Gov 365N/MES 323K

 

Questions for Class 7-8: Tuesday, Feb 9 and Thursday, Feb 11

 

1. Galal Amin offers an explanation of "whatever happened to the Egyptians" that may come as a shock to American readers brainwashed to the virtues of Horatio Alger and the American dream. What is the author's basic answer to Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?

 

2. How does Galal Amin measure social mobility? Would Galbraith's inequality data help?

 

3. Max Weber, the famous German political sociologist (1864-1920), argued in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that the Puritans had an intellectual affinity for entrepreneurship and capitalism. What does Galal Amin think of Islamically minded ("puritan") Egyptians? Do you think Muslim culture is an obstacle to economic development?

 

4. What has happened to Egyptian economists? Why, Galal Amin's opinion, are "their biases…becoming less and less their own, and more and more those imposed by outside influences?"

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Main page - Feb. 10, 2010

Department of Government, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin.

Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to chenry@mail.utexas.edu