Summer 2006

GOV f335M • 3- Politics and Reality- W

Course Description

Contains a substantial writing component and fulfills part of the basic educatin requirement in writing. Course number may be repeated for credit when the topics vary. In this course we will be reading and discussing various ideas about what makes different people experience reality differently, and how the differing ways people experience, or construct, reality can result in changes in reality--for them and for others--over time. We will then ask how we and others can use this knowledge to create changes we or they desire. Much of our study will focus on basic aspects of everyday life, especially interpersonal and intergroup relations. However, from time to time we wil also examine the practice of social science and some aspects of political action.

Grading Policy

Four essays plus class participation.

Texts

Ronald Laing, The Politics of Experience. Ballantine (Pantheon), 1983. Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. Anchor (Random House), 1967. Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances. Wesleyan University Press, 1988. And occassional articles and book chapters, most in a course packet.

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