Prof Simon Glendinning

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Global Europe: Culture and Conflict and MSc in Global Europe: Culture and Conflict (LSE & Sciences Po). This course is available on the CEMS Exchange, MSc in EU Politics, MSc in EU Politics (LSE & Sciences Po), MSc in European Studies (Research), MSc in Political Economy of Europe, MSc in Political Economy of Europe (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Over the last three hundred years European societies have undergone a fundamental changeover from a traditional form, with a largely self-sufficient agrarian economy, into a modern, industrial and technological form based on international trade and tele-communication. This revolution developed in the seventeenth century first and only in Europe, but today it has spread worldwide and increasingly dominates the entire planet. This course explores one the basic dimensions of this unprecedented globalization: the culture of politics.

We are used to speaking about globalization as a political-economic phenomenon, but its European origin makes it also an unavoidably cultural one. Europe’s predominant cultural form – its double form, both Christian and secular – is not a neutral set-up, and other world cultures, perhaps especially Judaism and Islam, can find themselves alienated from and in revolt against everything that belongs to what might be called the Christianizing of the world. International migration and processes of European integration sharpen these concerns and add new ones. This is the background to our study of the culture of politics.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the MT. 1 hour of lectures in the ST.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.                                           

There are two mock exam sessions in the Lent Term. The first session is the exam itself, the second session is to provide feedback.

2 essays of 2000 words.

Norman Davies, 'Introduction' to Europe: A History;

Anthony Pagden (ed) The Idea of Europe;

Roger Scruton, The West and the Rest.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.