Goal
This unit introduces students to a number of concepts that reappear throughout the module including rational choices, norms, civil society, and modes of participation.  Such concepts may be considered integral to the building of community at various scales.  The central question is, can democracy in the United States be understood in terms of procedures (such as competitive elections), outcomes (who wins, who loses), sources of legitimate political power (the consent of the governed), or some combination of these factors?  This is a recurring question and an enduring dilemma in public policy.  The activities suggested for this unit are designed to help students understand that although the principle of equality may be established in civil society, it may not prevail in the political world.  For example, whereas people may have equal rights in seeking wealth by the same means, not all individuals take an equal share in government.

 
Learning Outcomes
After completing the activities associated with this unit, students should:

• be able to take good notes on readings;
• understand the concepts of a civil society and equality;
• have discussed whether or not freedom is confined to democracies;
• have considered whether equality can be achieved; and
• have debated whether or not democracy simply promotes mediocrity.

Suggested Readings
The following readings accompany the activities for this unit.  Choose those readings most appropriate for the activities you select and those most adequate for the skill level of your students.

• Background Information to Unit 1 (all students should read)
• Alinsky, Saul.  1971.  Excerpts from Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals.  New York, NY: Random House.
• An easy read, if dated, but one that will certainly provoke some strong reaction.
• Alinsky’s is an extreme and certainly controversial point of view.
• Clark, W.C.  1987.  Scale relationships in the interactions of climate, ecosystems, and society. In K. Land and S. Schneider, eds. Forecasting in the social and natural sciences.  Dordrecht:  D. Reidel, pp. 337-378.
• A scientific text with which students might need some guidance (more with interpreting graphs than understanding the text). Recommended for a course in which environment-society relationships are central. Easier for students with some physical science background, but that’s  not essential.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis.  1945.  Influence of democracy on the feelings of the Americans.  From Democracy in America.  Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 62-72.
• This is a fairly long piece, and may be at times hard to get through for first year students. However, it’s a classic and is recommended in courses oriented toward political and/or philosophical aspects of the issues discussed in this unit.
• Meyer, W., D. Gregory, B.L. Turner, and P.F. McDowell.  1992.  The local-global continuum.  In Abler, Marcus, and Olson, eds. Geography’s inner worlds.  New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 255-279.
• An overview chapter on where and how geographic scale matters in geographic research.  This piece is not always an easy read because it relies on some sophisticated social scientific vocabulary, so some guidance is advised. But it picks up the themes of this module: globalization and global change through various forces, the local in the context of the global, thinking globally and acting locally (which is turned on its head in this module).
• Mueller, John.  1992.   Democracy and Ralph's pretty good grocery: Elections, equality, and the minimal human being.  American Journal of Political Science 36(4): 938-1003.
• Not difficult reading for undergraduates with good and well-outlined arguments.

Goals
The central theme of this module is “community” as it relates to global change.  This activity explores the linkages among communities at various scales and the relationships between communities and larger economic, cultural, political, social, and environmental processes.
 
Skills

• creating mental maps
• class discussion

• Student Worksheet 1.1
• paper and pens

The questions on the student worksheet encourage students to define what they mean by “community.”  If students themselves do not mention notions of equality and equity, you can bring those ideas into the discussion and ask whether these concepts would play any role in defining community and a sense of belonging.

The list of starter questions below may help you begin a class discussion on the issues of communities, democracy, and linkages to the environment.  These questions can be used to prompt students to ponder terms that they use on a daily basis but probably have not spent much time reflecting on.

• What does the word "community" mean to you? What does your community look like?
• To what extent is having a shared place or location necessary to the existence of a community (i.e., are communities necessarily place-based)?
• What types of communities do you identify with?
• What makes you feel like you belong to this community?
• What type of sub-groups constitute your community?
• Are opportunities equally or unequally distributed among different segments of your community?
• Does “community” have anything to do with “society” for you?
• What does the term "citizenship" mean to you?
• How would you define "environment?"
• Do you see a connection between citizenship and environmentalism? What about, e.g., environmental groups?
• Do you see a connection between economics and environmentalism?
• What does “think globally, act locally” mean to you? How do you understand that slogan? Do you think it is true in essence?
• What do you think of it when it’s turned around: “Think locally, act globally?” Does this make sense to you?

Activity 1.2:   Taking Good Notes

 

Goals
In this activity, students learn to take clear, pertinent, and concise notes on assigned readings.  The activity is introduced early in the module to encourage students to make note taking a regular habit throughout the module and the course.
 
Skills

• note taking
• critical text comprehension

• Student Worksheet 1.2
• Supporting Material 1.2
• Suggested or alternative readings

Tasks
With help from guiding questions and from the instructor, students learn how to take good notes on their readings, i.e., they learn to discern the structure of a text and subsequently to structure their own notes, to paraphrase the main argument(s), and to distinguish “important” information from “text fillers.”

A hand-out on note-taking is provided in Supporting Material 1.2.  Students should be encouraged to use it as a “standard” exercise they do automatically as they read assigned class material. The time required varies with the length of the readings and students’ reading skills and ease with the material. Instructors should choose readings accordingly.
 
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Activity 1.3:  Is Democracy Fair? -- A Class Debate

 

Goals
Students debate the nature of democracy using the perspectives found in the background readings.
 
Skills

• text comprehension
• note taking
• communicating (listening, interpreting, forming arguments)
• forming one’s own opinion
• relating a text to the student’s own situation
• participation in group or panel discussion (arguing, listening, leading, note taking, process evaluating)

• Supporting Material 1.3 or your own selection of statements from the readings (copied onto an overhead transparency or provided as hand-outs)
• Suggested Readings:  De Tocqueville (1945), Mueller (1992) and Alinksy (1971)

• “Let’s have a show of hands of all those who agree with ..., do not agree with ..., ‘kind of’ agree with...”
• “Why?” “What do you think of ...?”
• “How are things in our country in this [...] respect?”
• "In the community that you feel you belong to, do you feel there is equality?” etc.

• “What does a ‘perfect’ democracy look like?”
• “What is the best way to ensure equality?  Equity?  And what’s the difference anyway?”
• “What do you think the American Democracy needs to be a better democracy?”

Goals
Students understand the power of geographic scale in masking socio-economic diversity.  This activity, as well as Activity 1.5 and 1.6, is useful in making the discussion of community more real to students by linking it to activities that require them to consider concrete, local community issues.
 
Skills

• analysis of census data
• presenting data on maps
• understanding the concept of geographic scale
• working in small groups

• Student Worksheet 1.4
• Census data at a number of different geographic scales (block, block group, census tract, county, or state)
• Maps corresponding to the census data
• Suggested Readings:  Meyer et al. (1992) and Clark (1987)

As a homework assignment, students work with census data to assess social geographies that are visible at geographic scales smaller than the state.  Students assume the role of a campaign planner whose candidate will soon make a campaign stop in the area.  Their task is to provide the candidate with information on the social composition of the local community and to link this information to the candidate’s platform and other election issues.  If an election is approaching in your area, this is a great opportunity to link classroom activities with current political issues.

This project can be done individually or you can create teams of campaign planners to work together.  Assign each student or group a particular geographic scale of analysis (e.g., region, county, census tracts, census block groups, or census blocks).  If you are considering a specific  political race, you may want to select geographic scales that are a good fit with the geographic area that the candidate represents (i.e., counties for state-level congressional representative races or census tracts or blocks for city council races).  Students should choose one or two of the variables discussed above and extract the data for those variables at the assigned scale from the most recent census.  Each student or group should design a mapping scheme and map the data using the blank maps of the various geographic areas.  Those working at smaller scales (e.g., blocks or block groups) should be required to create maps for total areas that are smaller than those working at larger scales (e.g., counties).  The Student Worksheet provides detailed instructions for students on how to map the data.

After they have completed the maps, students write a 2-3 page summary of their findings. Students should explain in their report how their findings differed from the state-level analysis and how the information is related to their candidate’s campaign.  Each student or group will give a brief presentation (10 minutes) to the class of their findings and the maps they produced.  Allow students sufficient time to examine the maps created by other students for different variables and at different scales.  This is an important step because it allows students to see if any variables have similar distributions and to see how the spatial patterns change with changing scale.
 
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Activity 1.5:  Interpretation and Prediction of Election Results

 

Goals
This exercise is designed to demonstrate that the right to vote -- the cornerstone of our democracy -- is not widely practiced in the United States.

Skills

• map reading
• reading and interpreting voting tables
• collecting socioeconomic data

• Newspaper clippings or other information on recent elections including voting tables, interpretive articles, precinct maps, and/or election result maps

Looking at the voting data, ask students “What patterns do you see?  Is voter turnout in the community/ U.S. high or low?  In what sense? What do these considerations and comparisons indicate about citizenship in the United States?”  (You may want to focus on general election results or a hot referendum topic.)  Informal questioning will reveal whether students make blind or informed guesses, i.e., whether or not they apply knowledge previously established in class.  As a follow-up to Activity 1.4, have students investigate the role of scale:  At what scale are each of these processes, as tied to the voting patterns, operating?

Finally, ask students to explain the concept of “community” on the basis of socio-economic and voting patterns.
 
 
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Activity 1.6:  Role Playing on a Controversial Local Issue

 

Goals
Students become aware of the difficulties of decision making within a democracy by exploring a controversial local siting or development proposal.  They can see the various and often competing perspectives surrounding a local issue and understand the extent to which these perspectives vary according to community characteristics and the geographic bases of stakeholders’ positions.
 
Skills

• identification with a chosen role
• application of abstract concepts to a concrete local problem
• communicating
• writing a newspaper article (alternative activity)

• Background material (reports, newspaper articles, etc.) on a local development or facility siting issue or information on local council, planning board, or zoning board meetings

After students have read the background information, ask them to identify potential stakeholders in the controversy while you list them on the blackboard.  Each student (or small group of students) will then represent one of the stakeholders in the controversy (the developers, the city manager, the environmentalist, the concerned parents, the small business representative, etc.).   Allow students sufficient time to do additional research, to develop a position and strategy, and to prepare a concise and well-supported testimony about the proposal.  Ask them to think through and identify the geographic bases of their stakeholder’s position.  For example, someone who lives near a proposed highway expansion may have a different perspective than an out-of-town developer who hopes to benefit from the project.

On the assigned day, hold a public hearing (or several, if the class is big) in which representatives of all sides state their cases and try to convince a decision-making panel of their respective positions.  Adapt the scenario to the particular case in your area.  For example, if the controversy is a siting issue, make the decision-making panel a siting board or city council; if the controversy is a proposed piece of legislation, make the activity a legislative hearing before a legislative committee.  Ask teaching assistants, graduate students, and faculty to serve as members of the panel and instruct them to “play the role” meaning that some of them should be intimidating, loud, and visibly uninterested in their testimony.  Others should be quite the opposite.  This is the reality that many groups face when they are asked to provide input at a public or legislative hearing, so try to make it as real as possible.

After the hearing, the instructor should point out any common ground among the groups and encourage representatives to seek some form of consensus. If there were several hearings, compare results and observations on the process.  Ask students to consider whether this process is “democratic” and whether they can imagine a better process for decision making in their local community.

The role play may be done twice. Once without any guidance, and the second time after some post-hearing reflection in class, i.e., after students have considered how they succeeded in incorporating their “ideal” notions of democracy, civility, equality, etc. into the “real” process of practicing these.
 

Alternative Activity
Students attend a local council, planning board, or zoning board meeting in the role of a newspaper journalist and write a short newspaper article summarizing the issues brought up on a particular development proposal.   Make sure that students note the extent and type of conflicts that evolve and make sure they supplement the analysis with additional information from local officials or articles in the local paper.  To what extent were the conflicts solved?  How?  What roles did various board members or council members play?  Have the students present their articles to the class.
 
 
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Activity 1.7:   Does Democracy Mean Equity?

 

Goals
Students prepare a short, reflective paper on the tensions between democracy and political equality.
 
Skills

• text comprehension and reflection
• organizing a sequence of arguments
• writing

• Student Worksheet 1.7
• Suggested Readings:  De Tocqueville (1945), Mueller (1992) and Alinksy (1971)

Alternative Activity
Instead of having students think over these issues first in a written homework assignment, divide the class into small groups of students to debate and discuss the topic and the readings.  You may wish to assign a particular question or two to each group to get them started.  After the in-class discussion, students will then complete the written  assignment.
 
 
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