sciences

Preparatory reading

Christensen, Garret, Jeremy Freese, and Edward Miguel. 2019. "What is Ethical Research?" Chapter Two inTransparent and Reproducible Social Science Research. Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press. pp. 11-27.

In a first step, we discuss different texts on the variety of capitalist development in relation to welfare state development.
The second step is to highlight challenges of welfare capitalism as we know it.
Finally, we discuss some concepts on how to develop welfare state capitalism in the future.

preparatory literature:

Literature will be provided in Stud.IP

Art der Prüfungsleistung (CP) [credits and exams]:
You can achieve both 3 and 6 CP for the Master in Social Policy.
The seminar will be held as a block seminar on Fridays