INTRODUCTION: THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
First day of class.
January 27
C. Wright Mills, "The Promise" (in Intersections).Emile Durkheim, "What is a Social Fact?" (in Intersections).
Ferdinand Tonnies, "Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft" (in Intersections).
Questions for reading:1. What analytical themes do Mills' "sociological imagination" and Durkheim's "social fact" share?
2. How do gemeinschaft and gesellschaft manifest two different ways of understanding and interacting with other people?
SOCIAL INTEGRATION: WHAT KEEPS SOCIETY TOGETHER?
January 29
Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, pp. 1-87.Recommended:
Division of labor (definition)
Collins & Makowsky, chap. 6 ("Dreyfus's Empire: Emile Durkheim and Georges Sorel").
Questions for reading:1. How is a growing division of labor characteristically modern? Potentially divisive?
2. What is Durkheim's hypothesis about the division of labor's effect on social solidarity?
3. How do crime and punishment reveal the mechanics of social solidarity?
Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, pp. 88-138, 149-175.Recommended:
Giddens, chaps. 5, 7.
Questions for reading:1. Under organic solidarity, does individualism function in the same way that religion did under mechanical solidarity?
2. How are contracting and commercial exchange "moral"?
3. Can mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity co-exist simultaneously?
February 5
Adam Smith, from The Wealth of Nations.Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, pp. 179-225, 291-309.
Recommended:
Giddens, chap. 6, pp. 82-85.
Daniel Akst, "The Weight of the World on our Shoulders" (New York Times, February 1, 2004).
Questions for reading:1. How do Smith and Durkheim compare in their description of the "moral" and personal quality of life for workers in a complex division of labor?
2. What structural changes cause organic solidarity to become more predominant?
3. What are the common forces behind suicide and class conflict? (Today's recommended Giddens reading might be particularly helpful.)
SOCIAL INEQUALITY: SOCIETY FOR WHOM?
February 10
Kingsley Davis & Wilbur E. Moore, "Some Principles of Stratification" (in Intersections).Max Weber, "Class Status Party" (in Intersections).
Recommended:
Xan Brooks, "We are All Nerds Now" (The Guardian, December 12, 2003).
Giddens, chap. 11, pp. 163-168.
Collins & Makowsky, chap. 7 ("Max Weber: The Disenchantment of the World").
Questions for reading:1. How does Davis & Moore's explanation for social stratification complement Durkheim's theory of the division of labor?
2. For Weber, why do people who belong to the same status group engage in "communal action" (i.e., orient themselves to the feeling that they belong together)? Why do people who belong to the same class not engage in communal action?
3. How does class threaten the status hierarchy?
February 12
Karl Marx, "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (in Intersections).Karl Marx, "The German Ideology: Idealism and Materialism".
Recommended:
Collins & Makowsky, chap. 2 ("Sociology in the Underground: Karl Marx").
Giddens, chaps. 2-3.
Questions for reading:1. How does Marx define the bourgeosie and the proletariat?
2. How do the bourgeoisie both make possible and threaten the proletariat's existence?
3. Why does human survival necessarily involve social cooperation? How is this in contradiction with private property?
February 17
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: Introduction, chaps. 1-2.Robert Pear, "Health Spending Rises to Record 15% of Economy" (New York Times, January 9, 2004). [REGISTRATION REQUIRED]
Recommended:
Giddens, chap. 15.
February 19
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: chap. 3, Evaluation.Recommended
Paul Krugman, "The Death of Horatio Alger" (The Nation, December 18, 2003).
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS: THE MICRO WORLD
February 24
First set of take-home essays due.
Charles Cooley, "The Looking Glass Self" (in Intersections).Recommended:
Collins & Makowsky, chap. 9 ("The Discovery of the Invisible World: Simmel, Cooley, and Mead").
Questions for reading:1. How is one's sense of self influenced by social context?
2. How is one's sense of possessiveness meaningful only with reference to others?
3. What is the process by which one internalizes others' perceptions into self-evaluation?
February 26
Herbert Blumer, "The Nature of Symbolic Interactionism" (in Intersections).Howard Becker, "Becoming a Marijuana Smoker" (in Intersections).
David L. Rosenhan, "On Being Sane in Insane Places."
Questions for reading:1. How does the definition of a situation entail an interactive process of interpretation by the participants?
2. How must a marijuana smoker define the situtation of smoking marijuana before he or she gets high?
3. If the normal are not detectably sane, then how do psychiactric staff define the situation in order to label them insane?
Georg Simmel, "Dyads, Triads and Larger Groups" (in Intersections).Max Weber, "The Fundamental Concepts of Sociology" [read 1.1-1.7].
Recommended:
Giddens, chap. 11, pp. 145-163.
March 4
Midterm.
SPRING BREAK: March 7-20
March 23
Mary Chayko, Connecting.
SOCIALIZATION: REPRODUCING SOCIETY
March 25
Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: chaps. 1-3.Recommended:
Tamar Lewin, "For More People in 20's and 30's, Home is Where the Parents Are" (New York Times, December 22, 2003). [REGISTRATION REQUIRED]
March 30
Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: chaps. 4-7.Recommended:
Amy Reiter, "The Mommy Mystique" (interview with Susan J. Douglas, Salon.com, February 19, 2004).
Max Weber, "Characteristics of Bureaucracy" (in Intersections).Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: chaps. 8-12.
Sara Rimer, "Today's Lesson for College Students: Lighten Up" (New York Times, April 6, 2004).
Questions for reading Weber:1. What is the basis of authority in a bureaucracy?
2. What does bureaucracy do to personalized, informal relations within itself (i.e., among workers) and to those outside (i.e., clients of the bureaucracy)?
April 6
W.E.B. DuBois, "On Our Spiritual Strivings" (in Intersections).Recommended:
Collins & Makowsky, chap. 11 ("The Emergence of African-American Sociology: DuBois, Frazier, Drake, and Cayton").
Questions for reading:1. How is Dubois's idea of the "veil" of racism that separates whites from African Americans a sociological concept?
2. How does racial oppression give African Americans a "double consciousness" with special insight into the social world of whites?
April 8
Second set of take-home essays due.
Karl Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" (in Intersections).Recommended:
Giddens, chap. 14.
Questions for reading:1. How is religion a "reversed world-consciousness" (pg. 59)?
2. Why does the emancipation of the proletariat promise the emancipation of "all other spheres of society" (pg. 62)?
April 13
Karl Marx, "The German Ideology: The Illusion of the Epoch".Questions for reading:1. Why does civil society only develop fully under the capitalist mode of production?
2. Why does the ruling class "represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society"?
RATIONALIZATION: THE IRON CAGE
April 15
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: pp. 1-42.Recommended:
Giddens, chap. 12.
Questions for reading:1. Why has saving money been discouraged under "traditionalism"?
2. Why does the "ideal type of the capitalistic entrepreneur" emphasize "a certain ascetic tendency"?
April 20
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: pp. 67-127, 356-372.Questions for reading:1. What did (a) accumulating wealth and (b) spending money symbolize under Calvinism?
2. Whydid Calvinism and other Protestant sects rationalize the accumulation of wealth?
3. How come "the Puritan wanted to work in a calling" but "we are forced to do so"?
April 22
Final exam.
April 27
George Ritzer, The Globalization of Nothing: chaps. 1-5.
April 29
George Ritzer, The Globalization of Nothing: chaps. 6-8. Recommended: appendix.
Third set of take-home essays due.
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