| Prof. Francesca Polletta [email protected] (212) 854-4184 Office hours: Monday 2:30-4 Office location: 510 Fayerweather |
M. Kai Ho Emrah Goker |
Class Meetings:MW 1:10
-2:25 Class location: Fayerweather 310 |
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Social theory was born in an age of industrial and political revolution, its mission and mandate to usher in the age of modernity. Yet the analyses forwarded by Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber were profoundly ambivalent about the promise of modernity. The possibility of individual action in a world of powerful institutions, the social costs of technological "progress," the place of meaning in a thoroughly secularized world, the persistence of social inequality; these questions shaped the new discipline of sociology, and have proven of lasting concern. In this course, we will explore the work of the "founding fathers" as well as that of contemporary sociologists who have reexamined, appropriated, challenged and revised the work of their forebears. The questions we will wrestle with are thorny ones. Do we as individuals make our history or are we made by it? Do we become men and women? Are there ways of knowing that transcend our personal points of view? Is science truer than magic? Is the world progressing? What exactly is social theory? Can it be used to improve our lives? Should it?
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