FORDHAM UNIVERSITY
Graduate Program in Sociology
Spring 2002: Mondays, 5:30-7:20 PM Dealy Hall 115
Instructor: E. Doyle McCarthy mccarthy@fordham.edu
718-817-3855
Office hours for graduate students: Mondays 3-4 PM and by appointment
SOGA 6166
THEORIES OF CULTURE & KNOWLEDGE
Course Description:
An introduction to the expanding field of the sociology of knowledge and culture, including a discussion of the reasons for the resurgence of culture into the forefront of our understanding. The course is principally a course in the ways that sociologists and other social scientists have conceptualized and studied the relationship of mind and society: how socialization and internalization of cultural forms (language, knowledge, ideas, concepts, and entire worldviews) occurs and how human beings shape and are shaped by their social worlds (the problem of human agency). Social theories of the self and identity are also covered, including contemporary discussions of the politics of identity within postmodernity and globalization and the emergence of social movements of nations, sexualities, ethnicities, and women.
The works studied include classic and contemporary writings in the sociology of knowledge and culture—Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel— followed by commentaries on “culture” and “knowledge” by Karl Mannheim and Max
Scheler, framers of Wissenssoziologie in Germany in the 1920s, as well as later works in this subdiscipline by Werner Stark, C. Wright Mills, Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, and Kurt Wolff. Writings in the “new sociology of knowledge” are also discussed as are the theories of contemporary cultural theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall and
Anthony Giddens whose works are used to address particular issues of late modernity
(class, race/ethnicity, identity).
Also considered are what are regarded today as problems of culture in our society and internationally: “culture wars” in the worlds of politics and the arts, globalization, multiculturalism, racial and national conflicts, and identity politics; these topics are discussed relative to contemporary work on religion and nationalism in both national and international settings.
Course format:
The course is given as an elective course for both M.A. and doctoral students working in degree programs the social sciences. Interdisciplinary program students are also welcome.
Each week the class opens with a lecture on a topic on one of the required books or a section of a book. Students are to read the assigned weekly readings so that the
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lecture has a context; the final section of each class is expected to open up into a class discussion as well as questions and clarifications of the readings and/or the lecture.
Required Readings: Available at the university bookstore, McGinley Center.
Books are listed in the order that we will read them.
1 E. Doyle McCarthy KNOWLEDGE AS CULTURE: THE NEW SOCIOLOGY
OF KNOWLEDGE. (New York: Routledge, 1996). The book describes the “cultural turn” in contemporary social science and argues that social theory is itself part of the culture it studies and criticizes.
This book will be referred to at various points in the course; its Introduction and
Chapter One will be used in the introductory lectures to frame to course’s subject matter.
2 Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
OF REALITY: A TREATISE IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE. (New York:
Doubleday/Anchor, 1966) The authors relocate the problem of the sociology of knowledge to include “everyday knowledge”; the work also provides a theory of how the problem of the “social construction of reality” can be conceptualized through an integration of different traditions of social theory: the Marxist theory of externalization, the Durkheimian theory of the objective reality of “social facts,” and the Meadian theory of internalization or “subjectivization” of social reality.
The book’s Introduction and Chapter One will be used in the opening lectures.
3 Karl Mannheim IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA: AN INTRODUCTION TO
THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1936/1989) The classic work that introduced the sociology of knowledge to readers in the UK and US. It deals with the problem of objectivity in a world where scientific knowledge is under scrutiny and where a conflict of worldviews and ideologies raises questions about the possibility of both objectivity and rationality.
This book will be read by week 3 or 4 of the course and studied as a classic formulation of the field of the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim’s concepts of
“particular” and “total” conceptions of ideology are discussed as singular contributions to social theory.
4 Anthony Giddens MODERNITY AND SELF-IDENTITY: SELF AND
SOCIETY IN THE LATE MODERN AGE. (Stanford California: Stanford University,
1991). The author argues that modernity and late modernity, especially globalization, have introduced changes in social life and relations that have profound effects on personal aspects of human activity and consciousness: “reflexivity” is a vital feature of modern selfhood, ingredient to social and global processes where the “self” is seen as one of the “projects” of one’s life and where self-change in an assumed feature of one’s own
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current and future world; a developed and changing world requires a world where selves engage in projects of self-change and self-mastery.
This book will be treated within a discussion over 2 weeks of theories of self and society, beginning with G.H. Mead’s pragmatist theories of mind and self.
5 Clifford Geertz LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: FURTHER ESSAYS IN
INTERPRETIVE ANTROPOLOGY. (New York: Basic Books, 1983). The author’s
INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES, provided the setting in 1973 for the “interpretive turn” in the social sciences; it may have been the most often-cited work by a social scientist in the decades of change that followed its publication. In this work, Geertz presents what is “cultural” about anthropology, distinguishing its interpretive methods of
“understanding” from the scientific search for “explanation.” This book advances these discussions a decade later.
A useful and important source and commentary on Geertz’s contributions to a theory of ideology is Paul Ricoeur’s (1986) chapter on Geertz (see bibliography).
Two books are recommended reading :
Werner Stark THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE. (New Brunswick, New Jersey:
Transaction, 1958/1991). New introduction to this edition by E. Doyle McCarthy.
Stark’s work is still considered a classic statement in this field and was written to set his approach apart from Mannheim’s approach which Stark regarded as excessively Marxist, intent on an “ideological critique.”
The Introduction could be read along with the others discussed in the course’s opening lectures.
Roland Robertson GLOBALIZATION: SOCIAL THEORY AND GLOBAL
CULTURE. (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992). More than any other social theorist today, Robertson has examined the relationship between globalization, worldview, and the practice of theorizing a global world and world culture. His chapter on the “cultural turn” in social science and social theory address the question (from a sociology of knowledge perspective) of why “culture” has become a key concept in the social sciences today and the implication of this turn to “culture” for social science.
Course Requirements:
Attendance in class is required.
Please note that there is no class on Monday, January 21 (Martin Luther King
Holiday) and on Monday, February 18 (Presidents’ Day); There is a class on Tuesday,
February 19 when the graduate school follows a Monday schedule.
No class as well on March 25 and April 1 (Spring recess and Easter recess).
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Students will be graded on their preparation for weekly classes and on participation in discussions, on presentations (if assigned), and on short papers which make up about half of the final grade.
Students who do not participate or very rarely participate in class discussions cannot earn a grade of A or A- in this course.
Papers:
Students select 3 books from the list of required and recommended books. On each of these, they will write a summary essay on a topic, theme, or problem that the book treats. These essays are about 3-4 pages in length; references to particular sections are made with the usual (p. ) format.
The choice of books will be written up and submitted no later than February 19
(Tues.). The reasons for the selection will be written (about 1-2 pages), discussing the selection of these works over others. A brief working reference list of secondary sources may also be submitted, but is not required.
Each of the 3 papers is due in the class after the book is treated in class.
Longer paper option: Students may choose to undertake a term paper (15-25 pp.) in place of the 3 papers. The deadline is the same for selecting a topic and writing it up. No longer papers will be accepted after the February date.
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COURSE BIBLIOGRAPHY (References for each of the class lectures will be provided.)
Alexander, J. and S. Seidman. 1990. Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates.
New York: Cambridge.
Anderson, B. 1983/1991. Imagined Communities. Revised and extended edition. New
York: Verso.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. 1995. Identities. Chicago.
Archer, Margaret S. 1988. Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Aries, Phillipe. 1962. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New
York: Vintage Books.
Aronowitz, Stanley. 1992. The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture, Social Movements.
New York & London: Routledge.
__________. 1990. The Crisis in Historical Materialism. 2/e Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Barbalet, J. M. 1998. Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A
Macrosociological Approach. New York & Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barthes, R. [1957] 1972. Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. New York: Hilland
Wang.
Berger, Peter L. 1977. “Toward a Sociological Understanding of Psychoanalysis.” Pp.23-
34 in P.L. Berger (ed.) Facing Up to Modernity. New York: Basic Books.
Berger, Peter L., Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner. 1973. The Homeless Mind. New
York: Random House.
Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Bloch, Ernst. 1986. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice
Hall.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. NY: Cambridge University
Press.
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__________. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. R.
Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Calhoun, Craig. 1997. Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
______. 1994. Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Blackwell.
______. 1993. “Nationalism and Civil Society…” International Sociology 8(4):387-
411.
Canetti, Elias. 1962. Crowds and Power. New York: Seabury Press.
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press.
Cooley, C.H. [1909] 1962. Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. New York:
Shocken Books.
Crane, Diana. 1994. The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives.
London: Blackwell.
Curtis, J.E. and J.W. Petras (eds.) 1970. The Sociology of Knowledge: A Reader. New
York: Praeger.
De Grazia, Sabastian. 1962. Of Time, Work and Leisure. New York: Vintage Books.
Denzin, Norman K. 1984. On Understanding Emotion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
______. 1992. Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Dunning, Eric. 1999. Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence and
Civilization. London & New York: Routledge.
Eksteins, Modris. 1989. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern
Age. New York: Doubleday/Anchor.
Elias, Norbert. 1996. The Germans. New York: Columbia University Press.
__________. [1939] 2000. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic & Psychogenetic
Investigations. Trans. By E. Jephcott. Revised edition, edited by E. Dunning, J.
Goudsblom and S. Mennell. London: Blackwell Publishers.
Elias, Norbert and Eric Dunning. 1986. Quest for Excitement. New York: Blackwell.
Erikson, Erik H. 1968 [1902]. Identity, Youth, and Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton
1968.
______. 1963 [1902]. Childhood and Society. 2nd Ed. New York: Norton.
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Friedrichs, Robert W. 1970. A Sociology of Sociology. New York: Free Press.
Gabler, Neal. 1998. Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York:
Knopf.
Geertz, Clifford. 1995. After the Fact. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press.
__________. 1983. Local Knowledge. NY: Basic Books.
__________. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. NY: Basic Books.
Gergen, Kenneth J. 1985. “The Social Constructionist Movement in Modern
Psychology.” The American Psychologist 40 (3):266-75.
______. 1991. The Saturated Self. New York: Basic Books.
______ . 2001. “Psychological Science in a Postmondern Context.” American
Psychologist. Vol. 56 No. 10: 803-813.
Gergen, Kenneth J. and Keith E. Davis. 1985. The Social Construction of the Person.
New York: Springer.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press.
______. 2000. The Runaway World: How Globalization Is Shaping our Lives.
New York: Routledge.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections From the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. N.
Smith (eds. and trans.). London: Lawrence& Wishart.
Graumann, Carl F. and Kenneth J. Gergen, (eds.). 1996. Historical Dimensions of
Psychological Discourse. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gulbenkian Commission. 1996. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian
Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge & London: Harvard
University Press.
Harré, Rom. 1986. The Social Construction of Emotions. London: Basil Blackwell.
Hobsbawn, Eric. 1994. The Age of Extremes. New York: Vintage.
______. 1990. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Cambridge: Canto.
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Hutchinson, J. and A. D. Smith eds. 1994. Nationalism. NY: Oxford.
Jarvie, Grant and Joseph Maguire. 1994. Sport and Leisure in Social Thought. NY and
London: Routledge.
Jenkins, Richard. 1996. Social Identity. NY and London: Routledge.
Journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism. Nations and
Nationalism Vol. 1, Part 1, March 1995.
Kedourie, Elie. 1960/1994. “Nationalism and Self-Determination.” Pp. 49-55 in J.
Hutchinson and A. D. Smith (eds.) Nationalism. Oxford University Press.
Kracauer, Siegfried. 1995. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Lash, Scott and Jonathan Friedman. 1992. Modernity and Identity. Blackwell.
Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd. Second Ed. Marietta, Georgia: Larking Corp.
Lever, Janet. 1983. Soccer Madness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. [1962] 1969. Totemism. Translated by R. Needham. New York:
Penguin.
______. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Lutz, Catherine A. and Lila Abu-Lughod, (eds.). 1990. Language and the Politics of
Emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Maguire, Joseph. 1999. Global Sport: Identities, Societies, Civilizations. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, Illinois: University of
Chicago Press.
Mills, C. Wright. 1939. “Language, Logic, and Culture,” American Sociological
Review. 4 (Oct.): 670-680.
__________. 1940. “Methodological Considerations in the Sociology of Knowledge.”
American Journal of Sociology 46 (3): 316-330.
Mukerji, C. and M. Schudson. 1991. Rethinking Popular Culture. Berkeley, California:
University of California Press.
Neocleous, Mark. 1997. Fascism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
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Parker, Andrew, et al . 1992. Nationalisms and Sexualities. New York and London:
Routledge.
Percy, Walker. 1958. “Symbol, Consciousness, and Intersubjectivity.” Journal of
Philosophy 5:631-41.
Perinbanayagam, R.S. 1982. The Karmic Theater. Amhurst: University of
Massachusetts Press.
______. 1985. Signifying Acts. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
______. 1991. Discursive Acts. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
______. 2000. The Presence of Self. Rowman & Littlefield.
Peterson, Richard A. 1976. “The Production of Culture: A Prolegomenon.” Pp. 7-22 in
R.A. Peterson (ed.) The Production of Culture. Beverly Hills, California: Sage
Publications.
______. 1994. “Cultural Studies through the Production Perspective: Progress and
Prospects.” Pp. 191-220 in D. Crane (ed.) The Sociology of Culture. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Rabinow, Paul and William Sullivan. 1987. Interpretive Social Sciences: A Second look.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Remmling, Gunther, 1973. Towards the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1986. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by G.H. Taylor. NY:
Columbia Unive rsity Press.
__________. 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort
Worth: Texas Christian University Press.
Riesman, David, with Nathan Glazer and Renel Denney. 1950. The Lonely Crowd. New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Robertson, Roland. 1992. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. Newbury
Park, California: Sage Publications.
Robinson, Paul. 1976. The Modernization of Sex: Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey,
William Masters, and Virginia Johnson. New York: Harper & Row.
Rojek, Chris. 1995. Decentring Leisure: Rethinking Leisure Theory. Thousand Oaks,
California: Sage Publications.
Said, Edward W. 1983. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
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__________. 1978. Orientalism. NY: Vintage/Random House.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago
Press.
__________. 1976. Culture & Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Scheff, Thomas J. 1990. Microsociology: Discourse, Emotion and Social Structure.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
______. 1994. Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism, and War. Boulder, Colorado:
Westview Press.
Scheler, Max. 1992. On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing. Ed. H.J. Bershady. Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Schickel, Richard. 1986. Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity. New York:
Fromm International Publishing Co.
Schweder, R.A. and R.A. Levine. 1984. Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and
Emotions. New York: Cambridge.
Shotter, J. and K.J. Gergen. 1989. Texts of Identity. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Stark, Werner. 1980. Safeguards of the Social Bond, Custom and Law. Vol. 3 of The
Social Bond. New York: Fordham University Press.
__________. [1958] 1991. The Sociology of Knowledge. With a New Introduction by
E. Doyle McCarthy. New Brunswick, NY: Transaction Publishers.
Swaan, Abram de. 1990. The Management of Normality: Critical Essays in Health and
Welfare. New York: Routledge.
Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American
Sociological Review. Vol. 51 (April): 273-86.
Swidler, Ann and Jorge Arditi. 1994. “The New Sociology of Knowledge.” Annual
Review of Sociology 20: 305-29.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Wagner, Roy. 1981. The Invention of Culture. Revised and expanded edition. Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Williams, R.aymond 1981. The Sociology of Culture. New York: Schocken.
Wuthnow, Robert. 1987. Meaning and Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis.
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Berkeley: University of California Press.
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