[ IL, SC ] This course will investigate the idea of colonialism, its evolution in France, and its practice in past and contemporary Africa. We will study the colonial and post-colonial administration, states, peoples, ethnicities, and cultures that have been shaped by long-term French colonization.
States are made by collections of individuals. And yet states have powers that no individuals have. They collect taxes, put us in jail, draft us into the army, tell us what we can and cannot own, etc. In general, they compel us to do things in the name of a "common good," even when that good conflicts with what we would individually prefer to do. In this course, an introduction to key concepts of Western political philosophy, we seek to understand what, if anything, could justify states having this power over us.
