|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
3.00 Credits
Market, Capital, and Culture: An Introduction to Economic Sociology [B] Fall 2008. Three credits. Eiko Ikegami Economic sociology is one of the most vibrant fields within contemporary sociology, and many economic problems can be studied better by taking sociological considerations into account. This course provides an introduction to some exciting developments in the field. Topics include the problem of embeddedness, the issue of trust, varieties of capitalism, capitalism and the notion of strangers, and money as a cultural entity. Recommended for advanced graduate students. The course will also help students prepare for the field exam in economic sociology.
-
3.00 Credits
Media and Critical Theory, Spring 2009. Three credits. Jaeho Kang The aim of this course is to examine those distinctive-yet highly controversial-accounts of the media developed by the early members of the Frankfurt School and to assess their relevance to the understanding of contemporary media culture. Students focus on the relevant works of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Siegfried Kracauer. The course explores their critical analyses of the multi-dimensional development of the media, and the shift from print to electronic media (radio, film, and TV): a shift interwoven in complex ways with mass culture and politics. We will explore their original accounts of the spectacle of commodity culture and the growth of the media and entertainment industries in nineteenth century Europe. Throughout, we critically approach the debates that form the background of these analyses, concerning the crisis of democracy and the emergence of Fascism, the aestheticization of politics, and the transformation of the public sphere.
-
3.00 Credits
Advanced Seminar: Sociology of Culture [E] Fall 2008. Three credits. Jeffrey Goldfarb In his sociology of knowledge, Karl Mannheim asked the question: How do men think This seminar focuses on the question of social reality, and more specifically, on ideas and their relationship to social practice; therefore, it gives a central focus to the notions of meaning, belief, and representation. It raises epistemological issues pertaining to the possibilities and conditions of a "sociological knowledge of the social." This semester, the seminar focuseson the notion of the unconscious in social life; we read the work of Karl Mannheim, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi- Strauss, and Jeffrey Alexander, among others.
-
3.00 Credits
The State and Constituent Power in Domestic and International Politics and Law [C,B] Spring 2009. Three credits. Andrew Arato This course examines the convergence of state formation and restructuring and constitutional foundings or refoundings in the areas of nation states, regional integrations, and international and global organizations. The first half of the course deals with theories of constituent power. The second half examines cases of (1) state- or constitution-making under international occupation, (2) the process of creating regional federations, and (3) the supposed "constituionalization" process of international organizations. Thecourse meets together with the Columbia University political science course on the Theories of the State. Crosslisted with Political Science.
-
3.00 Credits
Proseminar in Politics, Culture, and History Fall 2008-spring 2009. One and one-half credits per semester. George Steinmetz, Eiko Ikegami This is a year-long research project seminar. Students eligible for this class are those writing PhD dissertations or developing their dissertation proposals. Students will present their research projects and will also serve as discussants in the class. We will also invite faculty members and scholars from New York and the surrounding areas to present their work, or to talk about how they construct their research projects. Students must register for both fall 2008 and spring 2009 terms.
-
3.00 Credits
Political Culture [A, C] Spring 2009. Three credits. Jeffrey Goldfarb The concept of political culture presents a paradox. On one hand, it has been widely viewed as being theoretically and politically problematic. The original purposes for which the concept was deployed appear tied to the Cold War era and the theory of modernization. Large cross-national quantitative comparison, the way scholars went about studying the subject, buries cultural differences, concealing culture factors more than revealing them. On the other hand, the common sense use of political culture in social scientific inquiry persists because the concept illuminates pressing cultural and political problems. In this course, we work with this paradox. We review the literature on political culture, work on a new way of conceptualizing it, and apply this conceptualization to major cultural and political problems. We review the notion in key works in the history of social thought, critically analyze the concept as it has been used in comparative politics and studies of development and modernization, and then, respond to the contributions of a more critical social theory. We work together to develop a clear conceptualization of political culture that attends to both the political and the cultural side of the concept. The remainder of the inquiry applies this understanding of political culture to a comparative study of pressing political and cultural problems of our times.
-
3.00 Credits
E mpire: Politics and Aesthetics Spring 2009. Three credits. George Steinmetz This course examines the politics, aesthetics, and theories of empire. It starts with a historical overview of imperial politics from Rome to the present. We then examine several prominent attempts to theorize empires. These theories are considered in relation to representations of empire more broadly, including literary and aesthetic ones. Students will write a research paper and be responsible for the readings in one or more sessions.
-
3.00 Credits
Topics in Contemporary Social Theory Fall 2008. Three credits. George Steinmetz This course examines recent discussions in social theory, with a focus on the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and others in his tradition. The first part of the course looks at the precursors of Bourdieu's work; the second part explores his oeuvre; the last part turns to efforts to revise or criticize Bourdieu, including those by Luc Boltanski. Finally we look at the reception and use of French sociology in the United States. Graduate students write a research paper and present the readings for one or more sessions in the seminar.
-
3.00 Credits
The Politics of Difference Spring 2009. Three credits. Aristide Zolberg At the dawn of the 21st century, issues of "difference" have quiteunexpectedly emerged in the central political arena of many states. These issues have emerged in both long established and post-colonial states, within both democratic and authoritarian regimes, and have occasionally led to major conflicts. Many of these issues reflect challenges to unequal institutional arrangements concerning language, religion, gender, or ancestry of established populations arrived at in earlier periods, but some reflect a broadening of differences due to recent immigration. The course considers these matters in a comparative perspective, drawing examples from North America, the European Union, and sub-Saharan Africa, with emphasis on "differences among differences"-i.e. normatively fair solutions tdifferences of gender, language, religion, and ancestry entail significantly different institutional arrangements. It also takes into consideration "global interactivity," i.e. that the internal political dynamics of a given country are often significantly affected by developments elsewhere.
-
3.00 Credits
State, Citizenship, and Culture: An Introduction to Historical Sociology [B,C] Spring 2009. Three credits. Pierre Birnbaum This course focuses on several crucial issues in historical sociology including state-building processes, the formation of civil societies, variations in democratic values, and ways of collective action. In Europe, state-building processes took place within different types of cultures, religions, and collective identities. Few states were able to become effective nation-states, which transformed their culture by cutting the idea of citizenship loose from a single national identity. Those states that succeeded more or less, such as France, are still unable to solve specific issues based on identity politics. In the context of contemporary multicultural societies such as England, Germany, Spain, and the United States, we explore the relationship between historical variations in state-building process and the resulting political issues in citizenship.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Privacy Statement
|
Terms of Use
|
Institutional Membership Information
|
About AcademyOne
Copyright 2006 - 2024 AcademyOne, Inc.
|
|
|