Professor Mary Kaldor

Core course for the Global Civil Society stream of MSc Global Politics. Optional for MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc Development Management, MSc Development Studies and MSc Gender, Development and Globalisation.

This course will introduce students to the key conceptual building blocks of 'global civil society'. Instead of a weekly lecture and class, the course will be taught in weekly three hour sessions, alternating teacher led sessions with student led sessions. Each session will introduce a different set of concepts, explore their historical origin and how they apply in a ‘global’ world. The course brings together various strands of thinking, including classic texts on civil society and contemporary literature on globalisation, which are needed to understand and critically assess global civil society as a contemporary global socio-political phenomenon as well as a political science concept. Global Civil Society I and Global Civil Society II are complementary. Taking both is recommended but not obligatory.

This course introduces students to the theoretical foundations of the concept of ‘global civil society’ and invites them to critically explore and evaluate the empirical dimension and political impact of global civil society as an important contemporary socio-political phenomenon. The course will begin by outlining the changing nature of the international political system under the impact of globalisation, and will use the example of the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe to illustrate these changes. It will then introduce different definitions of global civil society and what these definitions imply for different actors (NGOs, social movements, civic institutions, etc). The remainder of the course will investigate the relation of global civil society to key dimensions of the modern world –the state, capitalism and democracy- both in theory and in contemporary practise. Students will discuss issues such as the impact of global civil society on global governance structures, global civil society activism and the role and responsibility of transnational corporations, and internet activism and its relation to democracy. The readings will range from classical texts by Thomas Hobbes, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx to contemporary thinkers like Vaclav Havel and Jurgen Habermas as well as the NGO and social movement literature.

The course will consist of 5 three hour lecture sessions in the MT and 5 three hour classes which will be student-led.

Two non-assessed essays during term and at least one presentation; one assessed essay which can be an extension of one of the two non-assessed ones.

Kaldor, Mary (2003). Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge: Polity Press; Anheier, Helmut, Marlies Glasius and Mary Kaldor (2001-2007) Global Civil Society Yearbook series; J. Keane (ed.) , Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London: Verso; Cohen, Jean and Andrew Arato (1992); Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press; Howell, Jude and Jenny Pearce (2001) Civil society & development : a critical exploration, Boulder, Colo. : Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Students are encouraged to explore the Global Civil Society Yearbooks available at the website of LSE’s Centre for the Study of Global Governance:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/researchgcspub.htm

The course will be assessed by one essay (3,000 - 5,000 words) (40%)l the assessed essay can be an extension of one of the two non-assessed ones and 1 exam (60%).