166-018 Chinese Politics and Society

Usually 25 points of first-year politics.

On the first line of the first page of the first volume of Mao Zedong's Selected Works he states that the key question of the revolution is who are our friends and who are our enemies. This would be the question that would drive the revolution. Yet this division of the world into friends and enemies is not unique to China. Indeed, in Western political theory this friend/enemy distinction has becomes one of the most powerful definitions of 'the political'. Understood in this way, the empirical history of the Chinese revolution, as it unfolds into a series of problems around defining friend and enemy is of enormous import for political theory generally. This basic thesis underpins this subject. Beginning in the 1920s, the subject explores the power of 'the political' to drive people to revolution and into excess. It examines Mao attempts to harness and re-channel the power of the political, how it comes to frame governmental institutions and, in the Cultural Revolution, how 'the political' gains new intensity with the discovery of a new enemy. In the final part of the subject, the power of commodification in the recent period of economic reform is explored. How commodification has been able to overcome the political is the key question posed and examined in relation to a series of recent political events.

• be able to research through the competent use of the library and other information sources, and be able to define areas of inquiry and methods of research in the preparation of essays;

• be able to conceptualise theoretical problems, form judgements and arguments and communicate critically, creatively and theoretically through essay writing, tutorial discussion and presentations;

• be able to communicate knowledge ideologically and economically through essay writing and tutorial discussion;

• be able to manage and organise workloads for recommended reading, the completion of essays and assignments and examination revision;

• be able to participate in team work through small group discussions.

A research essay of 2000 words 50% (due mid-semester) and a 2-hour exam 50% (during the examination period).

A subject reader will be available.