Sociology 271B: Survey of

Contemporary Theory

Section 1. University of Western Ontario,

Winter 2004. Dr. Doug Mann.

Tuesday 1-3, Thursday 2-3, SSC 3022.

 

Sociology is an attempt to understand and explain social life. In this course we’ll look at a variety of theoretical approaches to this project from the twentieth century: functionalism, C. Wright Mills, the Frankfurt School, symbolic interactionism, labelling and neo-Marxist interpretations of deviance and subcultures, feminism, and postmodernism. The class will involve lectures and class discussions, and will encourage students to relate the theoretical approaches dealt with to both modern political, economic and cultural life, and to their everyday experiences.

 

Workload

Quizzes: 8% each, 40% total (best 5 out of 6, no rewrites for any reason)

Report (2 pages, applying a theory to a current issue, due March 30): 20%

Final Exam (2 hours, covers entire course): 40%

 

Texts

Courseware Reader: Contains all the readings listed below except for the following books.

Erving Goffman. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1959.

 

Synopsis of the Course [times are rough estimates]

1. The Sociological Imagination [2 lecture hours]

Macro vs. micro-sociology. Conflict vs. consensus. Explanation. Inductive vs. deductive laws. What is society? The sociological imagination. Individual troubles vs. social problems.

Reading: C. Wright Mills, “The Promise,” The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford UP, 1959), pp. 3-24.

 

2. Functionalism [3 hours]

Talcott Parsons on society as a self-maintaining structural-functional system. The functions of the system. Parsons’ theory of action. Pattern variables. AGIL paradigm. Robert Merton on manifest and latent functions. Reading: Ruth A. Wallace and Alison Wolf, Contemporary Sociological Theory: Expanding the Classical Tradition, 5th edition (Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1999), on Parsons and functionalism: pp. 16-19, 26-45.

 

3. Mills and the Power Elite [2 hours]

Mills’ view of American society as a pyramid ruled by a series of interlocking elites. Reading: C. Wright Mills, “The Higher Circles,” The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 3-29.

 

4. The Frankfurt School [3 hours]

Short refresher on Marxism. The Frankfurt school on consumer capitalism as producing one-dimensional people. The culture industries as new forms of social control & agents of mass deception.

Readings: A. Herbert Marcuse, “Chapter 1. The New Forms of Social Control,” One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Societies (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 1-18.

B. Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry Reconsidered," The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 85-92.

 

5. Lasch and the Culture of Narcissism [3 hours]

The devaluation of history, the propaganda of commodities, everyday life as a theatre, the sex war.

Reading: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, New York: Norton, 1978, xiii‑xviii, 38‑41, 71-75, 90‑96, 151‑3, 187‑201, 235‑6.

 

6. Symbolic Interactionism [4 hours]

George Herbert Mead on the “I” and the “Me”. Herbert Blumer on symbolic interactionism: social life as the generation of symbolic meanings. Readings: A. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 136-144, 195-196.

B. Herbert Blumer, “The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interationism”, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 1-23, 47-60.

 

7. Goffman’s Dramaturgical Theory [5-6 hours]

Erving Goffman on everyday life as a theatre where we all perform. Appearance, manner, setting, front and back stage, mistakes. Is the self a series of social masks?

Reading: Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 6, 7.

 

8. Subcultures and Deviance [2-3 hours]

Labelling theory and deviance. Moral entrepreneurs. Becker’s outsiders (e.g. the marijuana user). Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. Cultural Studies and the University of Birmingham’s CCCS. Class, subcultures, and style as an oblique form of resistance to the dominant culture. Mods, skins, punks.

Readings: A. Howard S. Becker, “Outsiders” and “Moral Entrepreneurs”, Chapters 1 & 8 of Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: The Free Press, 1973), pp. 1-18, 147-153, 155-163.

B. John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts, “Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview”, Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976), pp. 9-17, 30-33, 35, 38-41, 44-45, 47-57.

C. Dick Hebdige, Chapter 1, “From Culture to Hegemony ”; Chapter 7, “Style as...”, Subcultures: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979), pp. 11-19, 100-112, 161-163.

 

9. Feminism [3-4 hours]

The three waves of feminism. Sexual objectification in the media. The culture of love and romance. Victim vs. power feminism. Readings: A. Shulamith Firestone, Chapters 6 & 7, "Love” and “The Culture of Romance,” The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 126-155.

B. Naomi Wolf, “Inflexibility of Thought,” “Consensus Thinking,” “Ideological Purity,” “Literalized Theory,” “Two Traditions,” “Sex: Are Men Naughty by Nature?”, “Do Only Men Objectify the Opposite Sex?”, “Integrating the Bad Girl,” in Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the 21st Century (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993), pp. 107-112, 120-123, 135-142, 180-90, 225-232.

 

10. Postmodernism [3-4 hours]

The death of the author, the subversion of the subject, the intertextual universe, and the terror of truth. Power/knowledge. Logocentrism and deconstruction. The four phases of the image. Reality and hyperreality: the third age of simulacra has arrived. Baudrillard on symbolic and sign value and consumer society. Media seduction.

Readings: A. Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), selections on truth and methodology, pp. 77-91, 109-124.

B. Doug Mann, “Jean Baudrillard, A Very Short Introduction.”

C. Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of the Simulacra,” Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 1-14, 19-23, 26-32.

 

11. The Critique of Corporatism [2 hours - time permitting]

Saul’s critique of corporatist society and call for us to wake up from our unconscious social state.

Reading: John Ralston Saul, "The Great Leap Backwards," The Unconscious Civilization. Concord: Anansi, 1995, 1-9, 15-19, 26-37.

 

 

Report

 

Write a two-page (typed/word processed) report using one of the sociological theories we’ve studied in the course to analyse a contemporary social, political, economic or cultural issue. It must be 2 pages long, 11-12 point font, or 500-700 words approximately, or I will deduct marks for it being too short or too long (probably 2% per extra line). It’s worth 20% of your grade. Due March 30. Late penalty=5% per day.

 

Structure: Write it like an opinion article or editorial for a newspaper. Get to the point as quickly as you can, and state your own point of view in the first few sentences (read an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, or National Post to see how they’re written). Do NOT use long quotes from the courseware texts or other secondary sources – 80 to 90% of the report should be your own words. You must still footnote or in some way reference quotes and ideas that aren’t yours, though you can include a separate third page with references and endnotes on it.

 

The point of the report is to get to you (a) quickly summarize the sociological theory you’re applying, and (b) apply that theory in a critical way to the social problem you’ve chosen to write on. You can do both at the same time if you like, introducing theoretical ideas as you discuss your topic. Here are some suggestions for possible topics:

 

· Do a functionalist analysis of police enforcement or of the university.

· Is the Liberal Party part of the Canadian power elite?

· Is modern popular music, including music videos, part of a cultural industry that seeks to stupefy the masses?

· Show how advertising or sexual relations are affected by a culture of narcissism.

· Use symbolic interactionism to analyse which social objects give student life meaning.

· Use Goffman’s dramaturgical theory to analyse a specific social location e.g. a bar, an apartment building you live in, an office you’ve worked in, or a shopping mall.

· Use either Becker or the Birmingham School to discuss a specific modern youth subculture – maybe focus on whether or not it is “deviant.”

· Apply feminism to one of the following: images of women in the media, romance and marriage, sexual harassment, affirmative action.

· Apply postmodernist theory to our modern media-driven culture: is modern society significantly different from society before TV, computers and other forms of media?

· Is Saul right that we live in a corporatist society? Focus on a specific issue.

 

Since your article has to be fairly short, in all the above cases you can narrow your topic down even further. See my notes at http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann/good_papers_soc.htm for some additional hints on how to write your report. Remember, get to the point quickly, and edit… edit… edit! And don’t hide your position on the issue at hand – state it clearly. You’ll be graded on (a) your ability to express yourself clearly, (b) your ability to come to grips with the social theory you’ve chosen to apply, and (c) your creativity in actually applying that theory to the issue you’ve chosen to write on.

 

Policies (please read these over)

Quizzes: There will be 6 quizzes per term, with the best 5 counting as part of your  final grade. The quizzes will take about 15-20 minutes each, and will be a combination of multiple choice and/or short answer (the structure may vary from quiz to quiz). They’ll be as painless as I can make them, and will cover the lectures, readings, and any videos I show. I will announce the exact times of quizzes in class. In general, they will be timed to follow our finishing major units of the course. As you are expected to attend class on a regular basis, missing a quiz because you missed the announcement in an earlier class is not a valid excuse! They’ll take place at the end of class. There will be no rewrites of quizzes for ANY reason. The extra quiz is intended to act as a makeup to cover ALL possible reasons for missing a class, including religious holidays, sickness, family emergencies, car accidents, acts of the Deity such as earthquakes and tornadoes, sports, social events, and work in other courses. So don’t miss an early quiz on purpose assuming that if you’re busy you can rewrite a later quiz!

Plagiarism: Here’s the official word: “Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see Scholastic Offence Policy in the Western Academic Calendar). The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students may be required to submit their written work in electronic form for plagiarism checking.” Here’s the unofficial word: don’t do it! (people do actually get caught by the way). If you get caught, expect to fail the course automatically.

Class Attendance: All announcements having to do with quizzes, reports, exam structure, and so on will be given during class. You’ll be tested in part on the lecture materials and class discussions, along with the readings. It’s up to you to make sure you keep up to date on such things by attending class: though most of the overhead notes are in the course reader, don’t expect additional web notes to cover changes or additions. Please keep the background chatter down during lectures and group presentations out of respect for both me and for those of your classmates who wish to listen to the lecture or participate in class discussions.

Bonus Participation Grade: At the end of the class I will add 1-3 points to the quiz grades of the five or six students who most regularly attended and participated in the class, up to the maximum quiz grade of 40%. If you miss more than a couple of classes, you’re off the list!

E-Mails: I would like to conduct as much of class business as possible in person to avoid misunderstandings and the ever-worsening problem of e-mail congestion. Please don’t email me complex questions about the content of the course or how to structure and write your report - it’s far more effective for both of us if you come to speak to me in person about this sort of thing. Also, I reserve the right to not reply to e-mail questions or complaints concerning grades or requests for extensions on assignments - once again, present these in person!

 

The same standards of civility apply to electronic communication as apply to personal conversations or letters. If I receive a rude or impolite e-mail I will ignore it and delete all future e-mails from the offender unread. In short, don’t rely on e-mail for any communication you think is important - e-mails are often a poor replacement for direct verbal communication and can lead to serious misunderstandings and bad feelings!