Sociology 206: Sociological Theory

Fall term 2007

Reading Notes

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Intro & Methods (Notes here)

• Durkheim: Rules of Sociological Method
• Weber: Objectivity in the Social Sciences
• Merton: Middle Range Theory
• Giddens: New Rules for Sociological Method

Foundations of Social Theory

• Rousseau: The Social Contract
• Kant: What is Enlightenment?
• Smith: Wealth of Nations
• Tocqueville: Democracy in America

Durkheim

• Durkheim: Division of Labor
• Durkheim: Suicide
• Durkheim: Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Marx

• Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
• Marx: Wage Labor & Capital
• Marx: Capital
• Marx: Historical Materialism

Weber

• Weber: Class, Status, Party
• Weber: Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism
• Weber: Basic Terms, Legitimate Domination, Bureaucracy

Functionalism (omnibus notes here)

• Parsons: Position of Sociological Theory
• Parsons: Structural Components of the Social System
• Parsons: An Outline of the Social System
• Merton: Manifest & Latent Functions
• Merton: Social Structure & Anomie

Self & Society:

• Mead: The Self
• Simmel: The Stranger; Individuality
• Freud: Civilization and its Discontents
• Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk

Micro-Soc & Critical Theory

• Goffman: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
• Mannheim: Ideology and Utopia
• Berger & Luckmann: Social Construction of Reality
• Blumer: Symbolic Interactionism

Exchange & Rationality

• Homans: Social Behavior as Exchange
• Blau: Exchange and Rationality
• Olson: The logic of Collective Action
• Coleman: Rights to Act
• Cook et. al. Cooperation without Law or Trust
• Leifer: "Action Preludes to Role Setting

Institutions & Networks

• DiMaggio & Powell: Iron Cage Revisited
• Granovetter: Economic Embeddedness
• White: Cat-Nets
• Emirbayer: Manifesto for Relational Sociology

Foucault

• Foucault: The History of Sexuality
• Foucault: Truth & Power; Discipline & Punishment

Giddens

• Giddens: Agency, Structure
• Giddens: The Consequences of Modernity

Bourdieu

• Bourdieu: Social Space;
• Bourdieu: Structures, Habitus, Practices
• Bourdieu: The Field of Cultural Production
• Sewell: "Social Structure"

Contemporary work

• Boltanski & Thevenot: On Justification

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