Understanding the Contemporary World: Imagining the Future I
University Core Course for Freshmen
3 hours / 3 Credits, 6 ECTS
Aim
This course focuses on contemporary issues and problems of the
present day by bridging humanities and social sciences disciplines. This
course aims to provide the students with critical thinking abilities about
the world they live in. It will introduce the students to the major issues
of contemporary world grouped under certain topics. Being a
university-wide core course, it aims the students to develop basic
awareness and understanding on global issues. In this course, instead
of using textbooks, the coursework will be conducted by reading
internet blogs, newspaper articles, reports (of think tanks, NGOs…);
having group projects; watching documentaries & movies and by
auditing seminars from the experts. Depending their areas of
specialization, the course will be offered by a group of academic staff.
Outcomes
: By the end of this course, students will
-
Develop their critical thinking abilities
Have the ability of making comparisons between different
theoretical approaches to contemporary world issues
Conduct research on selected areas and topics.
Set cross-links with the science and math courses’ content by means
of global issues.
Participate in group projects, oral presentations and debates
Teaching Methods
-
The course is taught in the form of one-hour lecture and two-hours
tutorial
Methods of assessment:
-
10% attendance
30% midterm
30% term-paper
30% final exam
Keytext: Macionis, J.J. and Plummer, K. 2012 Sociology: A Global Introduction. Essex:
Prentice Hall.
Week 1 (8 - 10 October): Overview of the course:
- Topics, assessment methods
- Writing a social science and humanities paper (resources, references)
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Week 2 (13 – 17 October): What is this thing called science?
Modernity, Science, Social Science
Suggested reading:
1. Chalmers, A.F. 1999 What is This Thing Called Science? Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company
2. McGrew, D., Hall, St. and Held, D. 1992 Modernity and its Futures:
Understanding Modern Societies. London: Polity Press
3. Hall, st. and Gieben, B. (eds.) 1993 The Formations of Modernity: Understanding
Modern Societies an Introduction. London: Polity Press.
Films/Documentaries:
1. Life Story
2. Frankenstein
3. 1984
Week 3 (20 – 24 October): Who is Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber?
Is Capitalism a rational scientific system? Are we heading to our destruction or to
our happiness?
1. Durkheim, E. 1982 The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: The Free Press.
2. Durkheim, E. 1968 The Division of Labour in Society. New York: The Free Press.
3. Durkheim, E. 1992 Professional Ethics and Civic Morals . London and NewYork:
Routledge .
4. http://archive.org/details/protestantethics00webe
5. Marx, K. 2010[1867] The Capital(Vol.I)
http://libcom.org/library/capital-karl-marx
6. Marx, K. and Engels, F. 1962 Selected works. Vol. 1. Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House.
7. Marx, K. and Engels, F. 1962 Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House.
8. Weber, M .1948 Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
9. Weber, M. 1950[1905] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Films/Documentaries:
1. Modern Times
2. Gattaca
3. 2001: A space odyssey
Week 4 (27 – 31 October): Postmodernity:
Is this a pipe?
Did the gulf war actually happen?
Suggested reading:
1. McGrew, D., Hall, St. and Held, D. 1992 Modernity and its Futures:
Understanding Modern Societies. London: Polity Press
2. Hall, st. and Gieben, B. (eds.) 1993 The Formations of Modernity: Understanding
Modern Societies an Introduction. London: Polity Press.
3. Baudrillard, J. 1995 The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press
Films/Documentaries:
1. Inception
2. Midnight in Paris
3. The Matrix
Week 5 (3 – 7 November): Research and Society: How World War I played a role in
the development of social science research methodology?
Suggested reading:
1. Bryman, A. 2008 Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Gray, A. 2003 Research Practice for Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Methods and
Lived Cultures. London: Sage Publications.
3. O’ Reilly, K. 2011 Ethnographic Methods. London: Routledge.
4. Marcus, G. 1995 Ethnography In/Of the World System: The Emergence of
Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117
Films/Documentaries:
1. Tales from the Jungle: Bronislaw Malinowski
Week 6 (10 – 14 November): Capitalism a Love Story: Modern States, Market
Economy, Globalization, and the Wealth of Nations
Suggested reading:
1. Gellner, E. 2009 Nations and Nationalism. New York: Cornell University Press.
2. Weber, M .1948 Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Films/Documentaries:
1. Capitalism: A Love-story
Week 7 (17 – 21 November): What is debtocracy? From Great Depression to the Oil
Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008: Crises and Problems of the Global
Market Economy
Suggested reading:
3. Weber, M. 1950[1905] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
http://archive.org/details/protestantethics00webe
4. Marx, K. 2010[1867] The Capital(Vol.I)
http://libcom.org/library/capital-karl-marx
Films/Documentaries:
1. Catastroika
2. Debtocracy
3. The shock doctrine
Week 8 (24 – 28 November): Mid-terms
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Week 9 (1 – 5 December): Environmental issues: Let’s play a game!
History of environmentalism, environmental summits, major environmental
problems, logic and limits to growth
Suggested reading:
1. Beck, U. 1992 Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE.
2. Hannigan, J. 2006 Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective.
London: Routledge.
3. Ignatow, G. 2005b ‘Economic Dependency and Environmental Attitudes in
Turkey’. Environmental Politics 14(5): 648-66.
4. ─── 2007 Transnational Identity Politics and the Environment. Lexington
Books.
5. ─── 2008a Globalizations and the Transformation of Environmental
Activism: Turkey since the 1980s. Globalizations 5(3):433-447.
6. ─── 2008b Transnational Environmentalism at Europe’s Boundaries:
Identity Movements in Lithuania and Turkey. Current Sociology 56(6):845864.
7. Kousis, M. and Eder, K. 2001 Introduction: EU policy-making, local action,
and the emergence of institutions of collective action. A theoretical
perspective on Southern Europe. In: Kousis, M and K Eder (eds.)
Environmental Politics in Southern Europe: Actors, Institutions and Discourses
in a Europeanizing Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
8. Kousis, M. 2004 Greece. In Rootes, C. (ed.) Environmental Protest in Western
Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9. Lin, J. and Mele, C. 2005 The Urban Sociology Reader.
10. Özdemir, İ. 2003 The Development of Environmental Consciousness in
Modern Turkey. In: Richard Foltz (ed.), Environmentalism in the Muslim
World. Boston: MIT Press.
11. Seferiades, S. and Johnston, H.2012 Violent Protest, Contentious Politics, and
the Neoliberal State. London: Ashgate.
12. Sutton, Ph. 2007 The Environment: A Sociological Introduction. London: Polity Press.
13. Voulvouli, A. 2009 From Environmentalism to Transenvironmentalism: The
Ethnography of an Urban Protest in Modern Istanbul. Oxford: Peter Lang
Publications.
14. ─── 2010 Leftism, Secularism, Transnationalism and Localism: The
Identities of an Urban Protest in Contemporary Istanbul. Ethnologia OnLine
(http://www.societyforethnology.gr/site/pdf/TheidentitiesofASG.pdf).
15. ─── 2011a Transenvironmental Protest: The Arnavutköy anti-bridge
Campaign in Istanbul. Environmental Politics 20(6):861-878.
16. ─── 2011b Grassroots Mobilisation in Turkey: The Transnational
Character of Local Environmental Protests.
Films/Documentaries
1. Avatar
2. An inconvenient Truth
Week 10 (8 – 12 December): The Urban environment: What is the relationship
between Julia Roberts and the Third Bosphorus Bridge?
Population increase and urbanization, Gobal cities, Urban struggles
Suggested reading:
1. Sassen, S 2001 The Global City Princeton, Princeton University Press
2. Voulvouli, A. 2009 From Environmentalism to Transenvironmentalism: The
Ethnography of an Urban Protest in Modern Istanbul. Oxford: Peter Lang
Publications.
3. ─── 2010 Leftism, Secularism, Transnationalism and Localism: The
Identities of an Urban Protest in Contemporary Istanbul. Ethnologia OnLine
Films/Documentaries:
1. Kent Suclari
Week 11 (15 – 19 December): What is Civil Society? NGOs, Social Movements
(Definitions, local, national and global NGOs, local, national and global social
movements)
Suggested reading:
1. Tilly, C. 2004 Social Movements 1768 – 2004. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
2. Voulvouli, A. 2009 From Environmentalism to Transenvironmentalism: The
Ethnography of an Urban Protest in Modern Istanbul. Oxford: Peter Lang
Publications.
3. ─── 2011a Transenvironmental Protest: The Arnavutköy anti-bridge
Campaign in Istanbul. Environmental Politics 20(6):861-878.
4. ─── 2011b Grassroots Mobilisation in Turkey: The Transnational
Character of Local Environmental Protests. International Journal of Academic
Research 3(1): 881 - 888.
5. Seferiades, S. and Johnston, H.2012 Violent Protest, Contentious Politics, and
the Neoliberal State. London: Ashgate.
Films/Documentaries:
1. This is what democracy looks like
Week 12 (22 – 26 December): Technology: From antiquity to contemporary
technology (computer technologies, robotics, nanotechnologies, genetics etc)
Suggested reading:
……………………………………………..
Films/Documentaries:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Contact
The time Machine
Back to the Future
ET: The Extra-terrestrial
Week 13 (29 December – 2 January): Media: From Gutenberg to the world wide
web (internet, social networks)
Suggested reading:
1. McLuhan, M. 1964 Understanding Media London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
2. Williams, K. Understanding Media Theory. New York: Bloomsbury.
3. Thornham, S., Bassett, C. and Marris, P. 2009 Media Studies: A Reader. New
York: NYU Press.
4. Miller, D. 2011 Tales from the Facebook. London: Polity Press.
Films/Documentaries:
1.
2.
3.
4.
You ‘ve got mail
The social network
Jobs
The revolution will not be televised
Week 14 (5 – 9 January): Art and society: Is prettiness universal? The globalization
of art
Suggested reading:
1. Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural
Economy.” Public Culture 2: 1-24.
2. Griswold, Wendy. 1992. "The Writing on the Mud Wall: Nigerian Novels and
the Imaginary Village." American Sociological Review 57: 709-724.
3. Kim, Jeongmee. 2003. “The Funding and Distribution Structure of the British
Film Industry in the 1990s: Localization and Commercialization of British
Cinema towards a Global Audience.” Media, Culture & Society 25: 405-413.
4. Mukerji, Chandra. 1979. “Mass Culture and the Modern World-System: The
Rise of the Graphic Arts.” Theory & Society 8: 245-268.
5. Penkakur, Manjunath and Radha Subramanyam. 1996. “Indian Cinema
beyond National Borders.” Pages 67-82 inNew Patterns in Global Television:
Peripheral Vision, edited by John Sinclair, Elizabeth Jacka, and Stuart
Cunningham. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Films/Documentaries:
1. The red violin
Week 15 (12 – 16 January) Revision of the course – Submission of term-papers
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