sociological thought syllabus

Soci 2111 (Perspectives in Social Thought)

PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIAL THOUGHT

SOC 2111 – Fall 2013

Mickey Vallee, Ph.D.

Lectures: T.B.D.

Email: [email protected]

Office: T.B.D., Monday and Wednesday Afternoons

“I think, therefore I am.” Rene Descartes (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First

Philosophy, p. 16)

“The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and

therefore think.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (The German Ideology, p. 64)

“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown

through the window.” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus, p. xiii)

“If you have a good theory, forget about the reality.” Slavoj Žižek (Interview in The Guardian,

The Observer, 27 June 2010)

Reading

The two required texts for this course are available at the University Bookstore:

1. Roberta Garner (Ed.). Social Theory, Volume I: The Formative Years, 2nd Edition.

University of Toronto Press, 2010.

2. ---. Social Theory, Volume II: Power and Identity in the Global Era, 2nd Edition.

University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Relative weights of all work used to determine a final grade

Article responses (5% each x 10 = 50%); Extended article response to part I (20%); Extended

article response to part II (30%)

Final Grading Scheme

95-100 A+

86-94 A

82-85 A-

78-81 B+

75-77 B

71-74 B-

66-70 C+

62-65 C

58-61 C-

54-57 D+

50-53 D

0-49 F


OVERVIEW & OBECTIVES

Though theory can come across as one of the drier of sociological topics, for me it is the most

innovative, refreshing, and challenging. What does it mean to be a sociological theorist? Why should one devote their time to theorizing when there are so many other problems to fix in the

world? Isn’t this a time of crisis? Polar ice caps are melting, the financial system is walking a fine tightrope, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, First Peoples need to shout

to be heard, violence against women is still invisibilized, rural homophobia is on the rise, and so on. But a time of crisis is, in my opinion, the best time to theorize, because theory is at its

most efficient when it is theorizing society’s failures – and our society has produced some fantastic failures lately.

This course is designed to provide an illuminating and engaging introduction to sociological and

social theory as the foundation for a transition from introductory sociology to higher level courses in social theory and methodology, as well as theoretically oriented courses in diverse

substantive areas. Accordingly, it seeks to provide a broadly based introduction to the

“sociological imagination” for prospective majors in sociology or anyone intending to take more advanced courses.

Although the course will introduce you to theorists and their theories, more importantly it will

teach you how to theorize! Theorizing requires more nuance than does debate, discussion, or dialogue. It takes a careful and slow dissection of ideas on your own time and as a group.

Theorizing is something that can happen collectively or individually, but it is only something that can happen through reading, writing, and discussing. So that is what you are required to

do in this course: to read, to write, and to talk. That’s all.

The objectives for this course may be summed up as follows:

You will master the lowest-level cognitive operations on sociological theory, recalling and paraphrasing basic facts, processes, and definitions of essential terms, concepts, and

historical figures. Each class will make attempts to answer a central set of questions

generated by the readings.

You will identify, question, and abandon the misconceptions about theory that you brought into the classroom at the beginning of the term.

You will identify, question, and abandon any dualistic thinking about separations between

theory and fact (a particularly prevalent epistemological misconception) as you come to recognize uncertainties in the categories of internal and external reality.


COURSEWORK

You will be tested based on your ability to disseminate the main argument of given theoretical

texts found in the two readers for the course. You must (1) submit assessment exercises for

any 10 articles discussed in class, but they must be handed in at the beginning of the class

scheduled to discuss that article; (2) you will submit a critical response to any two articles

found in the first book; (3) you will submit a critical response to any three articles found in the

second book.

Assessment Exercises (Approximately one page single spaced, each worth 5% x 10 = 50%):

You are required to submit a one page summation of any one of the assigned readings for 10

classes of your choice. The one page summation must be five paragraphs and must identify the

following: one aspect of the selection you thought was interesting, on aspect you found

disagreeable, and one aspect that you found confounding. You must elaborate on these aspects

in the body of the text with persistent reference to the selection you are responding to. Points

of interest, disagreement, and confusion must be cognitive in nature. Simply, they must be in

some way related to the main argument of the selection. You will learn what to identify as

someone’s main argument during class.

Critical Response, Part I (Approximately 4-5 pages in length, double spaced, worth 20%): The

critical response must show explicit relationships between two texts that I will distribute in

class one week before the due date. Partially an extension of the assessment exercise, this

assignment will test your ability to cross-reference theories that are related to but wholly

distinct from one another.

Critical Response, Part II (Approximately 6-7 pages in length, double spaced, worth 30%): This

is similar to the previous critical response except this one will ask that you respond to three

texts that are from various historical times in order to test the continued validity of a theory

and to examine the manner in which it changes, and the manner in which it remains static.


READINGS

Sometimes people are overwhelmed with the amount of historical/theoretical information in a

course such as this. As in most university courses, however, the way to understand this

information so that you will be well prepared for the writing exercises lies in looking at the

content of the course as an edifice rather than a series of disconnected facts. That is, while

memorization of specific theories and people is important, in addition to the study questions

based on the source readings, the assignments will test you on how the various theories fit

together into a larger context: in other words, within a general school of thought, what was

going on? What behaviours were of interest? Which thought influenced other thought? What

came after what? What was the connection between deviant activities and processes of

labeling such activities? For those who are worried about how to organize the information from

the lectures and readings, I suggest that you create a chart: going across the top of the page,

list the theories studied during a given portion of the class; then, beneath the theory’s name,

answer the following questions, if they are relevant.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. When and where did these theories become important?

2. Who were the most important scholars in these theories? What was the social

background of the scholars?

3. For whom was the theory intended? What other considerations were involved in

developing the theory?

4. What were the most important deviant activities in the development of the theory?

5. In terms of questions 4, what were the innovations of this theory? What did this theory

retain from other theories? What did it abandon? How did it influence subsequent

theories? What were its beliefs and values? What were its ideological motives (world

view)?

6. What issues were raised and emphasized by the readings and the discussion of them

in class?


COURSE PHILOSOPHY

I loosely follow an Inquiry Guided Learning model in sociological teaching. This model of

learning does not ask the student to remember information (though I do consider it an asset),

but to demonstrate throughout the course that they are working on the task of becoming

researchers. A researcher’s job is to determine the existence of a problem, survey the

literature regarding the problem, organize the data, and present the problem systematically.

I consider myself a comprehensive professor, in that I value teaching and research equally, and

face considerable difficulty in separating the two. Without students, research becomes

nontransferable. Without researchers, the body of knowledge becomes stagnant. Part of the

reason I can’t separate teaching from research is that I still feel like a student myself. Jonathan

Sterne, one of my favourite teachers, wrote recently: ‘Student has meant “a person who is

engaged in or addicted to study”; students undergo courses of study, they are associated with

educational institutions, they have teacher and they always have more to learn” (The Sound

Studies Reader, p. 3). It is profound in its simplicity.

Inquiry-Based Learning espouses the following principles:

1. Students drive the content by asking questions

2. Instructor guides the class, does not control it

3. Learning is individualized for pace, depth, and content

4. Formal exams are inappropriate, since classes are not “controlled”

5. Instructor must work with pre-existing understandings students bring with them

6. Emphasis is on meta-cognitive skills, not fact retention

7. Student has opportunity to engage in feedback sections that correspond with grades

I still offer a significant amount of structure and deadlines, but I employ an improvisational

approach to class discussions and lectures. If you have difficulty following any of the

discussions, please do not hesitate to talk with me about your concerns.

Ultimately, my goal for you is as follows: You will learn to formulate good questions and have

chosen appropriate means of answering them in the context of the course material. Each

exercise will offer you a unique framework within which these questions can be formulated.

I hope you find the course challenging and enjoyable.


Schedule

Introductions: Becoming a Theorist

Part I: The Foundations

Week 1: Machiavelli, Burke, Comte (The Freedom of Restraints)

Week 2: Marx and Engels (Critique of Political Economy)

Week 3: Durkheim (Functionalism)

Week 4: Weber and Simmel (Interpretive Sociology)

Week 5: W.E.B. Dubois (Critical Race Theory)

Week 6: Benjamin and Gramsci (New Marxisms)

Part II: The Consequences

Week 7: Parsons and Mills (The Conflict Debate) (First critical response due)

Week 8: Becker, Goffman, Althusser (Deviant Selves)

Week 9: Foucault and Habermas (Social Control)

Week 10: Butler and Smith (Gendered Bodies)

Week 11: McLuhan, Debord, Hall (Media and the Spectacle)

Week 12: Appadurai and Sassen (Global Views)

Second critical response due: T.B.D.

Formulating the question: How to locate your cognitive taste! Perhaps you are

interested in:

1. A phenomenon: Does the author think that it exists? If so, to what magnitude? What are the

phenomenon’s causes? What are its effects?

2. The absence of an expected phenomenon: What prevents it from happening?

3. A perceived relationship: Does it exist? To what extent is it causal or spurious?

4. A controversy: What underlies it?

5. A concept: Is it in empirical observation? How well does it explain and predict a

phenomenon? How is it related to one or more theories?

7. A process: How does it work? What are the requirements for understanding?

8. A solution to a problem: How can a problem be solved?

9. A course of action: How sound or desirable is it?

sociological thought syllabus

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