Fordham University
Graduate Program in Sociology Fall 2005
SOGA 6100-001
CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY
Wednesdays 5:30-7:20 PM
Dealy Hall
Faculty: E. Doyle McCarthy
Dealy 405A; phone: 718-817-3855; mccarthy@fordham.edu
Office hours for graduate students: Wednesdays, by appointment only
Course Description
This is a course about the social and historical processes that gave rise to
“modernity.” Its texts—written from the mid-1800s to the period between the world
wars—are the classic statements on the modern world written by Karl Marx, Alexis de
Tocqueville, Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel.
According to these writers, the process of the formation of modern societies includes four
major processes—the economic, the political, the social, and the cultural—and can be
traced to developments that followed the decline of feudalism in Western Europe. Each
of them contributed theories about one or more of these processes, but we identify Marx
as the preeminent thinker about the “economy” as a distinct sphere of social life, just as
we identify Weber and Simmel with a cultural sociology that emphasizes religion as a
force for profound change in the early modern era. Tocqueville, a writer on the historical
origins of the French Revolution, is the author of the first work on the “democratic
revolution” of the 19th Century. Throughout the course, we will return to the examination
of how each of the processes were used by these writers to trace the emergence of
modern societies and how these processes contributed to the distinct character of the
modern world.
The course begins with the movement known as the Enlightenment and its
importance for modernity and for the rise of “science of man,” the precursor of modern
sociology. Certain select themes of the 18th Century are discussed: the modern idea of
“society” as communities and organizations that change, grow, and develop; the search
for an objective science of society; the use of reason and social science to advance
individual freedom, humanity, and the social order. Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the
Laws (1748) is described as both a great work of this movement and the first major work
in political sociology.
Works by Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber
are read for their distinctive (and conflicting) ideas concerning industrial democracies
and for their different conceptions of modern social and political development and its
future. Each of these authors also offers different theories about how the realm of
“material life” (labor, economy, markets, etc.) is related to “ideational forms” (ideology,
consciousness, knowledge, beliefs, etc.) and how the respective domains change.
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Selections from the work of Georg Simmel are also read and discussed, his essays as well
as his Philosophy of Money.
The final section of the course treats the American pragmatist philosopher George
Herbert Mead, author of Mind, Self, and Society (1934), a work that influenced
generations of American sociologists writing on the “social self.” Mead’s work is best
cast alongside of his European contemporaries who were formulating social theories of
mind, consciousness, and knowledge.
The final lecture will provide a review of these works as “modernist works” and
discuss the critique of these works by “postmodernist” writers.
Course format:
The course is a required theory course in the sociology graduate program.
Sociology students will be given an in-class final exam during the last class meeting
on December 21. The exam is only given on this date, so please prepare now to be
on campus for this exam. Other students may take this exam if they wish.
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 expected to come to class having read the assigned
weekly readings so that the 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.
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Raymond Williams (1921-1988) Oxford Univ. Press.
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society 1976/1983.
An examination of the words that were emerging as an influential vocabulary in
the post-War British environment at Cambridge where Williams returned to take up
studies after the war. This is not a dictionary. It is a vocabulary that had its grounding
and expression inside and outside the academy. Williams’s project was to understand his
world through an examination of the varied and changing meaning of words and of
worlds. The work can be used and read as a study of the roots of modern sociology’s
vocabulary which is also a vocabulary of the modern world.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
The German Ideology (1845-1848) International Publishers
This work, written by Marx and Engels, is the first concise statement of historical
materialism and its aim was “to settle accounts” with certain philosophical issues and
figures within the Hegelian schools (Old Hegelians, Young Hegelians, including those
left, center, and right). The authors set out the key terms: modes or means of production,
forces or production or productive forces, and the relationship between the stages in the
division of labor and the relations of production. Supplementary Marxist texts included
here provide a critique of the “bourgeois idea of the individual.”
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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Democracy in America Vol. 2. (1835) Vintage Paperback.
Tocqueville’s classic treatise is an original statement about America as well as the
“democratic revolution” of the 19th Century. The work gives us an image of democracy,
its inclinations, character, prejudices, and passions. The book is written “…to learn what
we have to fear or to hope from [democracy’s] progress.” It is considered a first work on
the rise of a new mass society of “individuals.”
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Routledge edition only.
Note: There are copies in the bookstore but the numbers are limited; if you order online,
please be sure to purchase the Routledge edition. Contact me if you have difficulties getting
this book.
Weber’s challenge to Marxist method and his own distinct contribution to
German “cultural sociology,” includes this brilliant analysis of the ideational roots of
capitalist economic organization in the Reformation doctrines of Martin Luther and John
Calvin and their 17th Century heirs. He argues for the “elective affinity” of these
doctrines regarding salvation and the “style of life” necessary for the building up of
capitalism and its commercial and this-worldly ethos.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
The Rules of Sociological Method (1895/1982) Free Press 1982 edition only.
This is a polemical work in which its author distinguishes the subject matter
of sociology from that of philosophy: it is the empirical study of “social facts.” This
edition also includes supplementary essays on the differences between the science of
psychology and of sociology. In addition to this methodological work, the lectures will
treat Durkheim’s theory of industrial society and its distinct forms of “social solidarity.”
We conclude with Suicide (1897), a work where Durkheim applies his arguments in
Rules… to the study of rates of suicide as “social facts.”
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George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) Univ. Chicago Press.
Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934/1962)
Mead’s work offers to sociology a sociologist’s view of mentality and the self:
thinking, reflection, and self-conscious selfhood presuppose a social universe, human
interaction, and language where thinking, speech, and consciousness are seen as part of
an ongoing dialogue with others brought inside ourselves or “internalized.” Even the
ability to view ourselves as part of our field of action and interaction, presupposes the
perspectives of others and the group that are swept into our own conscious life and are
used as we engage in ongoing interactions with others.
Two books are recommended reading:
H. Stuart Hughes
Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social
Thought 1890-1930. (New York: Vintage, 1958) This work locates the period of
classical social thought as part of a larger “reorientation” of thinking taking place from
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the 1890s to the 1920s; it included thinkers from diverse cultural and intellectual
backgrounds: Freud in Austria; Weber in Germany; Croce and Pareto in Italy; Durkheim,
Bergson, and Sorel in France. Hughes describes the work of this generation as an attempt
to define a “new conception of reality in which the activity of human consciousness for
the first time became of paramount importance.” The discovery of consciousness and the
role of the unconscious were considered as key elements in the construction of a new
approach to the problem of knowledge in the human sciences.
E. Doyle McCarthy Knowledge As Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge.
(New York: Routledge, 1996). This book describes the “cultural turn” in contemporary
social science and argues that social theory is itself part of the culture it studies and
criticizes. The chapters on Marx, Durkheim, and Mead argue that their classical
statements, while relevant to our own social worlds today, require a new reading in order
to address today’s social realities which are decidedly more “cultural” than the solid
structures of classical industrial capitalism.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance in class is required.
Students are required to read the assigned readings each week.
The final exam is expected to reflect knowledge from both the lectures and the
readings.
Papers:
Students select 3 books from the list of required books. On each of these they
will write an essay on a topic, theme, or problem that the book treats. These essays are
about 5 pages in length; references to particular sections are made with the usual (p. )
format. The assigned edition of the book is used for these papers.
The choice of books will be written up and submitted no later than class on
Wednesday, October 5. Briefly state in about 1-2 pages why you have selected these
works over others. A brief working reference list of secondary sources may also be
submitted, but is not required. Place your statement in a folder; this folder is submitted
with each paper you write, so that when you hand in your last paper I can review all 3 of
them and your initial statement. You may also change your choices and submit a revised
statement as the course develops. Please note: This selection statement is required
and is considered an important beginning to the writing of your papers.
Each of the 3 papers is due in the class after the book is treated in class. For
example, if we complete the Max Weber lectures on October 26, you hand in that paper
on the following Wednesday we meet for class.
Longer paper option: Students may choose to undertake a term paper (15-25
pp.) in place of the 3 papers. This option should be decided before October 19; after
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that I will no longer accept proposals for the longer paper option. You should be sure to
discuss this option with me.
Please note:
Mon. Sept. 5 no classes, Labor Day holiday.
Wed. Sept. 7, we have no class since MONDAY CLASSES MEET on that
day.
Mon. Oct.10 no classes, Columbus Day holiday.
In this class, we will not meet on Wednesday October 12, after the Columbus
Day holiday.
There are no classes, due to the Thanksgiving Holiday recess,
from Wed. Nov. 23-Sun. Nov. 27.
Dec. 15-22 in the Graduate School is the last week of classes/finals.
Dec. 16, Friday follows Monday class schedules.
Grading:
Sociology students: The final grade takes into account one’s preparation for
weekly classes and one’s participation in class discussions (14 pts.); the papers total 66
pts of the final grade. The final exam is 20 points.
Students who do not take the final exam: 20% preparation and participation; 80%
papers.
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Primary & Secondary sources used in each lecture are distributed each week.
Selected secondary sources for the course include:
Raymond Aaron Main Currents in Sociological Thought Vols. I & II
Jeffrey Alexander & Steven Seidman eds. Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates
(1990)
Louis Althusser Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx (1959)
____________. For Marx. (1969) (1969)
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann The Social Construction of Reality. (1967)
Victoria Bonnell & Lynn Hunt eds. Beyond the Cultural Turn (1999)
Norbert Elias The Civilizing Process. (1939/2000)
__________. What is Sociology? (1978)
Peter Gay The Enlightenment: An Interpretation
Vol I: The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966)
Vol II: The Science of Freedom (1969)
Anthony Giddens Capitalism & Modern Social Theory (1971)
Anthony Giddens & Jonathan Turner eds. Social Theory Today (1987)
Bryan S. Green Literary Methods and Sociological Theory (1988)
Richard Harland Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism & PostStructuralism (1987)
Geoffrey Hawthorn Enlightenment and Despair (1976 )
Robert Heilbroner The Worldly Philosophers (1972)
H. Stuart Hughes Consciousness & Society: The Reorientation of European
Social Thought 1890-1930. (1958)
Mark Hulling Montesquieu and the Old Regime (1976)
Hans Joas Pragmatism & Social Theory (1993)
Charles Lemert Sociology & the Twilight of Man (1979)
Niklas Luhmann Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity
(2002)
Robert Nisbet The Social Philosophers (1973)
Talcott Parsons The Structure of Social Action. (1937)
George Ritzer ed. Frontiers of Social Theory (1990)
Marshall Sahlins Culture & Practical Reason. (1976)
Edward W. Said Orientalism. (1978)
Steven Seidman Liberalism and the Origins of Modern Social Theory (1983)
Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner Postmodernism & Social Theory (1992)
Alan Sica ed. What Is Social Theory? (1998)
Quentin Skinner The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (1985)
Dorothy Smith The Everyday World As Problematic (1987)
Charles Taylor Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)
Immanuel Wallerstein After Liberalism (1995)
Hayden White Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(1973)
Irving Zeitlin Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory 6/e (1996)
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Preparing to write your papers:
The paper topics should be selected because you want to learn more about this
theorist and/or work. So give some thought to this. Write your “selection paper” in a
direct way using the 1st person “I” as you write. Discuss how you came to decide on your
books.
Considering your selection of books:
You should choose a book(s) that interests you and/or that you need to learn about
for your studies. As you consider your selection also consider a particular topic or theme
or problem that you think important or interesting; I can serve as your guide if your topic
is too broad. I can also refer you to works on your topic.
Here are some examples of paper topics:
The German Ideology:
Marx’s critique of Hegelianis as the basis of his economic theory
The economic categories in German Ideology…
The theoretical framework & its implications for social theory
The problems with the Marxist framework from reading German Ideology…
The Protestant Ethic…
Weber’s challenge to Marx
The problem of “idealism” vs “realism” in reading The Protestant Ethic…
Examples of Weber’s methodology in The Protestant Ethic (i.e., how did he proceed and
why? How is he able to use Franklin’s work as a critical text? Etc.)
Rules of Sociological Method
Durkheim’s distinctive method.
Durkheim’s understanding of “social facts.”
Durkheim’s essays on social psychology.
3 papers on Enlightenment themes in reading Marx, Weber, Durkheim….
3 papers on the conceptual methods/theories of Marx, Weber, Durkheim i.e., what are
central features of their thinking about social reality? about history? and the forces of
historical & social change?
Organizing your papers:
When you write the paper you present an argument in the opening section & return to it
in the conclusion. The reader should know what you are writing about after reading the
opening paragraph.
In the body of the paper you exemplify your argument through a discussion of the text, its
organization, its themes, its important cases or examples.
The papers are text directed, meaning that you need to engage the text and to refer to it
as you write your papers.
Use (p. ) for page references.
Always use the assigned text & edition. I welcome meetings with you to discuss your
papers. Please email me first & then we will make an appointment.
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