Statehood

Catalog description

States form the building blocks of our global order, significantly impacting how people from diverse countries, cultures, and regional backgrounds interact with each other. Yet what does the concept of statehood entail and what is its role in a globalized world? The course examines the historical, legal, political, and cultural foundations of the concepts of state and statehood, along with related ideas, such as sovereignty, citizenship, and statelessness. A diverse range of literary, cultural, legal, and government sources will help create the course's conceptual framework as well as case studies of past and present challenges to state-building efforts. Examples will include state-building in the Global South, various forms of regional cooperation (e.g. the GCC, ASEAN, etc.), and the creation of supranational institutions such as the European Union. In addition, the course will examine questions of statehood/statelessness during times of war and conflict, and in relation to topics such as migration and refugees, social movements, gender, race and ethnicity, and civil and human rights.