Introduction

• ajgomez@ucsd.edu
• Office Hours: WF 11:00-Noon, SSB 467
• Course website: adamgomez.wordpress.com/teaching/soci100

• Essay 1: 25%
• Essay 2: 30%
• Final exam: 35%
– Sections are meant to facilitate both writing and the understanding of the texts through discussion, and attendance is mandatory.
• Section participation: 10%
• Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com
• All assignments must be completed in order to pass the class

• Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
(Penguin)
• Robert C. Tucker, ed. – The Marx-Engels Reader
(Norton)*
• Max Weber – The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of
Capitalism (Penguin)
• H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills, eds. – From Max Weber:
Essays in Sociology (Oxford)
• Émile Durkheim – Suicide (Free Press)
*Texts from Marx & Engels can be also found online at marxists.org

• This course provides a broad treatment of classic works of sociological theory and analysis. The course texts present sociological explanations of, among other things, the origins of the state, the relationship between the individual and the community, forms and locations of power, the social bases of democracy, the significance of cultural, religious, and non-material interests, and the problem of education and the shaping of self.

• We will engage not only with the conclusions of these texts, but also their philosophical presuppositions.

• Scientific Investigation of Society
– “Science”
– “Society”
• Analysis
• Criticism

• Emphasis on temporal context
– Where
• What surrounds the subject of investigation?
• What other factors are present?
– When?
• What has come before?
• What developments are contemporary?

• Power
• Organization
• Belief
• The Self
• Teleology
– Telos
• Ontology
– Onto: Being, that which is

• Class
• Religion
• Family, Sexuality, & Gender
• Identity
• Politics, Government, & Law
• Technology & Medicine
• In-groups and out-groups

• What is the dynamic force or forces behind history?
• Why are given societies the way that they are?
What will they be like?
• Do material conditions dominate and shape ideas, or is the reverse true? What is their relationship?