CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Course Number: 920:314 Instructor: Asia Friedman
Semester: Summer 06 Email: afriedman@sociology.rutgers.edu
Time: T & Th, 6:00 PM – 10:30 PM Office Hours: Tuesdays 5:00 PM -6:00 PM
Location: Murray Hall 114 in Au Bon Pain
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is intended to provide students with a basic level of literacy in some of the major issues in contemporary sociological theory. There are many ways to organize such a course: by theorist, by time period, by school of thought. This course has been organized thematically. We begin with the notion of the social self and then introduce, among other things, the questions of consent, power, constraint, culture and the taken for granted, gender, race and sexuality. These issues by no means exhaust the themes of contemporary sociological theory, but no one course could. Instead, my hope is to provide you with an introduction to some of the important debates in social theory and a working vocabulary with which to discuss them theoretically.
ASSIGNMENTS
There are four types of assignments for this course.
1. Weekly question and answer. Each week you are to turn in one question that you think gets at the major theoretical issue(s) in the readings for that week (do not focus on readings already discussed in class in prior weeks) as well as your "answer" to it (i.e. your thesis statement) in a few sentences (or, at most, a page). These weekly questions must be typed, double spaced. They are due every Tuesday (except the very last one) in class.
Questions are due: July 18, July 25, August 1, August 8.
2. Short Essays. Three times during the course, you are to turn in an essay on the previous readings. I will provide the topics for these essays in class one week prior to the due date. Essays should be four pages or less (typed, double spaced) and submitted in class.
Short essays are due: July 25, August 3, August 10.
3. Final Essay. This essay is due on the last day of class, August 15th. It should reflect your learning in this course, consisting of a presentation of those elements in the theoretical analysis of the social self, power, the taken for granted, race, class, gender or sexuality you found most interesting and useful. You can choose to write an abstract theoretical paper or a paper where you identify those theoretical insights, issues, and questions most pertinent for talking about a specific social or cultural issue of interest to you. The essay should be typed, double spaced, and should be about 10-15 pages (or less, if you can make your points convincingly and succinctly), excluding footnotes and bibliography. Cite works and provide your references in accordance with one of the conventional reference formats.
GRADING
THE THREE SHORT ESSAYS WILL PROVIDE ABOUT 30 PERCENT OF THE COURSE GRADE; THE FINAL ESSAY, ABOUT 50 PERCENT. THE 20 PERCENT THAT REMAINS WILL BE DETERMINED BY YOUR WEEKLY QUESTIONS, YOUR ATTENDANCE, AND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO CLASS DISCUSSIONS.
REQUIRED READINGS
The main text for this course is Social Theory: Roots and Branches, edited by Peter Kivisto. It is available at New Jersey Books.
In addition, there are many articles on electronic reserve. To access readings on e-reserve, go to the libraries web page (www.libraries.rutgers.edu) and then click on the "RESERVE" tab and then search under my name. When you click on my name a list of all the readings for this course will appear. Look for the author you want. At the end of the syllabus, I provide a list of all the articles that are on reserve. You will need this citation information when you use these articles in your essays.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Familiarize yourself with the university’s policy here: http://teachx.rutgers.edu/integrity/.
SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READINGS
7/11: Introductions, syllabus review, in-class reading and discussion of C.W. Mills’ The Sociological Imagination (this reading will be distributed in class). Discussion of analytical concepts useful for theoretical analysis.
7/13: UNIT 1: THE SOCIAL SELF
G.H. Mead, “The Fusion of the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ in Social Activities” (Kivisto, p. 146)
Emile Durkheim, “What is a Social Fact?” (Kivisto, p. 43)
Sigmund Freud, “Civilization and the Individual” (on electronic reserve)
7/18 & 7/20
**Topic for Short Essay #1 distributed 7/18
UNIT 2: EVERYDAY LIFE AND THE TAKEN FOR GRANTED (Ethnomethodology and Symbolic Interactionism)
Herbert Blumer, “Society as Symbolic Interaction” (Kivisto, p. 241)
Erving Goffman, “Performances” (Kivisto, p. 248)
A. Lincoln Ryave and James Schenkein, “Notes on the Art of Walking” (electronic reserve)
7/25 & 7/27
**Short Essay #1 due 7/25 in class**
**Topic for Short Essay #2 distributed 7/27
UNIT 3: POWER, STANDPOINT & SOCIAL POSITION
Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” (Kivisto, p. 410)
Foucault, “Power as Knowledge” (electronic reserve)
Alvin Gouldner, “Toward a Reflexive Sociology” (electronic reserve)
gendered selves & androcentric theory
Judith Lorber, “Night to His Day” (electronic reserve)
Carol Tavris, “The Mismeasure of Woman” (electronic reserve)
Barrie Thorne, “Boys and Girls Together, But Mostly Apart” (electronic reserve)
Dorothy Smith, “Sociology From Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation” (Kivisto, p. 360)
8/1, 8/3 & 8/8
**Short Essay #2 due 8/3 in class**
**Topic for Short Essay #3 distributed 8/3
raced selves & white privilege
WEB Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races” (Kivisto, p. 151)
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (electronic reserve)
Ruth Frankenberg, “Whiteness as an unmarked social category” (electronic reserve)
Patricia Hill Collins, “Toward an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology” (Kivisto, p. 350)
class
Karl Marx, “Alienated Labor” (Kivisto, p. 6)
Pierre Bourdieu, “Structures and the Habitus” (Kivisto, p. 440)
Mary Romero, “Life as the Maid’s Daughter […]” (electronic reserve)
Dorothy Allison, “A Question of Class” (electronic reserve)
8/10
**Essay #3 due 8/10 in class**
*Class ending early – 8PM dismissal
heteronormativity, sociology & queer theory
Steven Epstein, “A Queer Encounter: Sociology and the Study of Sexuality” (electronic reserve)
Steven Seidman, “Symposium: Queer Theory/Sociology: A Dialogue” (electronic reserve)
8/15
**Final paper due 8/15 in class**
disembodied theory
Bryan S. Turner, “An Outline of a General Sociology of the Body” (Kivisto, p. 489)
LIST OF CITATIONS ON ELECTRONIC RESERVE:
Dorothy Allison, “A Question of Class” in In our own words: Writings from Women's Lives, M. Crawford & R. Unger, eds. (Boston: McGraw-Hill).
Steven Epstein, “A Queer Encounter: Sociology and the Study of Sexuality” in Sexuality and Gender, Williams and Stein, eds.(Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), pp. 44-59.
Michel Foucault, “Power as Knowledge” from The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (New York, Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 92-102.
Ruth Frankenberg, “Whiteness as an unmarked social category” in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Eric Klinenberg, Irene J. Nexica and Matt Wray, eds. (Duke University Press, 2001).
Sigmund Freud, “Civilization and the Individual” from Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: WW Norton, 1961), pp. 88-92
Alvin Gouldner, “Toward a Reflexive Sociology” from The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 488-495.
Judith Lorber, “Night to His Day” from Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 13-37.
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege” (Working Paper #189, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, 1988).
Mary Romero, “Life as The Maid’s Daughter: An Exploration of the Everyday Boundaries of Race, Class and Gender” in Challenging Fronteras, Romero, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ortiz, eds. (New York: Routledge Press), pp. 195-209.
A. Lincoln Ryave and James Schenkein, “Notes on the Art of Walking” in Readings in Contemporary Sociological Theory, Donald McQuarie, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995).
Steven Seidman, “Symposium: Queer Theory/Sociology: A Dialogue” (Sociological Theory 12:2, July 1994).
Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman (New York: Touchstone, 1992).
Barrie Thorne, “Boys and Girls Together, But Mostly Apart” in Relationships and Development, Hartup and Rubins, eds. (Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.: 1986), pp. 167-184.