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Understanding the social world

Academics and non-academics alike are occasionally given to forgetting that systematic thinking grows out of human engagement with the way the world is. While academic institutions misuse this heritage as a machine for reproducing social inequality, those who dominate everyday culture abuse the situation to evict all traces of serious thinking which might challenge their own position.

Social theory, the first subject covered here, grows out of the political attempt to understand the nature of changing societies and so be able to act effectively. Two crucial elements are an understanding of class and gender, interrelated forms of exploitation and domination which structure fundamental elements of the social field. The courses to be outlined here set out from a perspective of these as active social relations, not simply passive experience; and from a perspective that seeks to go beyond analysis to transformation. Radicals in the Marxist tradition in particular have argued that the possibilities and experiences of modernity are at their most visible in urban environments, so that an engagement with urban cultures past and present is also an engagement with the possibility of social change. Lastly, the sociology of revolution is an important part of thinking about the practicalities of social change, and becoming increasingly timely!

Laurence Cox

Sociology and modernity: an introduction to contemporary social theory

 This was a very rapidly prepared lecture course for TCD Dept. of Sociology in 1995, filling in for a lecturer on sabbatical. I wouldn't write it the same way now, but the distinction between affirmative and critical modernisms is perhaps still a useful one.

Sociology and modernity

Course outline and reading list (28k)

Lecture 1: Sociology and the modernist paradigm (41k)

Seminar: What is the object of sociology?

Lecture 2: Classic statements of sociological modernism (Marx, Weber) (39k)

Seminar: What is modernity?

Lecture 3: Humanist modernism (Lukács, Gramsci, Williams, Touraine) (33k)

Seminar: Is structure an effect of agency?

Lecture 4: Structuralism as ultra-modernism (Lévi-Strauss, Althusser) (24k)

Seminar: Is society a closed totality?

Lecture 5: Feminist critiques (Firestone, Wainwright, Daly, Walby) (10k)

Seminar: Patriarchy and modernity

Lecture 6: Replying to structuralism (Thompson, Foucault) (10k)

Seminar: Are we "fully socialised individuals"?

Lecture 7: The post-modernist challenge (Lyotard, Baudrillard) (26k)

Seminar: What remains of the rationalist project?

Lecture 8: A new totality (Wallerstein, disorganisation theory) (16k)

Seminar: What are the implications of the state for sociology?

Lecture 9: Reformulating modernity (Giddens, Habermas) (11k)

Seminar: Reflexivity and sociology

Lecture 10: Taking stock (12k)

Seminar: Social movements and modernity

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Understanding class: active conceptions

This was a course for Maynooth Dept. of Sociology in autumn 2001; an outline and reading list should be here soon. Back to top

Thinking gender: from critique to change

This is a course for Maynooth Dept. of Sociology in spring 2002; an outline and reading list should be here soon. Back to top

Urban cultures: living in modernity

This was a course for Maynooth Dept. of Sociology in spring 2001; an outline and reading list should be here soon. Back to top

Sociology of revolution: analysing radical change

This was a course for Maynooth Dept. of Sociology in spring 2002; an outline and reading list are available here. Back to top


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