210058 SE BA 13/G7/G6: SE Comparative Social Policy (engl.) (2009W)

Leistungsanforderungen

The seminar is run as a ‘block seminar’ and will be held in English. Some knowledge of statistical analysis is essential. It is based on compulsory reading and discussion of ten core texts for each of the topics covered. Participants are expected to undertake the required reading prior to the block seminar and to engage actively in seminar discussions. They are also required to submit short paper summaries on each of the ten texts prior to the block seminar in January. For guidelines on paper summaries – see below.

Concretely students are required to fulfil three criteria for passing the course:

1. Paper summaries

- read and send to jochen.clasen@ed.ac.uk paper summaries (of between one and two pages each) for sessions 3 and 7, i.e. the papers by Rhodes (2006) and Castles and Obinger (2007). The deadline for these summaries is November 20th 2009. Those who fail to submit these summaries will be deemed to have withdrawn from the seminar.

- read and send to jochen.clasen@ed.ac.uk paper summaries of the remaining eight papers by January 8th 2010. Those who fail to submit these summaries will be deemed to have withdrawn from the seminar.

Please send these summaries as two linked word documents, i.e. a single document by November 20th and another by January 8th. Please use your surname and ‘Vienna09’ in the document title.

2. Presentation

In addition students are expected to make one or two short oral presentations based on one of their summaries at the seminar on 15 or 16 January 2010. Students will act either as paper presenter or discussant of a particular text. These roles will be allocated after November 20th

3. Essay (Hausarbeit)

Students are required to write a seminar paper to one of a number of topics which will be presented at the Vorbesprechung. The seminar paper of 8-10 pages (excluding the title page and list of contents) must be submitted to jochen.clasen@ed.ac.uk by the deadline: 30 June 2010. There will be no subsequent opportunity to submit the seminar paper.

Half of the seminar grade will derive from the summary papers, which must be made in English. The other half of the seminar grade will be based on the seminar paper (essay) written in English or German.

Vorbesprechung

At the preliminary meeting (Vorbesprechung) there will be an introduction to the seminar’s aims and objectives, organisation and assessment requirements. Those who fail to attend this meeting without having provided an appropriate prior explanation by email to jochen.clasen@ed.ac.uk will be deemed to have withdrawn from the seminar. At the Vorbesprechung essay topic will be discussed and additional literature suggested

Paper summaries – a guide
(1-2 pages each; max 500 words!!)
Introduction - What is the main issue that is being dealt with in this paper? Is it primarily a conceptual or methodological discussion, or is there an empirical test/illustration of a given theoretical argument/methodological approach? If so, on what kind of evidence does the empirical contribution of the paper rest?

Summary of core themes - What are the main conceptual, theoretical or methodological points developed? Try to put the arguments of the author into your own words and/or to explain them in layman’s terms.

Open questions/critical reflection – What questions/issues do you think the paper fails to deal with/adequately explain/help understand? What was opaque or unclear to you in the argument, even after close reading? How solid/convincing does the evidence/illustration provided seem (where relevant)?

The relationship to the course – How does the argument developed/evidence presented seem to be important for the themes of this course? What insights does the paper provide for the analysis or understanding of the issues at stake?