Classical Sociological Theory
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Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas
Wallace 108
Office Hours:
Monday, 3:30-5:30 or by appointment.
SOC 501
Tuesday, 5:00-8:00, 190 Wallace.
This course offers an introduction to the construction of social theories through a
survey and critical analysis of the foundational texts in sociology. We will
explore the following questions: (1) What are the main themes and arguments
developed in classical sociological theory? (2) How do they relate to the social
and intellectual context in which these texts were produced? (3) How have these
theories and methods been used in recent sociological research? (4) How can
they help us formulate explanations of social phenomena?
Each session is organized around a discussion of (1) one or several readings from
a classical theorist and (2) a short, more contemporary piece from (an)other
scholar(s), which illustrates the relevance of such theory today.
This seminar is required of first-year graduate students in sociology. It is also
open to graduate students in other fields, as well as to senior-year sociology
majors.
Requirements
(1) Two in-class presentations on weekly readings, accompanied by a short
memo (2-3 double-spaced pages) to be posted on the course web site at
least 24 hours prior to the course meeting. (30% of final evaluation)
(2) Two longer exercise-type essays (10-15 pages). The first essay is due
before the fall break and will be based on a question from the instructor
(30%). The final essay must address an interesting empirical question and
contrast various possible theoretical explanations of it, using the readings
in this class (30%).
(3) Participation (10%). Students are expected to read all the assigned
material, to come to class prepared, and to participate actively in class
meetings.
(4) This is a P/D/F class. There are no grades.
Readings
The following books are required and have been ordered from the U-store (36
University Place). Additional readings are available from electronic reserves at
http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/reserves/elecres.html .
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Alexis de Tocqueville, 2000, Democracy in America, University of Chicago
Press.
Robert C. Tucker, ed., 1978, The Marx-Engels Reader, W. W. Norton.
H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber, Oxford University
Press.
Emile Durkheim, 1995 (1912), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Simon
and Schuster.
Emile Durkheim, 1951 (1897) Suicide, The Free Press.
Emile Durkheim, 1984 (1893), The Division of Labor in Society. The Free
Press.
Max Weber, 2001, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Roxbury
Publishing Co.
Donald N. Levine, ed., 1971, Georg Simmel. On Individuality and Social
Forms, University of Chicago Press.
Thorstein Veblen, 1994 (1899), Theory of the Leisure Class, Penguin USA.
Peter Gay, 1995, The Freud Reader, W.W. Norton, Vintage.
Randall Collins, 1994, Four Sociological Traditions, Oxford University Press.
Syllabus
Week 1. Sept 17. The Historical Emergence of Sociology and the Status of
Classical Sociological Theory.
Johan Heilbron, 1995, The Rise of Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. Introduction, Part III.
Randall Collins, 1994, Four Sociological Traditions, Oxford University Press.
“Prologue: The Rise of the Social Sciences”
Jeffrey Alexander, “The Centrality of the Classics” in Stephen P. Turner, 1996,
Social Theory and Sociology: The Classics and Beyond, Blackwell Pub.
Craig Calhoun, 1992, “Sociology, Other Disciplines, and the Project of a General
Understanding of Social Life”, pp137-196 in T. Halliday and M. Janowitz, eds.,
Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization,
University of Chicago Press.
Andrew Abbott, 2000, “The Context of Disciplines”, in Chaos of Disciplines,
University of Chicago Press.
Recommended
Connell, R. W., 1967, “Why is Classical Theory Classical?” American Journal of
Sociology, May, 1511-57.
Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Heritage of Sociology, The Promise of Social
Science”, http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwpradfp.htm
Wolf Lepenies, 1988, Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology.
Cambridge University Press.
Geoffrey Hawthorn, 1987, Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Social Theory,
Cambridge University Press.
Week 2. Sept 24. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Alexis de Tocqueville, 2000, Democracy in America, University of Chicago Press.
Book I, Part 1, chapters 1-4;
Book I, Part 2, chapters 6-9;
Book II Part 1, chapters 1-5, 7-8;
Book II Part 2, chapters 1-2, 5, 7-14, 18-19;
Book II Part 3, chapter 13.
Louis Hartz, 1950, The Liberal Tradition in America, Part One: “Feudalism and the
American Experience”, pp. 3-32.
Recommended
*Alexis de Tocqueville, 1987, The Old Regime and the Revolution, Book II.
University of Chicago Press.
Francois Furet, 1981, “De Tocqueville and the Problem of the French
Revolution”. In Interpreting the French Revolution, Cambridge University Press,
Pp132-163.
Look at http://www.tocqueville.org/
Week 3. Oct 1. Karl Marx (1818-1883). I. Historical Materialism and the
Theory of Classes.
Robert C. Tucker, ed., 1978, The Marx-Engels Reader, W. W. Norton.
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, pp3-6
The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1944, pp. 66-105
German Ideology, pp. 146-199
Manifesto of the Communist Party, pp. 473-491
Class Struggles in France, pp. 586-593
18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, pp. 594-617
Erik Olin Wright, 1998, “Posing the Problem: The Agenda of Class Analysis”,
Chapter 1 in Classes, Verso.
Recommended:
*Michael Burawoy and Erik Olin Wright, 2000, “Sociological Marxism”, working
paper. http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/burawoy/sociological.pdf
Shlomo Avineri, 1971, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge
University Press.
Karl Mannheim, 1985, Ideology and Utopia, Harvest Books.
Browse the Marxists Internet Archive on www.marxists.org
Week 4. Oct 8. Karl Marx II. The Theory of Capitalist Accumulation.
Robert C. Tucker, ed., 1978, The Marx-Engels Reader, W. W. Norton.
Wage Labor and Capital, pp. 203-217
Grundrisse, pp. 222-294
Capital, Vol. I., pp. 302-308, 319-361; 419-438
E. P. Thompson, 1982, “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” in
Anthony Giddens and David Held, Classes, Power and Conflict, Berkeley.
Recommended
Joseph Schumpeter, 1984, “Marx the Economist”, Chapter 3 in Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy, HarperCollins.
Robert Heilbroner, 1999, “The Inexorable System of Karl Marx”, pp. 136-170 in
The Worldly Philosophers. Simon and Schuster.
Week 5. Oct 15. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). I. Social Morphology.
Emile Durkheim, 1951 (1897) Suicide, The Free Press. Introduction. Skim Books I
& II. Book III Chapter 1.
Emile Durkheim, 1984 (1893), The Division of Labor in Society. The Free Press.
Introduction. Book I: Chapters 1, 2, 3 (I, skip II, then III from bottom of p 81 “to
sum up”-end), and Chapter 7. Book II: Chapter 1, 2 , 5(III only).
Viviana Zelizer, 1994, Pricing the Priceless Child, Princeton University Press. Pp5672.
Recommended
*Robert Bellah ed., 1973, Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press.
Gianfranco Poggi, 2000, Durkheim, Oxford University Press.
Steven Lukes, 1985, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, a Historical and Critical
Study, Stanford University Press.
Michel Foucault, 1995, “The Body of the Condemned”, Chapter 1 in Discipline and
Punish, Vintage Books.
Week 6. Oct 23. Emile Durkheim II. The Social Functions of Religion.
Emile Durkheim, 1995 (1912), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Simon and
Schuster, Introduction. Book I, Chapters 1, 4. Book II, Chapters 1, 3, 6, 7.
Conclusion.
Pierre Bourdieu, 1979, “The Kabyle house or the world reversed.” in Algeria
1960: The Disenchantment of the World, the Sense of Honour, the Kabyle House or the
World Reversed. Cambridge University Press.
Recommended
Mary Douglas, 1984, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo, Routledge.
Claude Levi-Strauss, 1971, “Nature and Culture”, pp5-11 in The Elementary
Structures of Kinship, Beacon Press.
Mid term essay due Oct 24.
Oct 28. No class (fall recess)
Week 7. Nov 5. Max Weber (1864-1920) I. Religion and Capitalism.
H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber, Oxford University Press.
“The Social Psychology of the World Religions”, pp. 267-301
“The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism”, pp. 302-322
Max Weber, 2001, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Roxbury
Publishing Co., Chapter 2, “The Spirit of Capitalism”.
Robert Wuthnow, 1996, Poor Richard’s Principle, Chapter 3, “Moral Tradition: the
Lost Ambivalence of American Culture”, pp. 59-82.
Recommended
*Wolfgang Schluchter, 1979, “The Paradox of Rationalization: On the Relation of
Ethics and the World” in Guether Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter, Max Weber’s
Vision of History: Ethics and Methods, University of California Press.
*Max Weber, 1978, Economy and Society, Chapter 1 “Basic Sociological Terms”,
pp. 3-62
*Max Weber, 1980, General Economic History, Chapter 4, “The Birth of Modern
Capitalism”, Transaction Pub.
*Randall Collins, 1992, “Weber’s Last Theory of Capitalism” in M. Granovetter
and R. Swedberg, The Sociology of Economic Life, Westview Press.
Wolfgang Schluchter, 1989, Rationalism, Religion, and Domination : a Weberian
Perspective, University of California Press.
Fritz Ringer, 1997, Max Weber’s Methodology: The Unification of the Cultural and
Social Sciences, Harvard University Press.
Albert O. Hirschman, 1977, “Reflections on an Episode in Intellectual History”,
pp117-135 in The Passions and the Interests, Princeton University Press.
Week 8. Nov 12. Max Weber II. Power / Domination / Rationalization.
H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber, Oxford University Press.
“Structures of Power”, pp. 159-179
“Class, Status and Party”, pp. 180-195
“Bureaucracy”, pp. 196-244
“Politics as Vocation”, pp. 77-128.
Max Weber, 1978, “The Types of Legitimate Domination”, Economy and Society,
University of California Press. Pp. 212-254.
Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, 1983, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional
Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields”, American
Sociological Review, 48, 147-60.
Recommended:
*Rogers Brubaker, 1988, The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral
Thought of Max Weber, Unwin Hyman.
Max Weber, 1978, “Domination and Legitimacy”, Economy and Society, University
of California Press. Pp. 941-955.
Week 9. Nov 19. Georg Simmel (1858-1918). A Sociology of Forms.
Donald N. Levine, ed., 1971, Georg Simmel. On Individuality and Social Forms,
University of Chicago Press. Pp. 3-25, 41-149, 251-294.
Ron Breiger, “The Duality of Persons and Groups”, Social Forces, 1974, 53, 2, Dec,
181-190.
Recommended
*Kurt Wolf, 1985, “Introduction” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, New York: The
Free Press.
Georg Simmel, 1964, “Competition” in Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations,
The Free Press.
Week 10. Nov 26. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). A Sociology of
Consumption.
Thorstein Veblen, 1994 (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class, Penguin Classics.
Chapters 1-8.
Pierre Bourdieu, 1987, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.
Harvard University Press. “Conclusion: Classes and Classifications”, Pp466-484.
[Also useful, but not required: Chapter 1, Part II]
Recommended:
David Riesman, 1995, Thorstein Veblen, Transaction Pub.
Robert Heilbroner, 1999, “The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen”, pp. 136-170
in The Worldly Philosophers. Simon and Schuster.
Week 11. Dec 3. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Psychoanalysis and Social
Control.
Peter Gay, 1995, The Freud Reader, xiii-xxiii, 129-171, 481-510, 685-771.
Norbert Elias, 1994 (1937), The Civilizing Process. Pp42-88, 95-105, 443-56, 460-465
Recommended:
Peter Gay, 1998, Freud: A Life for our Time. W. W. Norton.
Nancy Chodorow, 1999 (first ed. 1978), The Reproduction of Mothering, University
of California Press.
Film: Dream sequence from Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock / Salvador Dali).
Week 12. Dec 10. Other Currents. Synthesis and Conclusion.
Randall Collins, 1994, Four Sociological Traditions, University of Chicago Press.
“The Utilitarian Tradition” and “The Microinteractionist Tradition”.
Final essay due Dec 14.