Development of Sociological Theory Rutgers University: Sociology 01:920:313: 01-02, Fall 2015 Class Time & Location: Monday & Wednesday, 1:40 PM – 3:00 PM, BRR 2071 (Livingston)
Instructor: Kevin Chamow E-mail: [email protected] Office hours: by appointment (preferably before class-times)
TA: Wenbo Lu
Course Summary: This course is organized with two purposes in mind. The first is to give you a familiarity with the ‘canon’ of sociology: the most prominent early works in the field, which are often referred to as the ‘classics.’ The authors of these works, as well as the works themselves, continue to be reference points for contemporary sociologists. By closely reading and interpreting these texts – balancing appreciation and criticism – you will gain a greater understanding of the theoretical, methodological and social/political foundations of sociology. This understanding should help put into historical context the diversity of ‘schools’ of contemporary sociological thought. This ties directly to the second purpose of the class, which is to study how the arguments made in these ‘classical’ works have been updated, adapted and/or dismissed since they were introduced by their authors, as well as how they can be mobilized to allow for a more systematic and nuanced understanding of contemporary social life. To this end, you will also be expected to read relatively recent texts that draw inspiration (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) from these ‘classics,’ which should provide some orientation for their (meaning, the ‘classics’) relevance in today’s world and in today’s sociology. Additionally, we will occasionally watch documentaries and (more often) discuss current events in class to give empirical reality/weight to the abstract and technical theories of social life found in the texts. As most of the texts you will be reading are difficult –written over 100 years ago and in languages other than English (mostly French and German); collectively representing the invention of a new scientific language (‘Sociology’) – you will not be expected to ‘get’ every argument or absorb every detail in them. But you will be expected to devote 5-10 hours/week outside of class to them and to do your best to identify and recall their main points. If you do this, and show up to class ready to listen and participate, you will earn a good grade and, hopefully, learn a little bit about the social world around you and the academic discipline that has devoted itself to developing the ideas and tools needed to study it.
Grading: Lecture Attendance: 2 unexcused absences allowed – two points deducted for each additional unexcused absence – 10 % Recitation Attendance: 1 unexcused absence allowed – one point deducted for each additional unexcused absence – 10 % Group Quizzes: Bi-weekly multiple-choice group quizzes (given during recitation) reviewing previous weeks’ material – taken in groups of 3 or 4 – marked on schedule – 15 % Take home essays: Take home essays in response to prompts/documentaries – 3 total – lowest score dropped – 15 % Participation: Questions, comments, shrugs, winks, side-glances – all accepted modes – lecture and recitation combined (mostly recitation though) – 10% Final Exam: End-of-semester 40 question multiple-choice test of concepts and methods studied and discussed throughout the semester – 40 %
Schedule (Do the Readings IN ORDER! (please)): *Q = Group quiz this week in recitation
Week 1-1.5: What is Social Science and what does it have to do with Modernity?
Wednesday (Sept. 2): 1) Anthony Giddens: “What do Sociologists Do?” 2) Immanuel Wallerstein: “Historical Origins of World-Systems Analysis” (World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Chapter 1, pg. 1-22)
TUESDAY (Sept. 8): 1) Immanuel Kant: “What is Enlightenment?” 2) Michel Foucault: Selection from lecture on Kant (Government of the Self and Others, 5 January 1983: First hour, pg. 6-21)
Week 2: Political Economy -> Historical Sociology: Adam Smith (-> Marx)
Wednesday (Sept. 9): 1) Adam Smith: Selections from Wealth of Nations (An Inquiry into the Nature of Causes of the Wealth of Nations, pg. 198-200, 277-279, 361-362) 2) Giovanni Arrighi: “The Historical Sociology of Adam Smith” (Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, Chapter 2, pg. 40-68) 3) Karl Marx: “Alienation and Social Classes” (The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. 2, pg. 133-135)
Week 3: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: Foundational Contradictions of Capitalism (*Q)
Monday (Sept. 14): 1) Karl Marx: Commodity Fetishism, the General Formula for Capital, Surplus Value and the Working Day (The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. 2, Selection from Capital: Vol. 1, pg. 319-372)
Wednesday (Sept. 16): 1) Karl Marx: “Machinery and Modern Industry” (The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. 2, Selection from Capital: Vol. 1, pg. 403-411) 2) Karl Marx: “The Coming Upheaval” (The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. 2, pg. 218-219) 3) David Harvey: “On Contradiction” (Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, pg. 1-11)
Week 4: Marx -> Marxism
Monday (Sept. 21): 1) David Harvey: “Use value and Exchange Value,” “The Social Value of Labour and Its Representation by Money” (Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, pg. 15-37)
Wednesday (Sept. 23): 1) Karl Marx: “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. 2, pg. 473-500) 2) Antonio Gramsci: “Machiavelli and Marx,” “Sociology and Political Science,” “Hegemony and Separation of Powers,” “The Conception of Law”) (Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pg. 133-136, 243-247)
Week 5: Finishing Marx: Thinking Long-Term (*Q)
Monday (Sept. 28): 1) David Harvey: “Capital and Labor,” “Capital as Process or Thing,” “The Contradictory Unity of Production and Realisation” (Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, pg. 62-85)
Wednesday (Sept. 30): 1) David Harvey: “Divisions of Labor” (Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, pg. 112-130) 2) Giovanni Arrighi: “Marx, Schumpeter, and the ‘Endless’ Accumulation of Money and Power” (Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, Chapter 3, pg. 69-96)
Week 6: Critique of Ideology (break in the readings)
Monday (Oct. 5): Watching in class: The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
Wednesday (Oct. 7): Finish watching in class: The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
TAKE -HOME ASSIGNMENT 1 (Due Wed., Oct. 14): On Critique
Week 7: Weber on Capitalism, Bureaucracy and the State (*Q)
Monday (Oct. 12): 1) Max Weber: “Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism” (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pg. 190-206) 2) Max Weber: “Bureaucracy” (Economy and Society, Chapter 11, pg. 956-958) 3) Rogers Brubaker: “The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber”
Wednesday (Oct. 14): 1) Max Weber: “Politics as Vocation”
Week 8: Durkheim on Solidarity & Integration
Monday (Oct. 19): 1) Emile Durkheim: On the two kinds of social solidarity and the historical movement from one to the other (The Division of Labor in Society, pg. 60-64, 68-72, 83-86, 118-123, 217-223)
Wednesday (Oct. 21): 1) Emile Durkheim: “Egoistic Suicide” (On Suicide, Chapter 2, pg. 156-233) NOTE: Skim the details and tables, grasp the main argument and method (pg. 224-233)
Week 9: Durkheim on Method: Simmel on the City (*Q)
Monday (Oct. 26): 1) Emile Durkheim: “What is a Social Fact?”
TAKE -HOME ASSIGNMENT 2 (Due Mon, Nov. 2): On Social Facts
Wednesday (Oct. 28): 1) Georg Simmel: “The Metropolis and Mental Life” 2) Brian Larkin: “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure”
Week 10: Freud on the (Social) Psyche
Monday (Nov. 2): 1) Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents
Wednesday (Nov. 4): REQUIRED: Watch at home: Century of the Self (parts 1-3 required, part 4 optional but recommended) OPTIONAL): Sigmund Freud: On Dreams Peter Kropotkin; “Mutual Aid Among Animals”
TAKE -HOME ASSIGNMENT 3 (Due Wed, Nov. 11): On Psychoanalysis
Week 11: Loomba on the History of (and terminology relating to) Colonialism: McCann on Frederick Douglass’s Journey to Ireland (*Q)
Monday (Nov. 9): 1) Ania Loomba: “Colonialism/Postcolonialism” (pg. TBA)
Wednesday (Nov. 11): 1) Colum McCann: “Freeman” (Transatlantic, pg. 40-99)
Week 12: Cesaire and Fanon on Colonialism
Monday (Nov. 16): 1) Aimé Césaire: Discourse on Colonialism
Wednesday (Nov. 18): 2) Franz Fanon: “Introduction,” “The Black Man and Language,” “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” Black Skin, White Masks (pg. Intro, 1-24, 89-119)
Week 13: Fanon, Dubois, and Washington on Race
Monday (Nov. 23): 1) Finishing Fanon 2) OPTIONAL reading – Homi Bhabha, “Remembering Fanon”
Wednesday (Nov. 25): 1) W.E.B Dubois: “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 1) 2) Booker T. Washington: “The Awakening of the Negro”
Week 14: de Beauvoir, Lorde, hooks, and Collins on Gender and Intersectionality (*Q)
Monday (Nov. 30): 1) Simone de Beauvoir: “Introduction: Woman as Other” (The Second Sex, Introduction) 2) Audre Lorde: “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Responding to Racism” (From Sister Outsider)
Wednesday (Dec. 2): 1) Sojourner Truth: “Aint I a Woman?” (Speech delivered at Women’s Convention, Akron, Ohio, 1851) 2) bell hooks: Selection from Ain’t I a Woman? (Ain’t I a Woman?: black women and feminism, Introduction, pg. 1-13) 3) Patricia Hill Collins: “Black Feminist Thought and the Matrix of Domination”
Week 15: Networks and Final
Monday (Dec. 7): 1) Bruno Latour: “Where are the missing masses?”
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Wednesday (Dec. 9):
Final Exam
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Where are the Readings?
The readings have been made available on Sakai, under ‘Resources’, and organized according to when they will be discussed in class. As in, readings in the folder ‘Week 2 – M’ should be read by Monday of Week 2. You are more than welcome to purchase your own copy of the texts (listed below), and to have your way with them (mark and bend them as you see fit), but that is not required.
Complete Reading List:
Selections from…
Arrighi, Giovanni. Adam Smith in Beijing: lineages of the twenty-first century. London New York: Verso, 2007. Print.
Cesaire,́ Aime,́ and Robin D. Kelley. Discourse on colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. Print.
De Beauvoir. The second sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print.
Dubois, W. E. B. The souls of black folk. New York: Dover, 1994. Print.
Durkheim, Emile,́ et al. On suicide. London New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Print.
Durkheim, Emile,́ and W. D. Halls. The division of labor in society. New York: Free Press, 1997. Print.
Gramsci, Antonio, Quintin Hoare, and Geoffrey Smith. Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers, 1972. Print.
Fanon, Frantz. Black skin, white masks. New York Berkeley, Calif: Grove Press Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2008. Print.
Foucault, Michel, Fredé rić Gros, and Graham Burchell. The government of self and others: lectures at the Collegè de France, 1982-1983. New York: Picador/Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its discontents. Eastford, CT: Martino Press, 2011. Print.
Freud, Sigmund and M.D. Eder. On Dreams. Dover, 2011.
Giddens, Anthony. Social theory and modern sociology. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1987. Print.
Harvey, David. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 2015. Print. hooks, bell. Ain't I a woman?: Black women and feminism. Boston, Mass: South End Press, 1991. Print.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 2007. Print.
Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge, 2005. Print.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Digital Edition. Found at: https://content.sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/b413062f-7bd9-46f5-87b3- d528d7fa27f2/Week%202%20-%20Th/Smith%20Wealth%20of%20Nations.pdf
Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. The Marx-Engels reader. New York: Norton, 1978. Print.
Wallerstein, Immanuel M. World-systems analysis: an introduction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Print.
Weber, Max, Guenther Roth, and Claus Wittich. Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Print.
Articles and Essays…
Bendinx, Reinhard. “Inequality and Social Structure: A Comparison of Marx and Weber”
Brubaker, Rogers. “The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber”
Collins, Patria Hill. “Black Feminist Thought and the Matrix of Domination”
Finlay, Barbara. “Lester Frank Ward as a Sociologist of Gender: A New Look at his Sociological Work”
Foucault, Michel. “What is Enlightenment?”
Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?”
Larkin, Brian. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure”
Mead, George Herbert. “The Social Self”
Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life”
Washington, Booker T. “The Awakening of the Negro” Weber, Max. “Politics as Vocation”
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