Department of SociologyUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel HillFall, 2003Social Theory(SOCI 200)Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00–12:15 Hamilton 151Andrew PerrinOffice: Hamilton 269Office hours: Monday, 10:00–12:00; Thursday, 9:00–10:30Or by appointmentPhone: 962-6876E-mail: [email protected] • http://www.unc.edu/~aperrinCourse OverviewCourse Goals1. To acquaint students with the idea of sociological paradigms and the tools for understandingand evaluating specific paradigms;2. To introduce students to the “sociological canon” of major works in sociological theory;3. To demonstrate the importance of sociological theory as a part of sociological research andpractice; and4. To consider critically the possibilities for empirical application and testing of social theory.Requirements1. Attendance and active participation in class discussions2. Two team-based presentations of readings and discussion leadership3. An in-depth writing project; select either:• Three short, critical essays, each considering the work of one theorist; or• One final paper considering at least two theorists and contributing an original compar-ative or applied argument.Team PresentationsA team of students will be responsible for organizing the discussion of readings during each classsession. These students, working together, are responsible for:• Preparing a “seminar paper,” to be distributed by e-mail to the rest of the class no laterthan 12:00 noon the day before class; and• Organizing and directing class discussion of the readings for the class.The seminar paper need not be a polished product; it should raise ideas, issues, concerns, andopportunities presented by the readings, and thereby form a provocative basis for the class dis-cussion. The seminar paper should not be primarily a summary, nor primarily a list of discussionquestions.Grading PolicyThe main principle is this: Nobody sees, or cares about, your grades in graduate classes.For the qualitatively inclined, the grading policy is essentially this: students who excel both inclassroom elements of the course (e.g., seminar papers, presentations, discussion) and in thewriting project will receive H grades. This is unlikely to be more than 2 or 3 students in a class,although it can of course vary. Students who excel in one or the other, but not both, will receivegrades in the P+ to H- range. The vast majority of students will receive a P, which representssubstantive mastery, at a Ph.D. level, of sociological theory—a significant accomplishment.For the quantitatively inclined, think in these terms:Assignment Grade percentageAttendance & Participation 30%Team presentations 20%Final Paper 50%Readings and ResourcesI have put many of the required and recommended books on reserve in the Sociology and Political ScienceLibrary, 271 Hamilton Hall. Many of the articles and chapters from other sources are available there as well.Most required readings that are not in the books listed below are available for download from the coursereadings site, http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu/readings. You will need a username and password to accessthis site; these will be provided in class.The recommended readings listed under many class sessions are suggestions for further reading in the field.Students presenting on those dates, and those with particular interests in the areas, may find them useful.You are not required or expected to read them for the class.There will be a course e-mail list set up to facilitate out-of-class discussion of readings and other issues. Thecourse list e-mail address will be [email protected] BooksJean Baudrillard. The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers (Verso, 2002).Pierre Bourdieu. Logic of Practice (Stanford University Press, 1990).´Emile Durkheim. The Division of Labour in Society (Free Press, 1984).´Emile Durkheim (trans. Cosman). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2001).´Emile Durkheim. Suicide (Free Press, 1997).Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish (Vintage, 1979).Michel Foucault. History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (Vintage, 1990).Sigmund Freud. The Ego and the Id (Norton, 1990).Erving Goffman. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Anchor Doubleday, 1959).Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (trans. Edmund Jephcott). Dialectic of En-lightenment (Stanford University Press, 2002).Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (ed. Tucker). The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (W. W.Norton, 1978).Max Weber (trans. Kalberg). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Roxbury,2002).Recommended BooksReadings from these books will be available with the res t of the reserve reading for the course;you may wish to buy them if they strike you as particularly interesting. Older ones may well beavailable used, either in the bookstore or over the Internet.Andrew Abbott. Time Matters: On Theory and Method (University of Chicago Press, 2001).Anne C. Herrman and Abigail J. Stewart, eds.. Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends inthe Humanities and Social Sciences (Westview Press, 2001).Georg Luk´acs. History and Class Consciousness (MIT Press, 1972).Herbert Marcuse. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Beacon Press,1974).Max Weber (ed. Gerth and Mills). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1958).TextbooksI have not assigned a textbook for this course; take your pick of one or more of these six if youwould like a convenient reference.Lewis Coser. Masters of Sociological Thought (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972).I have put several personal copies of this book in the Odum La b for graduate students’ use.Craig Calhoun, et al.. Classical Sociological Theory (Blackwell, 2002).Craig Calhoun, et al.. Contemporary Sociological Theory (Blackwell, 2002).George Ritzer. Sociological Theory, 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 1996).Jonathan Turner. The Structure of Sociological Theory, 6th ed. (Wadsworth, 1998).Malcolm Waters. Modern Sociological Theory (Sage, 1994).Course ScheduleAugust 26 Introduction and course organization• Why theory?• Organization of presentation datesReadings (available online or in class):• Orlando Patterson, “The Last Sociologist,” New York Times May 19, 2002. www http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/opinion/19PATT.html.• Judith Stacey, “Virtual Truth with a Vengeance,” Contemporary S ociology 28:1 (January, 1999):18–23 wwwAugust 28 Enlightenment, Modernity, and Social Theory• Kant, Was ist Aufkl¨arung? (“What is