Tutorial notes- Wednesday 24th November 2010

19:00 Welcome- So far in this room you’ve discussed the relationship between leaders and led and the notion of representation. This seminar will cover Week 3: A Crisis of Representation? Having considered the idea that democracy is now in crisis because people no longer vote, it covers three main topics: the role of citizens in a democracy; the rise of populism; and the rise of the Information and Network Society. We will spend half an hour on each and then you will be given the final half hour to discuss TMA 02 between yourselves and ask me any questions you have about TMAs.

19:05 What role for citizens in democracy. (Readings found in 2nd section of week 3)

What is the key feature of democratic and legitimate decision making for Barber and Manin?

In the extracts from Barber and Manin, the two writers anticipate criticism of their own positions. What are those criticisms and how do they refute them?

Why does Schumpeter feel that citizens can’t make legitimate decisions about national and international matters? Do you agree?

Why does Walzer think that these citizens can, nevertheless play an important part in political decision making?

Do you think citizens should be more involved in politics?

19:30 The Rise of Populism

What is your favourite example of a politician trying to look ‘down with the kids’?

What other groups of people have politicians tried to appeal to in a populist way and how have they done it?

Do you think these attempts helped them become more popular politically?

What sort of person does a politician wish to be seen as?

Why might someone worry that populism makes a tyranny of the majority more likely?

Do you think a ruler can ever really be ‘of the people’?

19:55-20:05 Break

20:05 The Information and Network Society

How might ‘knowledge’ be an important component of traditional theories of democracy?

Do you think that globalisation undermines traditional theories of democracy? How?/Why not?

Who do you think count as part of the knowledge elite?

Could they be held democratically accountable? How?/ Why not?

20:30 How do theories of democracy help us to understand the role of modern political leaders? Discuss.

Tutorial 1, Room 1 -Karem

We started the tutorial by discussing how we felt about the first TMA. We noted that in this course you are given a lot of information and a big challenge is to decide how to use that information to support your own answer to the TMA question, without getting caught in the trap of simply summarizing and repeating all that you have read in the essay - as this will leave very little space for your own thoughts and ideas. The course resources that you do use must be linked back to the TMA question.

After discussing the first TMA we moved on to talk about the first two weeks of Room 1 by discussing a series of questions and bringing up authors introduced in the Room as appropriate to answer these questions.

Here is a brief overview of the questions we discussed during our tutorial (in parenthesis, some of the authors brought up by students).
1. What is democracy? (Pericles, Burke, Dahl)
a. Does it exist? (Mosca, Michels, Pareto)
b. Do we want it to exist? (Madison)
2. What are the main dangers of democracy as discussed in the readings? (Madison, Burke)
3. What is the role of leaders in a democracy?
a. Should representatives be representative of the people or stand above the people?
b. How should leaders rise to power (Mosca, Pareto, Michels)
4. What is a Machiavellian leader?
5. Do we agree with the statement: 'people receive the leaders they deserve'?


Hope everyone is enjoying working through Room 1,
karem

University Protests - Violence and Politics

You might have noticed how much of the coverage of the student demonstration that took place in London yesterday is focusing on how a few bad people caused (illegitimate) violence which in some way "ruined" the event for the tens of thousands of (legitimate?) peaceful protest.
It's worth following this debate and seeing where it goes. Behind it are important questions about the proper role of violence in politics - does violence mark the break-down of legitimate political action, or is, as we'll see Franz Fanon arguing later in the course, violence an integral part of politics and of political struggles? What counts as violence? Is smashing a window politically legitimate in a way that attacking people is not?
These are all questions you might wish to ponder after the last 24hrs. We'll be talking about these questions in Room 5, so you might also want to save any interesting articles or news clippings. If you find anything you think is particularly good, I'd be very grateful to hear about it.
Happy pondering!
Tom

1st Tutorial - Tom

Entry Room Tutorial Notes

We started out by discussing the different ways that ideas can be political – making use of the “What Makes ideas political?” audio. This was a way into thinking about the role of political ideas in the Cold War. As I’m afraid I said rather more times than was strictly necessary – in this Room, the Cold War offers us a way into thinking about political ideas. The room, therefore, is not strictly speaking about the Cold War – it’s about using the Cold War as a case study for thinking about political ideas.

This is what we then went on to do by discussing the range of political ideas present in the work of Stimson, Gaddis and Keylor. One of the broad conclusions of this was that - using the definition laid out in “What Makes Ideas Political?” - political ideas are a feature of all the three interpretations of the Cold War, not simply the one that emphasizes ideology. We picked out several examples of political ideas in each text.

We then went on to look at Fukuyama – focusing first on what Fukuyama takes the end of the cold war to mean for political ideas. Towards the end of the session we broadened the discussion to an assessment of whether Fukuyama is correct about his end of ideology claim.

More Advice on Writing - from Tom

Advice on writing the TMAs for this course


Importance of writing argumentative essays

1. Make use of the activities on the dvd-rom. These are designed to help you think critically about the material and to develop your own perspectives on it
2. Your aim is to produce essays that provide your own answer to the question, by deploying arguments and evidence designed to convince the reader of the strength of your position. Following on from this a couple of health warnings

a. Beware anecdotes: it can be very tempting to back up arguments you are making by giving direct examples from your experience. But bear in mind that while an experience you’ve had may give you a compelling reason to feel a certain way about something, if your reader hasn’t experienced it, it does not give them a compelling reason. Only use evidence that you can reasonably expect your reader to accept. For example:
“In the last 30 years the average intelligence of OU tutors has been steadily declining, according to a study conducted by Sheffield University” is much more plausible to write in an essay than “ I’ve been doing OU courses since the 1970s, and I’m sure the tutors are getting worse.” This latter argument is not very good because it may not be at all representative of what’s going on in the OU. It may simply reflect the fact that you’ve been progressively less lucky with your allocation of tutors over the years, or that as you do more courses and learn more, tutors become less and less impressive to you.

The exception to this rule is if you do have specialist knowledge, for example you might have worked for Open University recruitment for 30 years and checked the CVs of thousands of applications. You might then be able to say with considerable authority that (say) the average educational achievement of OU tutors has declined over a period.

b. The opposite extreme (and more common) problem is that you simply write essays which describe the course content. “According to Fred, x is the case, according to Jane, y is the case. To conclude: there is a disagreement amongst academics as to whether x or y is the case”. This is to be avoided! It is your job to take a view on the question you have been asked, and to defend that view, making use of the course materials in so doing. You need to do more than simply summarize the various views on the matter. Note too that this means that the view you wish to defend should appear early in the argument. Ideally, you ought to give an indication of your response to the question in the introduction – so your reader knows the position you’ll be defending, and how you plan to go about it. A common problem with essays is that people think that they should describe a lot of course content first, and assess it afterwards. This almost invariably results in your assessment of the material being crowded in to a paragraph at the end. This of course makes your arguments incomplete and ineffectual. Your thoughts should be structuring features of the TMA, not tacked on in the conclusion!

3. Please make sure that you complete Part 2 of the TMA – which asks you to reflect on an aspect of your study habits and approach. This is helpful to you in thinking about how you study, it gives your marker something to respond to and you get penalized if you don’t write something for it…
4. Please make sure you have read the information on referencing and follow it carefully in the essays. In third level courses, adequate referencing is not a ‘would be nice to have’ it’s essential. As a reminder: you need to reference all influence not just direct quotations. If you paraphrase someone’s argument, this needs a reference, if you are drawing facts from someone’s work, this needs a reference. And this is equally true of A/V materials as it is of texts!

a. Referencing A/V items
When referencing A/V items, you should be prepared to give a time in all situations where you would normally give a page number. So you’ll need to jot down the timing of particularly relevant moments in the A/Vs so you can cite them in your essays.

I promised an example of how you can contract references to Audio Visual sources for your in-text citations in the TMA – so they take up less space.

Your first reference to an A/V item should take this form
Author, date, publication title, timing
For example:

(The Open University, 2008a, 'Welcome to the course', 02:38)

Thereafter, any subsequent reference to the ‘Welcome to the course’ video can be shortened to (OU 2008a, then give the relevant timing)

Let’s say the next A/V source you cite is “What Makes Ideas Political”. Again the first reference to it will be in the longer form:

(The Open University, 2008b, “What Makes Ideas Political”, 1.45)

Subsequent references to this source become (OU 2008b timing)

And so on, the next A/V reference becomes 2008c…

Remember, the timings function like page numbers. The timing you give should refer to the part of the audio you are drawing the information from. Just as for references to texts, the page number should point to the precise location of the material you are using.
Enjoy!

1st Tutorial - Teresa and Karem

Tutorial 1: 13th October 2010

19:00 Introductions: Tutors/Students


Tutors:
Karem Roitman-
Hi, I am Karem Roitman. I completed my DPhil and MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. My background political sociology, economics and a bit of anthropology. I am interested in processes of social exclusion and political ideas and I absolutely love this course, love teaching it, and really enjoy OU students - a really bright, really engaged group :)

I am a full time lecturer at Regent's College at the moment, so I find it difficult to reply to e-mails as quickly as I wish I could, but I always do reply so please feel free to be in touch (kroitman@gmail.com), and let me know if you want to chat so we can arrange a mutually convenient time.


Teresa Ashe-
Hi, I’m Teresa Ashe. I’m studying for a PhD in the Politics of Climate Change and my background is in philosophy, economics and global politics. I currently teach DU311: Earth in Crisis, an international environmental politics course at the OU, but this is my first year teaching DD306.

I work from home so I will usually reply to e-mail t.ashe@open.ac.uk or text 07772857928 fairly quickly. Please let me know in advance if you want to discuss extension of TMA deadlines and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Students: Name/background/why you are doing this course/something memorable about you


19:15 Review of course structure

a) 6 room, each with a topic
b) over-arching theme and educational goals
i. living ideas
ii. creating and supporting your own response to TMA questions.
c) Substitutions - not allowed for No. 3 and 6
d) Grading –
i.50% TMAs, 50% ECA
ii. Monitoring, appeals - you are free to appeal grades you think are unfair or to ask for greater clarification on any mark comment. Please also note that all of our marking is monitored to ensure we are marking fairly and at the OU standard.
iii. Hard copies - please ask tutor before submitting a hard copy of a TMA.
iv. Extension policies- Extensions will be allowed as needed by students, to a maximum of a possible 21 total days across the course. (If you obtain a one week extension for TMA 01 then you have 14 days of extension left that you can use later in the course if you need them.)You must contact the tutor and inform them you will need an extension beforehand, though and assignments turned in late will be graded with the following assignment.
e) Good TMAs
i. Structure – depth vs. breadth - TMAs are about your ideas. They are not meant to be simply a summary of all you have read.
ii. Plagiarism - don't do it!
iii. Length - 10% over or under will be penalized. Tutor might stop reading essays once they reach word limit.
iv. Citations - make sure you follow the guidance in the Entry Room
v. Editing, and editing, and re-editing - this is the only way to ensure your TMAs make sense and get your points across.
vi. Please do not e-mail TMAs to tutors
f) Purpose of tutorials
i. provide a space for you to discuss ideas in a different way
ii. not a place for lectures
iii. questions discussed in tutorials and any other information will be posted in course blog www.DD306.blogspot.com
iv. structure of tutorials:
Open questions, discussion, last 30minutes to be used by students to discuss TMA question among themselves.

19:30 Entry room discussion
Group questions (1): How is the idea of 'healthy living'/'fertility'/'art' political? What ideas are not political?
Share answers with whole group
Question for whole group:
Do most people perceive these ideas as political?
Why/why not?
What is it that makes these ideas political?
Group questions (2): What were the main political ideas affecting how we understood the war in Iraq when it started?
Why do these matter?
Group questions (3): What are the main political ideas affecting society now? Why do these matter?
Group questions (4): What is the difference between political ideas in the broad and narrow sense?

20:30 Discussion of TMA

21:00 Finish

Clarification

Dear all,
Just to note that the post on what tutors expect from DD306 is in response to a student's request for specific pointers. This is not meant to be an intimidating list, but rather a helpful discussion for you.

What do DD306 tutors expect from students (i.e. how to do well in your TMAs):

On content:
* This is not a course on facts - we want you to read all the material, but your mark is not based on how much you cite/quote, rather it is based on how well you USE the material to support YOUR OWN argument.
* We want to hear your voice in essays - what you are arguing, why, and how. The opinions/arguments of others are here to help you support your position. Use them, do not let them use you.
* In short, essays should not be literature reviews or pieces were you simply list what all theorists have said about the topic -- such essays quickly turn into "So and So says, however Mr X says. Also Ms Y implies. And then Mr W adds..." -- we are interested in what YOU have to say.
* The above points should not lead you to believe that you can get away with not reading/watching all the material - otherwise your answers might have quite obvious blind spots...

On structure:
* Essays should have a clear, and effective structure - rambling essays tend to say very little and waste a lot of words saying it.
* Introductions and conclusions are important - use the introduction to tell your reader what you are arguing and how, and the conclusion to remind your reader what you argued and how. Do not introduce new material in the conclusion.
* Each paragraph should have a point, if it doesn't or if the point is not related to the TMA question - delete the paragraph!

On style:
* Clarity of language is key - draft, re-draft and then edit and re-edit. Then put it away, sleep on it, and re-edit it once more. And then before submitting, read your essay out loud to yourself and you will be surprised to find that a lot still does not make sense - edit again!
* You MUST cite your sources properly. You will be penalized for not doing so.
* You must remain within 10% of the word limit or you will be penalized.

On contacting your tutor:
* We like teaching. We like you :) . We want to help you (really, we do! Sometimes help is painful, however...we will be honest with our marks). Please use our feedback and chat with us if you have any concerns. However, we also have a life, so please don't be offended if we don't instantly reply to every e-mail/phone call.

Overall:
* Have fun! The materials in this course are incredible, the topics fascinating, and learning is a pleasure and a luxury, so enjoy!

DD306

Welcome!