Graduate Program in Sociology - Fordham University



Fordham University

Graduate Program in Sociology Fall 2005

SOGA 6100-001

CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY

Wednesdays 5:30-7:20 PM

Dealy Hall

Faculty: E. Doyle McCarthy

Dealy 405A; phone: 718-817-3855; mccarthy@fordham.edu

Office hours for graduate students: Wednesdays, by appointment only

Course Description

This is a course about the social and historical processes that gave rise to “modernity.” Its texts—written from the mid-1800s to the period between the world wars—are the classic statements on the modern world written by Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel. According to these writers, the process of the formation of modern societies includes four major processes—the economic, the political, the social, and the cultural—and can be traced to developments that followed the decline of feudalism in Western Europe. Each of them contributed theories about one or more of these processes, but we identify Marx as the preeminent thinker about the “economy” as a distinct sphere of social life, just as we identify Weber and Simmel with a cultural sociology that emphasizes religion as a force for profound change in the early modern era. Tocqueville, a writer on the historical origins of the French Revolution, is the author of the first work on the “democratic revolution” of the 19th Century. Throughout the course, we will return to the examination of how each of the processes were used by these writers to trace the emergence of modern societies and how these processes contributed to the distinct character of the modern world.

The course begins with the movement known as the Enlightenment and its importance for modernity and for the rise of “science of man,” the precursor of modern sociology. Certain select themes of the 18th Century are discussed: the modern idea of “society” as communities and organizations that change, grow, and develop; the search for an objective science of society; the use of reason and social science to advance individual freedom, humanity, and the social order. Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748) is described as both a great work of this movement and the first major work in political sociology.

Works by Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber are read for their distinctive (and conflicting) ideas concerning industrial democracies and for their different conceptions of modern social and political development and its future. Each of these authors also offers different theories about how the realm of “material life” (labor, economy, markets, etc.) is related to “ideational forms” (ideology, consciousness, knowledge, beliefs, etc.) and how the respective domains change. Selections from the work of Georg Simmel are also read and discussed, his essays as well as his Philosophy of Money.

The final section of the course treats the American pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead, author of Mind, Self, and Society (1934), a work that influenced generations of American sociologists writing on the “social self.” Mead’s work is best cast alongside of his European contemporaries who were formulating social theories of mind, consciousness, and knowledge.

The final lecture will provide a review of these works as “modernist works” and discuss the critique of these works by “postmodernist” writers.

Course format:

The course is a required theory course in the sociology graduate program. Sociology students will be given an in-class final exam during the last class meeting on December 21. The exam is only given on this date, so please prepare now to be on campus for this exam. Other students may take this exam if they wish.

Each week the class opens with a lecture on a topic on one of the required books or a section of a book. Students are expected to come to class having read the assigned weekly readings so that the lecture has a context; the final section of each class is expected to open up into a class discussion as well as questions and clarifications of the readings and/or the lecture.

Required Readings: Available at the university bookstore, McGinley Center.

Books are listed in the order that we will read them.

1. Raymond Williams (1921-1988) Oxford Univ. Press.

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society 1976/1983.

An examination of the words that were emerging as an influential vocabulary in the post-War British environment at Cambridge where Williams returned to take up studies after the war. This is not a dictionary. It is a vocabulary that had its grounding and expression inside and outside the academy. Williams’s project was to understand his world through an examination of the varied and changing meaning of words and of worlds. The work can be used and read as a study of the roots of modern sociology’s vocabulary which is also a vocabulary of the modern world.

2. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

The German Ideology (1845-1848) International Publishers

This work, written by Marx and Engels, is the first concise statement of historical materialism and its aim was “to settle accounts” with certain philosophical issues and figures within the Hegelian schools (Old Hegelians, Young Hegelians, including those left, center, and right). The authors set out the key terms: modes or means of production, forces or production or productive forces, and the relationship between the stages in the division of labor and the relations of production. Supplementary Marxist texts included here provide a critique of the “bourgeois idea of the individual.”

3. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Democracy in America Vol. 2. (1835) Vintage Paperback.

Tocqueville’s classic treatise is an original statement about America as well as the “democratic revolution” of the 19th Century. The work gives us an image of democracy, its inclinations, character, prejudices, and passions. The book is written “…to learn what we have to fear or to hope from [democracy’s] progress.” It is considered a first work on the rise of a new mass society of “individuals.”

4. Max Weber (1864-1920)

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Routledge edition only.

Note: There are copies in the bookstore but the numbers are limited; if you order online, please be sure to purchase the Routledge edition. Contact me if you have difficulties getting this book.

Weber’s challenge to Marxist method and his own distinct contribution to German “cultural sociology,” includes this brilliant analysis of the ideational roots of capitalist economic organization in the Reformation doctrines of Martin Luther and John Calvin and their 17th Century heirs. He argues for the “elective affinity” of these doctrines regarding salvation and the “style of life” necessary for the building up of capitalism and its commercial and this-worldly ethos.

5. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

The Rules of Sociological Method (1895/1982) Free Press 1982 edition only.

This is a polemical work in which its author distinguishes the subject matter

of sociology from that of philosophy: it is the empirical study of “social facts.” This edition also includes supplementary essays on the differences between the science of psychology and of sociology. In addition to this methodological work, the lectures will treat Durkheim’s theory of industrial society and its distinct forms of “social solidarity.” We conclude with Suicide (1897), a work where Durkheim applies his arguments in Rules… to the study of rates of suicide as “social facts.”

6 George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) Univ. Chicago Press.

Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934/1962)

Mead’s work offers to sociology a sociologist’s view of mentality and the self:

thinking, reflection, and self-conscious selfhood presuppose a social universe, human interaction, and language where thinking, speech, and consciousness are seen as part of an ongoing dialogue with others brought inside ourselves or “internalized.” Even the ability to view ourselves as part of our field of action and interaction, presupposes the perspectives of others and the group that are swept into our own conscious life and are used as we engage in ongoing interactions with others.

Two books are recommended reading:

H. Stuart Hughes Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought 1890-1930. (New York: Vintage, 1958) This work locates the period of classical social thought as part of a larger “reorientation” of thinking taking place from the 1890s to the 1920s; it included thinkers from diverse cultural and intellectual backgrounds: Freud in Austria; Weber in Germany; Croce and Pareto in Italy; Durkheim, Bergson, and Sorel in France. Hughes describes the work of this generation as an attempt to define a “new conception of reality in which the activity of human consciousness for the first time became of paramount importance.” The discovery of consciousness and the role of the unconscious were considered as key elements in the construction of a new approach to the problem of knowledge in the human sciences.

E. Doyle McCarthy Knowledge As Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge.

(New York: Routledge, 1996). This book describes the “cultural turn” in contemporary social science and argues that social theory is itself part of the culture it studies and criticizes. The chapters on Marx, Durkheim, and Mead argue that their classical statements, while relevant to our own social worlds today, require a new reading in order to address today’s social realities which are decidedly more “cultural” than the solid structures of classical industrial capitalism.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Attendance in class is required.

Students are required to read the assigned readings each week.

The final exam is expected to reflect knowledge from both the lectures and the readings.

Papers:

Students select 3 books from the list of required books. On each of these they will write an essay on a topic, theme, or problem that the book treats. These essays are about 5 pages in length; references to particular sections are made with the usual (p. ) format. The assigned edition of the book is used for these papers.

The choice of books will be written up and submitted no later than class on Wednesday, October 5. Briefly state in about 1-2 pages why you have selected these works over others. A brief working reference list of secondary sources may also be submitted, but is not required. Place your statement in a folder; this folder is submitted with each paper you write, so that when you hand in your last paper I can review all 3 of them and your initial statement. You may also change your choices and submit a revised statement as the course develops. Please note: This selection statement is required and is considered an important beginning to the writing of your papers.

Each of the 3 papers is due in the class after the book is treated in class. For example, if we complete the Max Weber lectures on October 26, you hand in that paper on the following Wednesday we meet for class.

Longer paper option: Students may choose to undertake a term paper (15-25 pp.) in place of the 3 papers. This option should be decided before October 19; after that I will no longer accept proposals for the longer paper option. You should be sure to discuss this option with me.

Please note:

Mon. Sept. 5 no classes, Labor Day holiday.

Wed. Sept. 7, we have no class since MONDAY CLASSES MEET on that day.

Mon. Oct.10 no classes, Columbus Day holiday.

In this class, we will not meet on Wednesday October 12, after the Columbus Day holiday.

There are no classes, due to the Thanksgiving Holiday recess,

from Wed. Nov. 23-Sun. Nov. 27.

Dec. 15-22 in the Graduate School is the last week of classes/finals.

Dec. 16, Friday follows Monday class schedules.

Grading:

Sociology students: The final grade takes into account one’s preparation for weekly classes and one’s participation in class discussions (14 pts.); the papers total 66 pts of the final grade. The final exam is 20 points.

Students who do not take the final exam: 20% preparation and participation; 80% papers.

Primary & Secondary sources used in each lecture are distributed each week.

Selected secondary sources for the course include:

Raymond Aaron Main Currents in Sociological Thought Vols. I & II

Jeffrey Alexander & Steven Seidman eds. Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates (1990)

Louis Althusser Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx (1959)

____________. For Marx. (1969) (1969)

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann The Social Construction of Reality. (1967)

Victoria Bonnell & Lynn Hunt eds. Beyond the Cultural Turn (1999)

Norbert Elias The Civilizing Process. (1939/2000)

__________. What is Sociology? (1978)

Peter Gay The Enlightenment: An Interpretation

Vol I: The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966)

Vol II: The Science of Freedom (1969)

Anthony Giddens Capitalism & Modern Social Theory (1971)

Anthony Giddens & Jonathan Turner eds. Social Theory Today (1987)

Bryan S. Green Literary Methods and Sociological Theory (1988)

Richard Harland Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism & Post-Structuralism (1987)

Geoffrey Hawthorn Enlightenment and Despair (1976 )

Robert Heilbroner The Worldly Philosophers (1972)

H. Stuart Hughes Consciousness & Society: The Reorientation of European

Social Thought 1890-1930. (1958)

Mark Hulling Montesquieu and the Old Regime (1976)

Hans Joas Pragmatism & Social Theory (1993)

Charles Lemert Sociology & the Twilight of Man (1979)

Niklas Luhmann Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity (2002)

Robert Nisbet The Social Philosophers (1973)

Talcott Parsons The Structure of Social Action. (1937)

George Ritzer ed. Frontiers of Social Theory (1990)

Marshall Sahlins Culture & Practical Reason. (1976)

Edward W. Said Orientalism. (1978)

Steven Seidman Liberalism and the Origins of Modern Social Theory (1983)

Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner Postmodernism & Social Theory (1992)

Alan Sica ed. What Is Social Theory? (1998)

Quentin Skinner The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (1985)

Dorothy Smith The Everyday World As Problematic (1987)

Charles Taylor Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

Immanuel Wallerstein After Liberalism (1995)

Hayden White Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973)

Irving Zeitlin Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory 6/e (1996)

Preparing to write your papers:

The paper topics should be selected because you want to learn more about this theorist and/or work. So give some thought to this. Write your “selection paper” in a direct way using the 1st person “I” as you write. Discuss how you came to decide on your books.

Considering your selection of books:

You should choose a book(s) that interests you and/or that you need to learn about for your studies. As you consider your selection also consider a particular topic or theme or problem that you think important or interesting; I can serve as your guide if your topic is too broad. I can also refer you to works on your topic.

Here are some examples of paper topics:

The German Ideology:

Marx’s critique of Hegelianis as the basis of his economic theory

The economic categories in German Ideology…

The theoretical framework & its implications for social theory

The problems with the Marxist framework from reading German Ideology…

The Protestant Ethic…

Weber’s challenge to Marx

The problem of “idealism” vs “realism” in reading The Protestant Ethic…

Examples of Weber’s methodology in The Protestant Ethic (i.e., how did he proceed and why? How is he able to use Franklin’s work as a critical text? Etc.)

Rules of Sociological Method

Durkheim’s distinctive method.

Durkheim’s understanding of “social facts.”

Durkheim’s essays on social psychology.

3 papers on Enlightenment themes in reading Marx, Weber, Durkheim….

3 papers on the conceptual methods/theories of Marx, Weber, Durkheim i.e., what are central features of their thinking about social reality? about history? and the forces of historical & social change?

Organizing your papers:

When you write the paper you present an argument in the opening section & return to it in the conclusion. The reader should know what you are writing about after reading the opening paragraph.

In the body of the paper you exemplify your argument through a discussion of the text, its organization, its themes, its important cases or examples.

The papers are text directed, meaning that you need to engage the text and to refer to it as you write your papers.

Use (p. ) for page references.

Always use the assigned text & edition. I welcome meetings with you to discuss your papers. Please email me first & then we will make an appointment.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download