Politics, Power and Inequalities

Instructors: Vlasta Jalušič and Tonči Kuzmanić, Mirovni inštitut, Slovenia

Working language: Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 

Course Description:

The course aims at an in-depth analysis of understanding the issue of inequality and its correlation with violence and relationships between politics, power and (in)equality. The approach to the course is based on the premise that inequalities undermine politics and power, and that they contribute to violence or lead to violence. However, inequalities can sometimes present greater danger then violence. Therefore, the course discusses proactively if violence is really “the worst thing that can happen to us.”  The empirical baseline of the course are the cases of revolutions as generators of power and politics, while the focus will be put on experiences from 1968, on the revolutions in Central and East Europe during 1989, and the recent revolutions in Middle East and Africa (known as the “Arab Spring”). 

Key questions are: What happens when political-based power becomes a stunted basis of institutions? How to discuss and understand (in)equal state policies in such contexts and how to respond to them? Various experiences in establishing power and its institutionalization will be discussed and accompanied by exercises in forms of concrete policy analysis of laws and documents that refer to issues of (in)equality and its consequences. 

Course goals: 

  1. Understanding and rethinking of terms such as politics, power, revolution and (in)equalities, relationships and links between them, and possible consequences of these links on the post-socialistic and post-capitalistic global context.
  2. Differentiating, defining and rethinking of terms and their practical adoption. 
  3. Analysis and decoding of concrete phenomena of inequalities in societies where participants live and work, as well as indetifying their possible contributions to peace or violence. 
  4. Analysis of inequality policies on the basis of concrete examples of policital documents, laws, etc. (concrete examples will be taken from participant's home states). 

List of Reading Materials: 

  1. Hannah Arendt, O nasilju. U Hannah Arendt, Politički eseji, Antibarbarus Zagreb, 1996, 176-190. 
  2. Vaclav Havel, The Power of Powerless. Moć nemoćnih : ogledi o politici. Nove Knjige, 1990
  3. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Rasprava o porijeklu i osnovama nejednakosti među ljudima. Str. 33-71
  4. Michel Foucault: Panopticism.U: Foucault Reader str. 206-213 i Biopower, ibid. 259-272. (Michel Foucault, Znanje i moć, Globus, Zagreb 2004. Michel Foucault, Rađanje biopolitike, Svetovi, Novi Sad 2005.).
  5. Mahmood Mamdani, An African Reflection in the Tahrir Square. http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73187.
  6. Carol Lee Bacchi.Women, Policy and Politics: the Construction of Policy Problems. (1999) London: Sage. 3-13 i 35-49. 
  7. Vlasta Jalušič: Kompleksne nejednakosti. Tekst iz knjige Majda Hrženjak, Vlasta Jalušič, Vrata nisu baš odprta. Treba da jih gurneš, pa da se otvaraju... Perspektive v reševanju kompleksnih neenakosti. Mirovni inštitut, Ljubljana 2011. str. 11-32.
  8. Proposals or passed antidiscrimination laws from home states of participants. 

Documentaries and other films: 

  • Adam Curtis  collection: The Trap i The Power of Nightmare
  • Lorédana Bianconi: Do you remember revolution?

Essays