ANTHROPOLOGY 297H

THE GOOD SOCIETY

(4 Honors Credits)

Fall 2005

Professor Art Keene

Office; 209 Machmer Office

Phone: 545-0214 (H) 253-3421

Email: keene@anthro.umass.edu

Office Hours: Walk in:.TH: 9-10 and 1-2 and by appointment – sign up on office door – hours vary from week to week.

TA: Deborah Keisch Program Adminstrator: Chris Felton

Office: 610 Goodell Office: 610 Goodell

Phone :TBA Phone: 545-2015

Hours: TBA Hours: TBA

Email: dkeisch@anthro.umass.edu Email: cmfelton@comcol.umass.edu

COURSE WEB PAGE: https://www.webct.oit.umass.edu

KEENE’S PERSONAL WEB PAGE http://www.people.umass.edu/akeene

OCSL WEB PAGE: http:// www.umass.edu/csl

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? Robert F.. Kennedy

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

While it is true that without a vision the people perish, it is doubly true that without action the people and their vision perish as well.

Johnnetta Cole

In a rich society, no one should be allowed to suffer from deprivation such as homelessness, starvation and illness,'' This ideal is essential, not simply as a matter of human good, but as the price we pay for a measure of domestic tranquility.

John Kenneth Galbraith

A holistic approach to education would recognize that a person must learn how to be with other people, how to love, how to take criticism, how to grieve, how to have fun as well as how to add and subtract, multiply and divide…It would address the need for purpose and for connectedness to ourselves and one another; it would not leave us alone to wander the world armed with plenty of knowledge but lacking the skills to handle the things that are coming up in our lives.

Jane Tompkins

PREFACE

In 1916 John Dewey. a leading philosopher of the early 20th century defined the central problem of the time as the impact of modernity on the way we as citizens relate to each other and on its role in the disintegration of community and mutual responsibility. He posed the problem as follows: “Our concern at this time is to state how it is that the machine age, in developing the Great Society, has invaded and partially disintegrated the small communities of former times without generating a Great Community.” Dewey was hardly nostalgic for the good old days of the parochial and perhaps xenophobic rural village. He was however concerned with how growing alienation of citizens from each other and from the larger institutions of society posed a threat to effective democracy. Dewey's vision of a good society began with supporting institutions that enabled people to find and appreciate their connection to each other.

In 1937 the columnist Walter Lipman published a book entitled The Good Society that addressed some of these issues. Since Lipman’s book at least two others have been published with the same title, one by the noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith and one by the sociologist Robert Bellah and his collaborators. These books, along with several others of similar titles (e.g. Charles Erasmus’ In Search of the Common Good, Noam Chomsky’s The Common Good and Herman Daly and John Cobb Jr.'s For the Common Good) continued to explore the fundamental questions raised by Dewey at the dawn of the twentieth century: how should we live and how should our lives be connected to the lives of others, and, to the degree that such connection is desirable, how may it be facilitated? These questions are certainly no less timely as we begin a new millennium. The idea of a good society has deep roots in western philosophy. The idea is inherent to biblical writings (both Old and New testaments). It occupied Greek philosophers and is central to all theories of democracy. But the question, "what constitutes a good society " is by no means an exclusive preoccupation of the West. The very core of Buddhist practice for example offers and eightfold path for “right living”.

We will spend our first few meetings considering how we personally envision the good society and how this vision meshes with the kind of world in which we want to live. We will not for the moment worry so much about how to bring that vision about. That will, mostly (but not exclusively), be left for other courses. Certainly bringing such visions to fruition must begin, like any journey, with a single step. And that first step is to articulate our own vision. The next step will be to refine or expand that vision to generate a vision that is untainted by the cynicism or pessimism of the day. Therefore we do not begin by asking what we think is possible, but rather, what do we think is desirable or necessary. After we’ve shared our own visions we’ll return to the ideas of great and not so great thinkers of the modern and the ancient worlds to reflect on their visions. But we do not want to be limited by the visions of established philosophers or other professionals and experts. Our primary aim in this course is to liberate our own imagination and to extend it beyond what we already know to be true. Einstein claimed that problems cannot be solved by the same thinking that created them. Similarly, he believed that imagination is more important than intelligence. So, we want to see if we can free our imagination to come up with visions of social possibilities that may not yet exist. This is easier said than done as the previous classroom experiences of many of us have been structured around mastering specific content or on conforming to expert knowledge or on reigning in and domesticating our creative impulses. So, part of the challenge of this course will be to rethink how we go about learning and what constitutes being educated.

Similarly, it is easy enough to sit in the classroom and engage in lofty discussions concerning how we ought to live. The task becomes more challenging when we temper these discussions with some understanding of real life experiences or people whose lives differ from our own. The challenge increases when we confront the contradictions between the ideals and the reality of American democracy (or the gap between theory and practice) as well as the contradiction between our own ideals and our own daily practice. The class includes a service learning component that requires each student to participate in a service project that will bring you into contact with real needs in the communities surrounding UMass and that will allow you to work side by side in partnership with people who struggle on a daily basis to persevere in the face of such needs. This experience invites you to inquire deeply into why things are the way they are and to challenge yourself and your partners to imagine ways that things might be different.

Anthropologists have often used the metaphor of a mirror to describe the consequence of living and working in communities that are unlike our own. We look into the other culture as if it were a mirror and we see ourselves reflected back and nothing ever looks quite the same as it did before. Our engagements with people unlike ourselves lead us to see ourselves, indeed, to see the world in new ways. The practical experience that you acquire through your service in the community will give each of you the opportunity to apply what you learn in the classroom to the real world and to bring the real world into your classroom. This engagement with the real world and its potential to open your eyes to new ways of seeing will thus serve as another catalyst to your imagination.

Dewey believed that participation, engagement and experience were the key to strong democracy, strong citizenship and effective education. We concur. We welcome you to this seminar. Come prepared to engage, to get involved and to find your connection with the other members of the seminar and with the communities in which you will be working.

ADMINSTRIVIA

There are a lot of administrative/logistical details for this course that you need to know about and we have tried to provide you with a comprehensive source – right here. However, the course is a lot more interesting than administrative detail. Therefore, you might want to skip this section for the moment and read about what we will be doing during the semester and then come back to read up on the details or how we will do it.

Required Readings: These books are available at Food For Thought Books, 106 North Pleasant Street, and Amherst.

Horton, Myles, The Long Haul. Teachers College Press (1990)

LeGuin, Ursula The Dispossessed . Mass Market Paperback. (1991)

Saney, Isaac, Cuba, A revolution in motion. Fernwood Publishing (2004)

Weisman, Alan, Gaviotas: A Village to Change the World.. Chelsea Green Publishing, VT (2002)

Additional Required Readings: We have compiled a small collection of articles and chapters to supplement the comprehensive case studies contained in the books list above. These articles/chapters will be available as PDF files on the course web site. We will try to get them all posted in the next 2-3 weeks. There will also be at least one hard copy of the readings available in both Art’s office and Deborah’s office.

Community Service Learning (CSL). The Good Society is a CSL course. As such it endeavors to link theory to practice by giving students the opportunity to apply the ideas we explore in the classroom to the real world. CSL classes bring the community to the classroom and the classroom back to the community. Guided reflection (oral and written) both in the classroom and with your field site supervisors helps facilitate this linking. Community service experiences force us to consider issues such as social justice, not as academic abstractions but as ongoing struggles that daily touch our lives, the lives of our community partners and indeed the lives of every person on the planet. They force us to ask challenging questions of ourselves and our society and to consider actively what it means to be a citizen, what it means to participate in a democracy and they way our societies ought to be.

The Good Society is the gateway course for this Citizen Scholars Program (CSP) and thus also serves as a first course in community service learning. (note; those students in The Good Society who are not members of the CSP and who have 3 semesters remaining at UMass may, on successful completion of this course, apply and receive priority consideration for openings in the CSP). In this role the course will consider some of the most fundamental questions concerning service and activism: e.g. what is service, what does it mean to serve and for whom, what are the different motivations for undertaking service, does /how does service differ from other forms of civic engagement including political activism, what role can service play in effecting social change and social justice, what is the role of service in the construction of a good society and what kinds of skills and understandings are necessary to engage in successful and meaningful service? The linking of these two concepts, i.e., service and the good society is no accident. We will explore a number of different visions of the good society this term. What nearly all have in common is an underlying belief that any good society rests on the active participation by and engagement of its members as well as a belief that the well being of ALL members of society is necessarily interconnected. These visions invoke either explicitly or implicitly a sense of connection, commitment, and mutual responsibility among members of society.

Community Service is an important part of this course. There may be times when you wonder, why are we doing service or why with these particular agencies? And when you wonder you should pose and process your questions with the rest of the class. But here is a short preamble to the answer which , we will explore more thoroughly throughout the term.

In this course we attempt to liberate our imagination from what we already know to be true. We ask, what does a good society look like? What kind of a society do we want to live in? What kind of society might we want to create if we could? The challenge of creating such a society will be taken up during your last two semesters in the program. We will not ask therefore, what is possible or how can we do this, but rather, what is imaginable. The task is not as simple as it might seem. Our imagination is always constrained by our culture and by the limits of our own experience. Many of us have had limited experience living with or working with people whose lives, experiences, values and orientations are quite different from our own. We do service for a variety of reasons in this course and we will explore these reasons throughout the term. But one key reason is that it gives us a chance to share in the lives of others who may not be like us. This fundamental anthropological experience is an effective way to free the imagination.

COMMUNITY SERVICE OPTIONS IN ANTHROPOLOGY 297H - THE GOOD SOCIETY

All students in anthropology 297h must complete a minimum of 60 hours community service in this course. In most cases, service performed for another service learning class may not be used to fulfill the service requirements of Anthro 297h. All students must finalize their service placement by the second class meeting on Sept 13 and must begin their service before the fourth class meeting on Sept 20. You will have a field report about your first day of service due on that date.. Service contracts must be filled out and signed by community supervisors and turned in to the program manager – Chris Felton, (OCSL – Room 609 Goodell) no later than 4 PM Sept 13. . Simlarly, anyone who wants to apply hours of service completed during the summer toward their program requirements should complete documentation by the 13^h. Anyone who has not completed a service contract by the first day of class should schedule an appointment immediately to meet with Art or Deborah or Chris Felton.

WHAT KIND OF SERVICE? The six organizations listed below are key partners of the Citizen Scholars Program. These organizations and the CSP are attempting to establish a long-term relationships in which we work together to create programs that will meet the needs of the communities surrounding UMass while providing important educational experiences for our students. These community based organizations (CBO’s) are involved in different kinds of civic engagement, ranging from traditional human service interventions to political activism. During the next four semesters representatives of each of these programs will join us either in the classroom or at one of our planned program activities.

Here are the contacts for our six key partners. We encourage you to get in touch with them immediately. We also will entertain specific proposals for service that does not involve our key partners. Those who wish to propose alternative service need to make application to the program in writing addressing the criteria listed further below.

The criteria for appropriate service placements include but are not limited to:

1. The placement is supervised by a staff member at a community based organization.

2. The placement must address a public need.

3. The placement provides an opportunity for learning and an opportunity for personal and intellectual growth.

4. The service must be unpaid.

Your proposal should address clearly the issues above as well as the following questions.

1 .How is the work that this organization does part of the solution and not part of the problem?

2. Would you have clear and regular access to supervision by one of the experienced staff? How and with whom?

3. Would you have opportunities for regular mentoring by one of the experienced staff, helping you to reflect on your action there and see the larger picture for the work you are doing? How and with whom?

4. As you grow over time, what are the possibilities for moving into new roles and increased responsibility in the organization?

Current Partners:

The Amherst Survival Center provides a variety of services to people of the Amherst area including a soup kitchen, a furniture and clothing exchange, an emergency food pantry, and a variety of referral services. One goal of the center is to create a supportive community amongst the people who use the ASC’s services. Seventy percent of the people who use the Center also volunteer there. They need volunteers who want to help create and sustain this community. Usage of the ASC has gone up markedly in the last year in response to the economic downturn. Contact: 549-3968, ext. 205.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Hampshire County sponsors a variety of mentoring programs for youth at risk. The primary program requires a full year commitment and access to a car or other reliable transportation; it also has flexible hours. Note: This program requires a background check and interview. This usually takes a minimum of two months. Therefore, if you did not begin the process during the summer, you should not plan to use BBBS as your primary service in the fall term. Contact BBBS at 253-2591.

Food Bank of Western Massachusetts collects and redistributes tons of surplus food for organizations that feed the hungry. The Food Bank operates a farm, conducts the second harvest (which salvages food left behind in fields after the main harvest), develops food curricula for schools, and conducts research in food policy. Volunteers are needed to help conduct development (fundraising) activities, research food policy, and mobilize campus volunteers to do Second Harvest. The Food Bank is located in Hatfield and is not located on a bus route so a car is helpful though some projects can be done largely from campus. Contact the Foodbank Internship Coordinator at 247-9738.

Nueva Esperanza runs numerous health, economic, and social programs designed to serve the community of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Housing and Neighborhood Development, Health and Human Services, and Economic Development are initiatives implemented by Nueva and include the YouthBuild Project (building rehabilitation and new home construction), after school programs (K-12), as well as youth and community activities (such as tutoring, workshops, and arts and crafts classes). The Economic Development unit provides technical assistance for small business start-ups. The ability to speak Spanish is not a necessity for service. Nueva Esperanza is not located on a bus route. Contact John Linehan at 533-9442 .

Democracy Matters: DM is a non-partisan student activitst organization that mobilizes students around the issue of private money in politics and other pro-democracy reforms. DM informs and engages college students and communities in efforts to strengthen our democracy. With 52 campus-based chapters throughout the country students in DM encourages the emergence new generation of reform-minded leaders.. During the fall term DM will members will mobilize Umass students and plan a campaign around a pro-democracy issue – most likely the upcoming fair elections initiative in MA. During the spring, the DM chapter will take the campaign into the surrounding communities. For background information check out. www.democracymatters.org. For info on volunteering speak to the campus coordinator – Shawn Robinson (who is a member of this class).

Bangs Center Teen Program: The Bangs Center after school teen program is a wholly volunteer effort, conceived, designed, implemented and managed by UMass students. It provides a safe space for teens to hang out after school and to receive stealth mentoring from college students. The center runs M-F from 2:30-5. For more information, contact Ventura Perez at bioarchman@aol.com

Everywoman’s Center (EWC) is a multicultural campus-based women’s center that provides leadership in promoting educational access and equity for women to empower women to take full control of their lives.  EWC works to stop all forms of oppression, particularly those based on gender, age, class, ethnicity, race, mental and physical ability, sexual orientation and spiritual belief.  Placements at EWC include: the Educator/Advocate Program that trains individuals to be educators and advocates around issues of rape awareness, sexual harassment, and teen dating violence etc.; the Counselor/Advocate program that trains individuals to be crisis counselors on the C/A hotline; the Resource and Referral Program that trains individuals to be resources for people seeking assistance or guidance from EWC; and the Women of Color Leadership Network that woks with and provides support, refuge and community for women of color.  Contact EWC at 545-0883 Note: Placements at EWC require intensive training and a year-long commitment

Emerging Partners:

Faculty for Israeli/Palestinian Peace: FFIPP is an international organization (with a new Amherst Office) that works to promote a just peace in the Middle East through active dialogue, outreach and education. The major activities of FFIPP have been to sponsoring American speaking tours of Israeli and Palestinian scholars and to organize study tours of Israel and Palestine by American scholars and students. Student volunteers and interns are needed at the downtown Amherst FFIPP office, Fall 2005

Interns and volunteers will work on the following projects/tasks

1 Help to organize tours on campuses in the US and Europe. Each semester FFIPP hosttours of Israeli and Palestinian students and faculty.  Work includes identifying and maintaining contacts with student groups and Middle East Study programs in universities and colleges in the US and Europe.  

2 Organizing a student and faculty international delegation to Israel/Palestine. At the end of each semester FFIPP  organizes a delegation to visit universities in Israel and occupied Palestine, meeting with peace and justice activists, faculty, students and community leaders.

3 Organizing an international campaign, Books Without Borders, among students, academics and researchers to donate, collect and deliver books to students in Palestinian universities, schools and NGOs under Israeli occupation.

4 Do research on foundations and work on grant applications.

5 Organize FFIPP educational events in the 5 Colleges area.

6 Help in organizing international academic conferences on Israel/Palestine and the Middle East.

Working with FFIPP will help students learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Middle East, conflict resolution and peace efforts, as well as international relations and US policy on the Middle East. Students will also learn about activism, organizing and running a non-profit organization. Students are expected to make a semester-long commitment to work with FFIPP and work at least 4 hours per week, with flexible work hours. Some work can be done at home with a computer. For information call 413-256-3598 or email: yoav@educ.umass.edu

American Friends Service Committee: Following the wars in Afghanastan and Iraq, some students in the program expressed an interest in using their service obligation to work for peace. In response to their requests we have begun discussions with the American Friends Service Committee, a national Quaker affiliated organization that undertakes political and educational campaigns that promote world peace and justice. While we have not yet discussed formal placements for citizen scholars with AFSC, you are encouraged to begin your own discussions. You can learn more about AFSC at http://www.afsc.org or you can contact the local organization at 584-8975.

MASSPIRG: The campus chapter of the Massachusetts Public Interest Group is now organizing campaigns focusing on issues of homelessness, energy, clean water, and voter participation. For more info, check out their web site at www.umass.edu/rso/masspirg and visit their office at 423A Student Union.

COMMUNITY SERVICE LINKS: We maintain a data base of over 100 Community Based Organizations that are looking for volunteers and interns. While not all of these listings are suitable for this class, this might be a worth a look. Check out community service links at http://www.comcol.umass.edu/csl/

Please note that it is YOUR responsibility to make arrangements with these organizations and that to do so you may have to visit them in person and be persistent. . Many of these CBO’s are understaffed and overworked and many are going through staff transitions at this very busy time of year. As much as they appreciate your service, you are not their top priority. Do not leave phone messages and do no wait for these organizations to return your calls and emails. You might have to wait a long time.

GOOD SOCIETY COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

(the rationale for these requirements is set out the class covenant, which will be distributed on the first day of class).

Attendance at ALL classes.

Conscientious and timely completion of all readings.

Conscientious and timely completion of weekly writing assignments (typically 2-3 typed pages/week).

Maintenance of a class binder that includes: your required writing assignments and your service log. (this binder must be turned in at the final class meeting).

Conscientious preparation for and active participation in the seminar (this includes conscientious talking AND listening).

Conscientious completion of a minimum of 60 hours community service in an approved placement.

Conscientious maintenance of a service log with at least one dated entry for each time that you “do service” at your service site.

Conscientious adherence to the agreements set forth in the covenant for Anthro 297H

Attendance at the CSP introductory retreat from Friday September 23 to Saturday September 24.

Completion of a final comprehensive reflective essay (approximately 7- 10 pages).

On the meaning of conscientious and timely:

Why is it essential to get work done on time? In this class we have adopted the framework of a learning community. This means that each of us comes to the seminar as a teacher and a learner and that each of us is responsible for our own learning as well as the learning of others. To the extent that we come to seminar unprepared, we deny others in the seminar our own valuable input. To the extent that many people come unprepared, they put an unfair teaching burden on others and they diminish the quality of the discussion and the overall learning. And the deleterious effects of failure to prepare are cumulative. The work we do in this seminar is not a set of isolated lessons but a complex interrelated whole. When we fail to engage the material deeply, it inevitable produces shallow discussions and analyses further down the line. This applies not only to reading but to writing as well. Writing assignments are designed to help you prepare for the in-class discussions. Completing them after the fact diminishes your preparation for seminar and consequently undermines the quality of the mutual teaching/learning that takes place. In addition, it diminishes the quality of your own learning as your responses tend to be derivative of those expressed in the class, rather than based on your own engagement with the material.

We expect all assignments to be undertaken conscientiously. What does this mean? It means that your written work should be presentable, well thought out and thorough. You should ask yourself if this is the case of every piece of work that you turn . Conscientious work should showcase a serious, thoughtful effort. If an assignment deals with assigned readings, then the writing should demonstrate clearly that the reading has been done thoughtfully, and that the writer is capable of making connections among his/her own thoughts and experiences and those ideas encountered in the readings. Conscientious work should not be thrown together at the last minute. It should not be either mechanically or intellectually sloppy. It should be something that you would not be ashamed to show to a friend, another professor or a Dean as representative of the kind of work that you do personally and the kind of work that we do in this program.

The writing that we undertake in this course is an important part of the kind of reflective practice that we think is essential to effective citizenship. None of these assignments are gratuitous. We encourage you to look at them not as obligations but as opportunities to stretch your mind, to explore ideas and to make sense of the world around you. We expect you to take them seriously and to take yourselves seriously when you undertake the work.

LINKAGES: Weekly Writing/Guided Reflection: Weekly writing assignments are designed to help you reflect on the relationship between classroom discussions, assigned readings, your real world service and your own life and how you want to live it. Writing about what you are reading and what you are thinking about is an important way to prepare for class and to process your ongoing learning. Assignments are typically posted on the web site on TH for the following week. These will usually consist of two or more questions, to help you reflect on your readings for the week (and also to help you prepare talking points for our in class discussions) and to help you reflect on your ongoing service. See Guide to Reflection , handed out at the class retreat.

Service Log: The key to learning in a service learning class is in reflection – the oral and written practice where we search out the connections between our own lives and those with whom we serve. Reflection helps us to make the connection between classroom learning and real world action. And it helps prod us to ask good questions about what we do and don’t know, and about how we can become more knowledgeable. While many of you have some significant experience at practicing reflection, we are going to try to build good reflective skills by starting from scratch. Each time you do service, we will ask you to complete a Service Log – a form that we will hand out in class and which should, by week 2, be downloadable as a PDF from the web site. The form presents you with some basic questions that you should ask of yourself each time you do service. It also doubles as a way for you to document to us the service hours that you are putting in. As the semester moves on, and certainly next term, we’ll expect you to move beyond the prompts of the log to expand your reflections. But for the moment this provides a sound structure to help you get started. YOU NEED TO COMPLETE A DATED SERVICE LOG FORM EVERY TIME THAT YOU DO SERVICE.

Late Work: Assignments are due in class on the due date designated in the syllabus (or revised in class). They are due whether you are there or not. If you must miss class (and we hope that you will not have to) we expect you to get your assignment to us anyway, either via a classmate, or by email. As we note in the grading contract - Late work will result in a grade reduction. Late work will not be excused except in the most unusual circumstances (e.g. you are in the hospital or in jail or in the midst of a family emergency).

Attendance: We place considerable value on attendance and preparation for class. Remember, the central theme of this class is the importance of engagement and participation in creating a good society. We envision this seminar as a learning community. As such, its success depends on the thoughtful contributions of each of its members. As we noted above, we expect everyone to approach the seminar as a learner and a teacher. We expect everyone to assume responsibility for their own learning AND to hold others responsible for sustaining a strong learning environment. When you miss class, you not only deprive the other members of the seminar of your participation and your unique experience but you potentially undermine ongoing discussions by not being up to speed. Should you have to miss class it is your responsibility to make sure that you are fully caught up when you return and that your written assignments are turned in on time.

In addition, because we strive to be not just a class but a community, your unexpected absence may raise concerns about your well being among your peers and instructors. Thus, in this course, if your absence is absolutely unavoidable, then it is courteous to let people in the class know, so that we need not worry about you, or, so that we can be of support if you need it.

Grades: Much of the work that we are doing in this seminar is not amenable to conventional grading protocols. Because this is an honors class AND a service learning class we expect that everyone who has enrolled will bring with them a high level of commitment and motivation and will do high quality/honors level work. We have tried to de-emphasize grades in this course placing an emphasis on qualitative feedback. Nonetheless, for those of you who worry about grades, the grading contact spells out precisely what you need to do to acquire a specific grade in this class.

All work in Good Society should adhere to the following guidelines In completing written assignments students:

1) should follow the directions carefully

2) should reflect a careful consideration of the readings

3 )should present a well crafted reflection that is concise,well organized and error free

4) should clearly answer the question as set out in the assignment

5) should not be thrown together quickly

6) should not play with margins or font to fit the space.

Failure to follow ALL of these guidelines will result in a paper being marked as unacceptable.

Evaluation of participation and citizenship – As noted in the grading contact all members of the seminar are expected to demonstrate good citizenship in the class. Your citizenship will be evaluated by the instructional team based on the following criteria: oral participation in class, demonstrated attentive listening ( as evident in the incorporation of or engagement with the ideas of your peers and your instructors in your reflections and analyses) and the demonstrated ability to learn from others in the class, respect for seminar members and contribution to their learning and growth).

ADDITIONAL GRADING CONSIDERATIONS:

SERVICE LOGS: We will not grade your service logs but we will read them at regular intervals. In order to get a grade of B+ or higher in the class your service log must be consistently thoughtful and thorough and you must conscientiously fulfill all of your obligations to your service organization. In order to get a grade of at least B your service log must be acceptable (see guidelines for conscientious work above) and you must receive an acceptable evaluation from your service site supervisor. Failure to complete an acceptable service log or failure to fulfill your obligations to your service organization (this includes missing service dates, arriving late or leaving early) will result in a grade of less than B.

DEMONSTRATED PERSONAL AND INTELLECTUAL GROWTH: In order to get a grade of B+ or higher students must demonstrate personal and intellectual growth during the term. This will be assessed based on the total portfolio of work submitted at the end of the term.

PORTFOLIO OF WORK: at the end of the term, students must present a well organized portfolio of work that includes 1) all of their graded weekly assignments (you must include the copies with the original staff comments). 2) your mid-term and final essays 3) your complete set of service logs 4) any other documentation of artifacts of the semester that you wish to share with us. In order to receive a grade of B+ or higher you may not have ANY of these items missing from your portfolio.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GRADING PROTOCOLS PLEASE SEE KEENE EARLY IN THE TERM.

BUILDING COMMUNITY

September Retreat: Drawing on the strong recommendations of previous Citizen Scholars, the program begins with an overnight retreat. The retreat presents an opportunity for students and program staff to begin to build a learning community among Citizen Scholars and to engage the members collectively in exploring the intentions of the program. The retreat is mandatory. If you are unable to attend the retreat for any reason, you will not be allowed to continue participation in the Citizen Scholars Program. The retreat takes place off campus at Camp Nawaka in East Otis, Massachusetts. Students and staff of the Citizen Scholars Program stay overnight in a simple setting which requires a sleeping bag. A list of other items that students will need to bring will be provided prior to the retreat.

Monthly Events: The Citizen Scholars Program sponsors a monthly evening forum that meets on the first Wednesday of each month beginning in October from 5:30-7:30. These events, which usually meet in the Butterfield Lougne are held jointly with both classes of citizen scholars and with the first year students in the IMPACT program. Pizza and drinks are served at 5:30 with the formal program beginning around 6:15. The forum is entitled Who Am I and What Do I Care About. Each month we will bring in a person of interest, a member of the University Community, a community leader, a political figure or even a celebrity (three years ago we had singer song writer Dar Williams) to talk about their take on the world and to take questions from the students. We’d be delighted to have students help us pick our guests so if you’d like to be involved on this committee please let us know through your steering committee representative. We expect all Citizen Scholars to attend these events unless they have absolutely unavoidable (scheduled class or scheduled job) scheduling conflicts.

Informal events: In the past we have usually scheduled a potluck and a movie night (last year we watched the film Gandhi) as out of class activities. These are enjoyable events if we schedule them before things

Get really crowded late in the term. They are not obligations of the class and we’ll only do them if there is a critical mass that is interested. But if we plan this we should plan it early before our schedules get full.

.

Class List Serve: Most of you are already members of the class list-serve goodsociety7@yahoo.com. We are in the process of forming a new list sever that is based on the University Server. Once it is up and running we’ll let you know via email – hopefully by week 2 of the course. Please practice good list etiquette by remembering that if you want to communicate with only one member of the class or if you want to respond to a question that was directed specifically to you – then please respond to individual email addresses and not the list. When you hit reply to a list posting , that reply goes out to everyone on the list. If you are not on the list (and we’ll make an announcement when its working) and would like to be, please send an email to Chris Felton (cmfelton@comcol.umass.edu) with the email address that you are currently using. The list is also good for sharing announcements, good links from the web and other good stuff. Please use the list as a tool for building community within our program.

One on Ones – Office hours offer you an opportunity to get to know us (the staff) better and vice versa. We encourage you to come to our office hours and continue the conversations we begin in class. We will also ask each of you to meet with each of us twice during the term (once in Sept and once in November) in what we call a one on one – a meeting in which we set aside the time to get to know one another better.

WEBCT: This year we will maintain the course web site on WEBCT. We will be posting all class assignments on the web site, a course calendar and many of the course readings. In addition, you will be posting some of your written work on the site to share with your peers. This gives you a chance to share your ideas more fully with others in the class and we have found that our discussions are much more rigorous when we come to class when we already have some idea of what our peers are thinking. This approach was well received by the CS5’s and they have encouraged us to continue giving students opportunities to share their work with each other. We will provide an orientation of how to post your work on the web site early in the term. The site can be reached at www.webct.oit.umass.edu. You must have an active OIT account to access the site. Once you sign in you will be provided with a list of all of your active webct classes. All you need to do is click on the link for Anthro297h.

CALENDAR OF EVENTS -THE COURSE MAP

The Structure of the Class

We want to use the semester to explore a sufficient number of concrete examples of “Good Societies” in order to jump start our imagination. This is no small task. We are all culturally constrained by our sense of human nature and human possibility. We know certain things to be true because our range of experience tells us that this is the way things are. By stepping outside of our known experience, by looking beyond the world that we know, we also open up our imagination to a broader range of possibilities. Hence- our method is pretty simple – at least on the surface. By exploring case studies of societies that either wholly or partially exhibit characteristics that we find to be both desirable and perhaps outside the range of what we may have thought to be possible – we open ourselves up to considering what else might be possible (that we previously considered to be impossible).

My (Keene) own vision of a good society includes an expectation that every adult would be able to engage in life work that is meaningful, fulfilling and sustaining. I have been lectured by economics students that such an aspiration is pretty much impossible – indeed, the prospect of full employment, never mind, with meaningful work, is an economic impossibility in a modern economy. Yet, I spent nearly 14 years of my life working in an economy (the Israeli Kibbutz) that provided an absolute guarantee of life-long meaningful work, unconditionally to every member of society. The failure to consider this possibility is not just a failure of the imagination but a failure to acknowledge the empirical reality of the modern world. And if we can’t even imagine what actually exists, how can we liberate ourselves to imagine what never was but ought to be?

The bulk of the semester is designed to look at a handful of case studies in some detail. These cases – the Israeli Kibbutz, the Eco-village of Gaviotas in Columbia, the fictional anarchist planet of Annares, The modern state of Cuba, and the historic New Deal from United States give us a broad range of possibilities for imagining what a good society might look like. But in making this in-depth inquiry we sacrifice breadth. There are thousands of interesting experiments in good living from around the world that we might have looked at. But past students in Good Society have recommended that we choose depth over breadth and that is what we have done. Nonethess, we will, try to flavor our discussions with references to other examples from outside of the syllabus and we invite you to do the same.

Political/Theoretical Orientation: We are well aware of the progressive bias in our approach to the good society. It is our belief that most published discussions of a good society share a kinship to Dewey’s notion of a Great Community grounded in justice, engagement and mutual commitment. The good society IS, fundamentally, a progressive concept. This is a perspective that we on the staff share and it dominates the diverse selections in the syllabus. But there are visions of a good society that stand in contrast to the social justice/engaged democracy/promotion of the common good model. For example, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, which elevates individualism and selfishness to the highest of values stands in contrast to Dewey’s progressive vision. Plato’s elitist vision of the good society has justice for the elites only at the expense of the common people. And William Bennett envisions a good society as one in which conformity and obedience prevail and in which privilege is essential but the benefits of which, do eventually and necessarily trickle down to the less fortunate. While we have not included these or other exclusionary visions in the syllabus there is plenty of room for you to explore them and introduce them to the forum throughout the term . But it’s really up to you to take the initiative.

A Word About the Required Readings: We started with a reading list that was about three times as long as the one in this document. We paired the list down over the summer to give us one or two provocative readings for each week. Most of the readings are short and non-technical but their simplicity should not be mistaken for vacuity. Each reading is meant to provoke a discussion about social possibilities. You need not agree with the readings in order to use them effectively to help you develop your own ideas. In keeping with our desire to create citizen scholars, that is, engaged citizens who have mastered the tools of inquiry, we have compromised on breadth in order to help you hone your skills to promote depth of inquiry.. But we hope that at least some of these readings will inspire you to read further. In many instances, the readings represent a single chapter from a book but we hope that the reading will provoke you to go on to read the entire book or to seek out others..To this end we will maintain a running supplemental bibliography on the web site to assist you in expanding your inquiry.

THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

CLASS 1 - Sept 8 (TH). Introduction: Visioning: Seeking the Good Society: The idea of a good society has deep roots in western philosophy. The idea is inherent to biblical writings (both old and new testaments). It occupied Greek philosophers and is central to theories of western democracy. Our first task will be to articulate our own vision. Therefore we do not begin by asking what do we think is possible, but rather, what do we think is desirable or necessary.

Some Global Questions:

What is a Good Society?

What is a good life?

What kind of a society do you want to live in?

Which of these features currently exist in your own society?

Activities:

Small Group work: Build your own society simulation.

Introductions

Begin Course Overview

CLASS 2 Sept 13 (TH) , Establishing the Learning Circle and Setting the Agenda. How is this class different from other classes? What to expect and why we do it the way that we do.

Some Guiding Questions:

What will we do this term and where will we be by the end?

How does this course prepare us for the next three in the CSP?

What are the questions we want to be able to answer by the end of the term?

What are the expectations that we have of the course and each other?

How can we choose an appropriate service site and prepare for a rewarding service experience?

Whatza learning community and why are we trying to become one?

What do we need to do to make sure that we succeed as a learning community?

Actvities: (all aimed at creating transparency)

Complete Introductions

Course Overview – syllabus questions resolved

Ground Rules

Learning to Ask - Learning to Listen- Learning to be fully present

Collect Service Contrcts

Explain Service Logs and reflection

Thinking about how to read

Intro to political autobiography

CLASS 3 Sept 15 (TH) Introduction to Service Learning:

Some Global Questions:

What does it mean to do serve?

What do I hope to get out of my service?

What is the relationship between service and citizenship? Between charity and justice?

How can I prepare myself (and what do I need to know) to make the most of my service experience?

What exactly does it mean to make the most of a service experience?

What is the best way to think of the relationship between service and served?

How do the readings help me answer the above questions?

Activities:

Answer the questions above through a thorough discussion of the readings.

Required Readings:

Loren Eisley – The Start Thrower (posted below)

Keith Morton – Starfish Hurling and Community Service

Sarah Mosle – The Vanity of Volunteerism

Keith Morton- Campus and Community at Providence College

The Star Thrower

There was a man who was walking along a sandy beach where thousands of starfish had been washed up on the shore. He noticed a boy picking the

starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. The man observed the boy for a few minutes and then asked what he was doing. The boy replied that he was returning the starfish to the sea, otherwise they would die. The man asked how saving a few, when so many were doomed, would make any difference whatsoever? The boy picked up a starfish and threw it back intothe ocean and said "Made a difference to that one…."

Loren Eisley

Class 4 Sept 20 (TU) Introduction to Service Continued. The role of anthropology in service or

Thinking about service as fieldwork. A continuation of the discussion from last week. We’ll also explore briefly the concept of human nature and review some of the ways that anthropological knowledge can expand our vision of what we know/think is humanly possible. We will also define the difference between opinion and analysis and discuss the role of theory in developing the latter.

Activities: apply a new set of readings to the questions we considered last week.

Add the question – how do you prepare to work in a community that is unlike your own?

Add the question: how does service intersect with privilege?

Endeavor to come up with a set of guidelines for how we ought to do our service.

Very brief reports (?) from first service activities (time permitting).

Readings:

Michelle Camacho – Power and Privielge: Community Service Learning in Tijuana

John McKNight – Do no harm

Richard Lee – Eating Christmas in the Kalahari

You are also invited to read ahead and explore Robert Coles Chapter from The Call of Service. We’ll explain why this might be a good idea in class.

CLASS 5 SEPT 22 (TH) VISIONING. Sharing our own personal visions of the good society .

Global Questions:

What kind of a world do I want to live in?

What does a good society look like?

Note: not – what kind of a world do I think is possible or impossible!

Activity: Small Group Discussion Based on our visioning statements (to be posted on Web CT)

Reading: Horton: Long Haul – Chapter 1 and 2

Class 6 - SEPT 27 (TU) Elaborating on the Vision of Myles Horton: The Lessons from Highlander.

Guiding Questions:

What does it mean to live your life with integrity?

In what ways does the work of Highlander reflect a good society?

What can we learn from Myles and Highlander that will make our own education more effective?

What does it mean to be morally and politically literate?

How does one cultivate hope? How is this evident in the work of Highlander. What is the connection between hope and a good society?

How might we use Myles’ two-eyed approach to inform the community service work that we do.

What do you imagine Morton or McKnight would say about the work of Myles and Highlander?

Activity: concluding discussion of The Long Haul. Come prepared to share (and to explicate) your favorite passages.

Read: Complete Horton – The Long Haul

CLASSES 7-8 &9 SEPT 29 (TH),Oct 4 (TU) Oct 6 (TH): The Israeli Kibbutz And The Role of Cross-Cultural Studies. How can an exploration of societies other than our own, liberate our imagination and allow us to explore possibilities, that might, within the context of American Society, seem unreasonable? Can we use cross-cultural case studies to expand our understanding of what is humanly possible (i.e. our notion of human nature)? How has the cross cultural example of the kibbutz that you read for this week helped you think about your own vision of what is possible and desirable in a new way. Question: What are some of the attractive features of the kibbutz (or any other case that we explore this term) that are strikingly different from your current way of life? Why are they present and how are they sustained?

NOTE: Everything that you have read for this week was written prior to the current Intifada and the intensified Israeli military reoccupation of Palestine. The complicity of the Kibbutzim in sustaining this occupation and the current expansionist government within Israel certainly complicates the questions raised by and about the kibbutz. What are the bounds of a good society? What are we to make of a society that creates great good for its members but at considerable expense to outsiders? Does a good society have responsibilities that extend beyond its borders?

Activities: Slide Presentation with Q& A and story telling from Keene’s fieldwork.

Discussion of the readings.

Readings:

Patricia Wright - Family Time

Gavron – The Kibbutz – Retreat from Utopia – Chapters 1 and 2

Barzel - Philosophy of the Kibbutz

CLASS 10- Oct 11 (TU) Interlude: Relfectiing on Service

We’ll devote today’s class to reporting on how our service is going. We’ll start off by reading a couple of theoretical pieces on the meaning of service. Then we’ll seek our own connections among the work we do in class, in our lives and in our service placement. And we’ll try to refine our approach to both written and oral reflection on our practice.

Guiding Question:

How is your service going?

What questions does it raise for you?

What are the key elements of reflection – how can you get better at it.

Activity: small group reflective discussions

Read: Rober Coles – The Call of Service – Chapter 1.

CLASSES 11 and 12. and 13 Oct 13 (TH), Oct 18 (TU) OCT 20 (TH) Seeking the Good Society In a Fictional “Utopia”.

Imagine a society, if you can, in which there is no government, no police or courts, no private property, no money. A society without war or poverty. A society in which each citizen is guaranteed unconditionally all of the essentials of life from cradle to grave: that is, food, shelter, clothing, education, health care and meaningful work. Can you imagine such a place and what it would look like? Novelist Ursula K. Leguin imagines such a place and brings it to life in the world of Annares the centerpiece of her science fiction novel The Dispossessed. Leguin’s novel does not offer us a fictional utopia. She is well aware of the problems posed by her vision of planetary anarchism and the characters as well as their society are presented realistically with all of their “human” failings. But the novel gives us an opportunity to imagine something really different – though within the realm of human possibilities.

Because student imagination is frequently constrained by the cynicism and cultural myopia of the times, it is useful to incorporate into our explorations a novel – a piece of imaginative writing that is not constrained by what we know to be true or by what we can observe in the world around us. We could of course, teach the entire class based on fictional, theoretical and speculative writings – there is a wonderful body of literature out there that is appropriate. But previous students in this class have been resistant to using fiction as a catalyst for discussion. Many have been suspicious of spending time on cases “that are not real”. Some have been frustrated with a vision that is so removed from the way they experience the world.

We have noted previously the importance of expanding our vision and our imagination in the project of building a good society. We (the faculty) see fictional treatments such as Leguin’s as a useful and indeed necessary tool in this process. This is a well-crafted story. Leguin, who was raised by two prominent anthropologists – understands the human condition and she sees well the connections among social institutions in her fictional planets and raises for us very explicitly key questions about the consequences of different social arrangements.

Please try to approach the story from the perspective of an anthropologist. Ask yourself, how do these societies work? Why do they adopt the cultural traditions that they do? What would be the implications of doing things differently? What do these societies accomplish for their citizens? Try to avoid judging these societies based on whether you would like to live in them, or on the actions of some unappealing characters (all societies have them) or on the absence of perfection (evident in no society that I know of). Try to use the story as an opportunity to think about what is socially possible or socially necessary. Enjoy the plot (which is not irrelevant to our discussion) but try to track the larger issues that are of concern to us as well.

Activities: lots of discussion.

READ: The Dispossessed: All ( don’t worry, it’s long but it goes quickly)

Be sure to refer to the assignment sheet and the study guides.

CLASSES 14, OCT 25 (TU) 15 OCT 27(TH) and 16 Nov 1 (TU) THE GOOD SOCIETY AND THE PLANET. THINKING ECOLOGICALLY.

What is the proper relationship with the land, with nature with the larger ecological systems of which we are a part? Does a good society consider the long-term impacts of the actions of its members on future generations? Is this part of the everyday consciousness of people? Should it be? How should the imperative to grow, to build and to create be reconciled with the finite and unevenly distributed resources on the planet? Does building a good society require ecological thinking? How do social ecology (the interconnection of human relationships) and ecosystems (the interconnectedness of all living systems) inform each other? To what extent can technology and ingenuity resolve the problems that human societies now face? Is there a technological solution to every problem? What is the connection between technologies and the social systems that produce them?

WE will spend the next three classes discussing Alan Weisman’s account of Gaviotas, an extraordinary village in one of the harshest environments in the Americas. In the face of the most extreme environmental challenges and formidable political turmoil, the village of Gaviotas draws together an extraordinary collection of engineers, scientists, peasants and artisans who create what they regard as a successful example of sustainable development – people living in harmony with each other and with the planet.

We will want to consider whether the Gaviotan’s have built a good society. And whether we think that they have or they have not, their experiment should provide plenty of fodder for a lively discussion on the proper attitude toward the planet. We will also want to use this opportunity to consider the issue of food. w We may agree that the right to eat is a fundamental human right and that a good society insures that none of its members go hungry. But what form should this feeding of society take. Does Gaviotas provoke any questions about our own approaches to food in our Fast Food Nation?

Read: Weisman: Gaviotas. All.

Class 17 NOV 3 (TH) Service Interlude: The Ethics of Service

Today we’ll consider the question of ethics – what does it mean to do the right thing (and how might this vary from society to society). Is a good society and ethical society? What kind of ethics does one find in a good society. We’ll try our hand at resolving some ethical scenarios and compare the results.

Activities: Role Playing and/or ethical scenarios.

Discussion of the question – how does this issue apply to the service work that we are doing?

Read: Randy Cohen – The Good the Bad and the Difference- excerpts

Class 18 and 19 Nov 8 (TU) and Nov 10 (TH) Mini Cases – we will devote this week to the study of mini cases – small case studies in modeling the good society. We’ll divide the class into four groups and each will take responsibility for learning about and teaching about one specific case. Borrowed from the mini-tools pedagogy from ASB – this unit allows everyone to become a mini-expert in a particular kind of good society and allows the rest of us to learn from everyone’s expertise. In the end, we’re introduced to four additional ways of looking at the good society. In the dock for consideration right now are – The New Deal, Cohousing, The Tribal World and the Bruderhof ( a communal Christian Demonination) of New York State. Others additions or substitutions are possible and we’ll talk more about it as this unit approaches.

Activities: Plan key learnings around your particular case by caucusing with those who read the same case. Teach what you have learned to those who have not read your case.

Readings: cases to be assigned in class.

Class 20 Service Interlude and 21 Nov 15 (TU) and NOV 17 (TH), The Nature of Service in the Good Society and the question of required service.

How is the concept of service to others constructed in different societies. To what extent does a good society require some kind of expectation of service to others? We will share in what we’ve been able to glean from our individual readings and also consider the difficulties raised in our own service. This includes addressing a wide range of questions including those posed below:

How do we enter another community that is not our own? What right do we have to do so? What are the impacts of our presence on various constituencies within the community where we serve? What is/should be the relationship between servant and served?

What cultural baggage do we bring to our service?

What skills do we bring to our own service work?

What is privilege and how does it impact our ability to be agents of change in our society?

Who are you to do this? What right do you have to enter another community and presume to help?

What makes a good ally?

How do you communicate effectively with those who do not share your background, culture or values?

How do these questions inform our larger agenda of imagining, building the good society?

READ: Barber

Battistoni

Hyatt

CLASS 22 Coffee House – NOV 22 (TU) No formal class. Meet in the Anthro Seminar Room (or better yet, maybe at Rao’s to discuss issues that remain in our BIKE RACK. People who need to leave town early to get home for thanksgiving are free to do so.

Classes 23, 24, 25 Nov 29 (TU), Dec 1 (TH), Dec 6 TU. Cuba, A revolution in motion. Following the revolution in 1959 the Cuban people built a society that offered full employment, free education and ultimately produced the highest rates of literacy, theater attendance, and quality health care in the hemisphere. The Cuban constitution guarantees more human/civil rights and more freedoms more explicitly than any other constitution in the world. And today the Cuban people are engaged in radical experiments in grassroots democracy. All this was done pretty much from scratch – as local resources and capacities at the time of the revolution had been devastated by centuries of colonialism and exacerbated by years of cold war and aggressive economic embargos on the part of the United States. Americans tend to know Cuba as a dangerous dictatorship only 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Would we be inclined to see Cuba with its full employment, free health care and education, massive humanitarian aid to poor nations and emerging green consciousness as a good society if our own view were not colored by half a century of cold war prejudice. We’ll explore the accomplishments (as well as some of the failings) of the Cuban revolution as see through the eyes of an admitted partisan. This will not only give us a chance to learn about some social experiments that have not been readily accessible to us, but it will also allow us to think about the question of scale – what might a good society look like at the scale of a real nation state in the 21^st Centruy?

Activities: Slide show and story telling from Keene’s study trip to Cuba.

Discussion of the readings:

Read: Issac Saney – Cuba – a revolution in motion (all).

Optional (?): Excerpts: The Cuban Constitution.

Class 26: The Meaning of Citizenship: Dec 8 (TH) As we approach the end of our first course in the CSP, it’s a good time to think about - what does it mean to be a citizen.

Activities; Discussion:

Creation of a manifesto of Citizenship

Read: Barber and Battistoi – Educating for Democracy – excerpts.

CLASS 27 Bike Rack - DEC 12 (TU) The last chance to take up all of the issues that have been postponed and parked in the bike rack.

CLASS 28 DEC 14 (TH ) WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? MOVING TOWARD AND ANALYSIS.We have said on more than one occasion that students are inclined to confuse opinions for analysis. Our explorations in this class have been mostly empirical. During the last 14 weeks we have endeavored to expose you to a variety of different ways that people can and do organize themselves socially. We have hopefully created a forum where you were able to explore and share your opinions. Implicit in some of our discussions has been theoretically informed analyses. But we did not have the time to explore explicitly why such analyses are important and we certainly did not have time to help you formally develop such analyses. This is a goal of the second course in the Citizen Scholars Program. Our final meetings will serve as a segue to that course.

In our final meetings we will revisit our visions from the beginning part of the term to see how they have changed. We will assess whether we were indeed able to catalyze our imagination to move beyond what we knew to be true when we entered the class. And we will begin to consider the question of what we can do, now that we have begun to shape a vision.

SEE WEB SITE FOR FULL CITATIONS FOR REQUIRED AND SUPPLEMENTAL READING LISTS