INTRODUCTION
This course is designed to deepen graduate (M.A.) students'
understanding of basic sociological theories, and of new undercurrents. The
course also seeks to increase their awareness of the relevance of theory to
their specific fields of interest. It
emphasizes contemporary themes and macro-level dimensions of social reality.
Given that students will have been exposed to a greater or lesser degree to the
major sociological theories during their undergraduate years, the
lecture-seminar format adopted for the course stresses close familiarity with a
set of readings around carefully selected topics and themes. Experience
suggests that undergraduate courses with a theory content have tended to dwell
on the broad outlines of particular theories. In general, students have not
been required to demonstrate detailed knowledge of specific texts, or the
writings of particular authors. This is a shortcoming which this course will
help to overcome.
A. COURSE DESCRIPTION
Survey of major theorists and schools of thought in recent decades.
Course includes functionalism, exchange theory, conflict theory, symbolic
interaction, and phenomenology. Analysis of a sample of recent thinkers with a
major impact on sociological thinking, from this list: Blumer, Bourdieu,
Braverman, Cardoso, Collins, Foucault, Garfinkel, Geertz, Giddens, Goffman,
Gunder Frank, Habermas, Marcuse, Mead, Merton, O’Neil, Parsons, Ritzer, and
Wallerstein. The major concepts and theories to be sampled include: conflict;
exchange theory; systems theory; modernity and post-modernity;
structuration; action, practice;
double-reflexivity; ethnomethodology; agency-structure linkages; network
theory; dependency and underdevelopment; world system; rational choice theory;
negations and revolution; globalization; and ethnic and cultural identity.
