Instructor:
Howard Brick                                                                                                                                                Busch 104
Office Hours: Mon., 10:00-12:00; Thurs., 12:00-1:00                                                                                     935-4251
hbrick@artsci.wustl.edu

TA:
Jennifer Nicoll Victor
jnvictor@artsci.wustl.edu
Office Hours:  Tues. and Wed., 11:00-12:00, Social Science Computer Lab, Eliot 113

Texts (available for purchase at the University Bookstore, and on Olin Library Reserve), listed alphabetically by author:

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (NAL, 1999)
Emile Durkheim, Suicide  (Free Press, 1997)
Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Beacon, 1969)
Carol Stack, All Our Kin:  Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (Basic, 2000)
Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2d ed. (Norton, 1999)
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Roxbury, 2001)
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Viking Penguin, 1993)

PLUS additional reading selections on E-Res (electronic reserve), Olin Library

Course Description:  This course offers an introduction to modern social theory from the age of Adam Smith to the present, featuring discussion of primary texts by major contributors to “classic” social theory—notably Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim—and surveying trends of social thought since their time, including main currents of American social science, critical theory, feminism, postmodernism, and new approaches to understanding global social structures.

Format and Requirements:  The class combines lecture and discussion, with emphasis on the latter.  The course calls for careful, intensive reading of primary texts in the history of modern social theory, and much of our time in class will be devoted to discussion of the reading assignments.  For each new unit in the course, indicated on the class schedule below by underlined topic headings, the instructor will provide historical background and an overview of theoretical issues in the form of lecture.

To a large extent, the success of the course depends on your informed and enthusiastic participation in class discussions.  Naturally, regular attendance is expected.  In our first meeting, we will discuss the various means we can use to facilitate vital participation by all.  Furthermore, each student will make a short oral presentation once in the term, suggesting a set of questions about the assigned reading that day for the sake of commencing discussion.  (Given, the number of students in the class, some discussions will begin with two presenters.)  Please indicate, by the second class meeting, the week in which you would like to provide the introduction.

Written Assignments and Grading:  There are three short papers (5-7 pages each), written in response to essay questions on the course readings, and a final exam.

Your participation in discussion (including your oral presentation on one of the readings) will constitute a fifth element in the calculation of the final grade.  The three papers, the exam, and participation each count for 20 percent of the final course grade.

The instructor’s assessment of participation will NOT judge whether you are “right” or “wrong” in your contributions to discussion (to a large extent, the matters we deal with are open to interpretation and to a range of reasonable differences in judging what a valid interpretation may be).  Rather, it consists of judging whether, or to what degree, you were an active, and responsible, participant in discussion.

Style:  In preparing your papers, you may use any consistent style of documentation you choose.  Standards are The MLA Style Sheet and Kate Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses  and  Dissertations.

Academic Integrity:  See the Graduate School’s statement of policy regarding plagiarism and other infractions of academic integrity on the web, at http://artsci.wustl.edu/GSAS/Academics/integrityBL.html.

Week       Date  Topic

 1             1/14      Welcome to the Course

                1/16      Capitalism, Modernity, Individuality, and the World:  What Do These Mean?

Reading:  Raymond Williams, from Keywords:  “Civilization” and “Society” [E-Res]

 2             1/21      The Scottish Enlightenment:  Political Economy and Civil Society

Reading:  Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (University of Chicago, 1976), selections:  Introduction and Plan of the Work, and Book I, Chaps. I-VII (but Chap. IV optional), pp. 1-71. [E-Res]

Reading: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, selections: Book I, Chaps. VIII-IX, pp. 72-110; (Optional: Book I, Chap. X, Part II, pp. 132-160); Book IV, Chap. II, pp. 474-95. [E-Res]

 3             1/28      Modern Liberalism:  The Individual and Society

Reading: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Chaps. 1-4, pp. 91-172.

Reading: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman:  Chaps.  6-9, pp. 219-63; Chap. 13, p. 300-319.

 4              2/4       Karl Marx and Historical Materialism

Reading:  From The Marx-Engels Reader:  Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, Part One, pp. 147-200.

Reading: From The Marx-Engels Reader:  Marx and Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Part I, pp. 473-83; Marx, Selections from Capital, vol. I, pp. 302-29

 5              2/11     Outlining Capitalist Development [Presenter:  Hasan Siddiqui]

Reading:  From The Marx-Engels Reader:  Marx, Selections from Capital, vol. I, pp. 384-417, 422-38.

                2/13      Foundations of Modern Sociology:  Weber and Durkheim

Reading: Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Chapters 1-3, pp. 3-50

6              2/18      Religion and Economic Ethics [Presenter:  Sarah Aronson]

Reading: Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Chapter 4, pp.53-101

Reading:  Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Chapter 5, pp, 103-25.

 7             2/25      Social Causes of Individual Action [Presenter: Jonah Sobol]

Reading:  Emile Durkheim, Suicide, Preface and Introduction (pp. 35-53); Book Two, Chap. 2 (pp. 152-70), Chap. 3, sections IV-VI (pp. 197-216), Chap. 5, sections I-III (pp. 241-58) [and section IV, pp. 259-76, OPTIONAL].

Reading:  Emile Durkheim, Suicide, Book Two, Chap. 6, section I (pp. 277-90); Book Three, Chap. 1, sections I and III (pp. 297-300, 306-20), [Chap. 2, section I (pp. 327-38) OPTIONAL], Chap. 3 (pp. 361-92).

 8             3/4 - 3/6 SPRING BREAK
 

 9             3/11      American Sociology:  Cities, Roles, Interaction

Reading:  Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, Chap. 4-6, pp. 60-100; [Optional:  Chap. 7, pp. 101-17]; Chap. 9, pp.133-47.

Reading: Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House: [Optional:  Chap. 10-11, pp. 148-85]; Chaps.13-15, pp. 200-56.

10            3/18      The Chicago School and the City [Presenter:  Sheila Swartz]

Reading:  W. I. Thomas, “Social Organization and Social Reorganization,” “Social Personality,” and “Family and Community,” from On Social Organization and Social Personality (University of Chicago Press, 1966), Chaps. 1, 2, and 5 [E-Res]

   *******Second paper due (Marx/Weber/Durkheim)*******

                3/20      Social Structure and Social Roles [Presenter:  Tyler Zander]

Reading: Talcott Parsons, “Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States” and “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World,” from Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory (Free Press, 1954) [E-Res].

Optional:  C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford, 1956), chap.12; “The Distribution of Power in American Society,” from Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Free Press, 1960) [E-Res].

11            3/25      Interaction and the Formation of the Self

Reading: Erving Goffman, from Interaction Ritual (Doubleday, 1967):  “On Face Work” or “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor” [E-Res]

Reading:  Michelle Z. Rosaldo, “Woman, Culture, and Society:  A Theoretical Overview,” from Woman, Culture and Society, eds. Rosaldo and Lamphere (Stanford, 1974); Louise Lamphere, “The Struggle to Reshape Our Thinking about Gender, from The Impact of Feminist Research in the Academy, ed. Christie Farnham (Indiana, 1987) [E-Res]

12             4/1       Race, Family, and Women’s Agency [Presenter: Silvia Dadian]

Reading:  Carol B. Stack, All Our Kin (complete)

Reading:  Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution:  An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 20 (Winter 1988) [E-Res]

13             4/8       Critical theory and Postmodernism in Social Theory

Reading:  Jürgen Habermas, selections from The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (MIT, 1989), Chap. 2 [E-Res]
General remarks on Habermas and Critical Theory

Reading: Jürgen Habermas, selections from The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (MIT, 1989), Chap. 5 [E-Res]

14            4/15      Estrangement, Refusal, and Revolution  [Presenter:  Laura Egerdal]

Reading:  Herbert Marcuse, Essay on Liberation,Preface and pp. 3-48.

                4/17      Reading:  Herbert Marcuse, Essay on Liberation, pp.49-91.

15            4/22      Rise of the Carceral Society [Presenter:  Joshua Jones]

Reading:  Michel Foucault, selections from Discipline and Punish (Pantheon, 1977),  Note abbreviated assignment:  pp. 195-228 [E-Res]

Reading:  Douglas Kellner, “Theorizing Globalization,” Sociological Theory 20:3 (November 2002):  285-305 [E-Res]

                 5/2       FINAL EXAM, 1-3 pm, Eliot 314.