Fall 2007 & Spring 2008 Courses

Course descriptions are immediately following. Click to view the schedule for Fall 2006 classes, including days and times. There may be periodic changes and additions, particularly to Spring 2007 courses, so please check back frequently.

To view courses for 2006-07, click here.

Emphasizing a variety of approaches to interpretation and research, the Department of Sociology provides diverse opportunities for both master’s and doctoral study. Students combine study of major sociological texts with exploration of topics that speak to the major questions of our times, including the development of cyberspace and the network society; the rise of new cultural forms; the articulations of race, class, and ethnicity in cities and nations; the role of religion and ideals in social and political life; the relations between citizens, constitutions, and rule of law; and democracy, civil society, and the public sphere.

Core and Methods courses are indicated by the notation [Core/Methods]. Letter designations correspond to the following six tracks of study:

[A] Sociology of culture
[B] Comparative and historical analysis
[C] Sociology of politics
[D] Urban sociology
[E] Social thought
[F] Sociology of the media

GSOC 5004
Fundamentals of Urban Sociology [D]
Fall 2008. Three credits.
Virag Molnar Please consult an advisor or visit www.newschool.edu/gf/soc for course updates.

GSOC 5005
Fundamentals of Political Sociology [C]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Andrew Arato
This course locates political sociology in relationship to political philosophy, the “science” of politics, and the political conceptions of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. On the methodological level, we compare causal, purposive, and normative types of analyses of politics and elaborate the following concepts: power, collective action, violence, domination, influence, administration, law, legitimacy, association, representation, party, and organizations. Next, we deal with the histories of states and political organizations and, in modern society, the relationships to one another of state, political society, and civil society under regimes. The role of political and social movements in transitions among regime types is stressed.

GSOC 5006
Ethnographic Field Methods [A]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Terry Williams
The purpose of this course is twofold: One, provide training in field methods engaging sociological research, or “fieldwork,” with primary emphasis on participant-observation. Two, establish a forum for students to direct their work and creative energies towards social, environmental and political issues in the public sphere. This approach allows the researcher to discover “communities,” to create a channel of communication, to find ways of continual engagement and project development, and to perhaps carry knowledge and expression beyond the immediate workings of the community and into the realm of culture.

GSOC 5013
The Social Construction of the Avant-Garde [A]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Vera Zolberg
Avant-garde art of the early 20th century rose to acceptance and legitimacy as the foundation of what came to be called “the tradition of the new.” Its success in reordering aesthetic vision was so complete that contemporary works adhering to an earlier canon came to be rejected—until recently, that is.

In this course we examine the processes whereby art styles—cubism, fauvism, futurism, expressionism, among others, against the traditional Academy, came to constitute a new “academy” without walls. Other art forms, such as music underwent equally revolutionary transformations: experiments with new and ancient modes, dissonance, tone-rows, operas without arias, blending of the popular with “the serious.” In the context of global processes in which artistic modernism emerged, we see its effects on artistic creation, production and dissemination; institution building; the sometimes conflicting ideologies of aesthetics.

GSOC 5014
Fundamentals of the Sociology of Media [F]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Paolo Carpignano
The object of this course is to examine the notions of medium and mediation from different perspectives. For this purpose, the course covers three main areas. First, it surveys theories and theoretical approaches to media that, directly or indirectly, have contributed to the definition of the field, such as medium theory, information theory, semiotics, cultural studies, mediology, and others. Second, it critically examines today’s media industry, its institutional apparatus, its forms of production and distribution, and its economic and political power. Third, it relates some media-specific historical and technological changes, such as reproduction, recording, transmission, and networking, to the transformation of social experience. Finally, the course suggests that it is from the combination of these levels of analysis that one can understand the experience of mediation and the mediation of experience. Cross-listed as GHIS 6127.

GSOC 5015
Media and Micro-Politics [F, C]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Jeffrey Goldfarb
This course examines the way social interaction constitutes politics, with a tight focus on interpersonal interactions and with time and space considered as variables influenced by media forms. We consider the relationships between face-to-face deliberation, the printed word, and electronic media. Theoretically, the course attempts to integrate the micro-sociology of Erving Goffman with the political theory of Hannah Arendt. Empirically and historically, cases are examined in which micro-interactions constitute political forms and contests. Normatively, the relationships between free associations, free speech, and free politics are studied.

GSOC 5028
Concept of Culture [A]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Elzbieta Matynia A preoccupation of many philosophers with the phenomenon of culture long antedates J.G. Herder’s remark that “nothing is more indeterminate than this word.” Still, the preoccupation with culture has been widely shared ever since, by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists. What does this indeterminate word “culture” mean? How should one approach the understanding and transmission of culture? How is it related to the question of identity, and to the construction of a nation? In this introductory survey, we rehearse the main debates surrounding the idea of culture and its development. Whether discussing the Greek notion of paidea, the Romantic ideal of genius or the historiographic essays of the Annales historians of our own day, we trace the dynamics of two contrasting approaches to culture: the broadly empirical and anthropological approach, and the more narrowly normative and “humanistic” approach. The readings—some of them passionate critiques of culture—include works by Plato, Vico, Rousseau, Herder, Marx, Durkheim, Ferdinand de Saussure, Sigmund Freud, Fernand Braudel, J. Huizinga, Ernst Cassirer, Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Samuel Beckett. Cross-listed with Liberal Studies.

GSOC 5030
Seminar as Organic Novel [D]
Not offered 2007-08. Three credits.
Terry Williams The course examines the social construction of narrative, including the novel, novellas, short stories, the nature of anecdotes, the social function of the storyteller, and the storyteller’s place in city life. While sociology is a science, it is also one of the arts, fed by a creative imaginary so evident in drama, music, poetry and the novel. This relationship between art and science is a core part of the course. Students must find a location and construct a narrative account of a situation, events, and actors. This course attempts the living novel while embracing the unity of science and art through the various ways of understanding reality. Students read from weekly journals about their lived experiences and discuss how they are doing the process. This enables the page to be the central element in the analysis, as students are not limited to writing nonfiction accounts of the events experienced. Limited to 10 students.

GSOC 5032
Globalization and Anticapitalism in Historical Perspective [B]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Robin Blackburn
This course presents an account of the origins and development of globalization, of the social and political traditions that have contested capitalism, and of the new forms of collectivism in the modern world. The legacy and debates of 19th- and 20th-century socialism, liberalism, and anarchism are reconsidered in the light of the experience of the 20th century. The ideas of Marx and Proudhon, Engels and Bakunin, Kautsky and Lenin, Bauer and Bernstein, Trotsky and Luxemburg, the Fabians and the syndicalists, Mao and Fidel Castro, Keynes and Beveridge, Polanyi and Bookchin, and Fanon and C.L.R. James are scrutinized and shown to have continued bearing on the new forms of capitalism and collectivism in the 21st century. The calculation debate of the thirties and forties, which pitted Mises and Hayek against Oskar Lange and Maurice Dobb, are reexamined. The legacy of struggles for universal social security in the advanced countries are presented for the light it can shed on inequality and insecurity in the modern world. The question is posed as to how today’s new social movements and anticapitalism measure up to new forms of corporate and financial power. The role of money managers and institutional funds in globalization is explored. The potential of consumers’ campaigns, cultural contestation, social trade unionism, environmentalism, and pension fund activism are assessed in terms of their capacity to strengthen democracy and mount an effective challenge to capitalist power. Cross-listed as GHIS 5128.

GSOC 5033
Media and Social Theory [F]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Jaeho Kang
This course examines the relationship between the media and modernity and explores key contributions of a number of social theorists to the critical understanding of mass communication. It analyzes the substantive theoretical debates on the development of the media and its impact on the emergence and transformation of modern societies. During the course, we reexamine some of the key issues and concepts in social theories as applied to media phenomena, including the concepts of ideology, hegemony, culture, and the public sphere. First, the course examines those key debates of early Western Marxism in relation to the rise of modern mass culture and consumption. We discuss the relevant work of Gramsci, Lukács, and the early members of the Frankfurt school. Second, it critically approaches later media theories developed by authors like Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, who explored how the media impact on the spatial and temporal organization of power, on globalization, and on the body. Third, it explores some of the important theoretical contributions to media theory made by more recent social theorists such as Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu, and Baudrillard. Cross-listed as NMDS 5241.

GSOC 5042
Memory and Religion [A]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Sarah Daynes
Memory has become an omnipresent term in the contemporary world; and yet, the success of the word has also led to a lack of precision in its definition. In this course, we set up on an extensive exploration of the social dimensions of memory and, more specifically, of religious memory. We use various case studies—from early Christianity to contemporary Africa and Asia to religious and profane commemoration sites—to look at the ways in which religious tradition is built and transmitted, and to question the relationship between believing and remembering. Ultimately, we wish to reflect on the definition of religion as memory, put forward by some sociologists and historians.

GSOC 5043
America’s Empires: The Historical Perspectives [B]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Oz Frankel
Empire is a keyword of our time. It has been in frequent use since the American invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq—either to celebrate or to castigate U.S. foreign policy—but even before 9/11, thinking of the United States in terms of empire informed the study of American history. This seminar addresses the utility and feasibility of empire as a term of analysis in U.S. history. It takes an expansive view of empire that includes diverse systems of domination and inequality, inside and outside the formal boundaries of the US, and aspects of private well as public lives. The emphasis is the social, cultural, and daily dimensions of imperial power rather than diplomacy and strategy. Examples, from the conclusion of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, include western expansion, post Civil War Reconstruction, race and domesticity, and the global process of “Americanization,” in other words, the transnational presence of the United States as a model for social relations, political structures, and popular culture. Cross-listed as GHIS 5125 and HLIS 4567.

GSOC 5044
Historical Roots of a “Fiasco”: Iraq [B]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Eli Zaretsky
The American invasion of Iraq has been described as a fiasco. In Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas E. Rick supports this view by characterizing the administration’s actions as the errors or bad intentions of the political right: e.g., the neoconservatives and the cabal around Bush. By contrast, this course explores the weaknesses and failures of American liberalism and the political left in providing the opening for the Bush presidency. The model for this approach is Marx’s explanation (in his Eighteenth Brumaire) of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat in 1851. Other readings include both long-term critiques of American liberalism, such as those by Richard Slotkin and Patricia Seed, and more focused studies of the post-1989 period. Cross-listed as LHIS 4568 and GHIS 5115

GSOC 5045/GPOL
The Interpretive Turn in Contemporary Social Science [E]
Fall 2007
Carlos Forment
The aim of this seminar is to introduce graduate students to the “interpretive turn” that is currently sweeping the human sciences. We examine some of the most influential approaches within this tradition: Intentionalism (as exemplified in the work of Quentin Skinner); Language Games (Ludwig Wittgenstein); Universal Pragmatics (Jurgen Habermas); Critical Hermeneutics (Paul Ricouer); Discursive Strategies (Michel Foucault); and Symbolic Practices (Pierre Bourdieu). The readings and discussions focus on the relevance that each of these approaches have for practicing sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anthropologists.

GSOC 5046/GPOL
Civil Society and Democratic Life in the Postcolonial World: A Tocquevillian Perspective [C]
Spring 2008
Carlos Forment
The aim of this course is to introduce graduate students to the current debates regarding the changing relationship between civil society and democratic life in the postcolonial world of Latin America, India, Africa, and the Middle East. In order to make sense of the different socio-historical trajectories, particular institutional configurations and divergent forms of civic democracy that emerged in this part of the world, we adopt a common framework based on the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. During our discussions, we strive to develop a Tocquevillian account of postcolonial democracy as well as a postcolonial reading of Tocqueville.

GSOC 5047
Islam and Secular Modernity: Body, Space, and Memory
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Nilüfer Göle
Islamic “religious subjectivities” and “public visibilities” address new criticism to secular notions of modernity. The cultural realm of this encounter, the realm concerning modes of life, gender relations, private and public distinctions is essential to understand and deconstruct secular and liberal notions of modernity. A hermeunetic reading at the level of microlevel practices will be engaged to understand the new religious subjectivities, social imaginaries, and public visibilities. Body, space, and memory are the three main sites around which the cultural repertoire will be examined and discussed. References to Europe, Turkey, and Iran are used to compare and contrast the competing claims of Islam and secularism on modernity.

GSOC 5048
Becoming Other: Mimesis, Alterity and History in Time-Based Media [F]
Spring 2008. Three Credits.
Orit Halpern.
This course explores how genealogies of time based media might serve as critical tools to think about difference. Our focus in the course will be two fold. First, we will explore methodological approaches to the history of technology, media, and subjectivity. Some questions we will be investigating are: how to expand our conception of “media”? How would we approach a history of the senses and perception? How would one even historicize the very idea of time?

Second, we will inquire into the ethical possibility such historical inquiry might offer for rethinking subjectivity, difference, and politics. Some of the questions we will be investigating will be: How might we consider these new historical forms of inquiry as modes of thinking about difference? How do different accounts of mimesis, performance, and temporality specific to time based mediums help us think about subjectivity, politics, and aesthetics? How can these historical approaches complicate our thinking about nature and culture, machines and organisms, ourselves and Others? Crosslisted as GHIS 5118.

GSOC 5048
Revisiting Media Events
Fall 2007. Three Credits. (Cancelled course)
Daniel Dayan

The formulations offered in I992 have been challenged on two counts.

(1) On a theoretical level , various forms of critique have pointed to unexplored dimensions of the genre.

(2) On a descriptive level , historical transformations have taken the genre in new and sometimes unexpected directions resulting (a) in a banalization of the format, and (b) in a conflictualization of the contents .

This seminar proposes a critical reevaluation of what is meant by Media events today. It will be organized in 5 parts. Part I describes the initial theory and the main critiques it received. Part II is devoted to a reformulation of the I992 book, in reference to types of events the original formulation overlooked. Part III focuses on the emergence of Media Events as a resource for Terrorism, and, more generally, on the notion of dissensual Media Events. Part IV analyzes those Media Events that focus on the spectacle of Death. Part V proposes a general reformulation of the genre’s characteristics.

GSOC 5101
Foundations of Sociology I: Social Theory [Core/Methods, E]
Spring 2007. Three credits.
Jose Casanova
This graduate seminar is a broad introduction to the central ideas and key works of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber, whose concepts and questions continue to animate theoretical and empirical research in sociology. We will focus primarily on what unites-and secondarily on what divides-these theorists and their contributions to the canon of sociological knowledge: the confrontation with the dualism of subject and object, criticism of utilitarian thought and normative political philosophy, the epistemological break with primary experience, theories of power and solidarity, the sociological discourse of modernity.

GSOC 5102
Foundations of Sociology II [Core/Methods, E]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Eiko Ikegami
This course examines sociology as understood in historical context. Students examine major theoretical works as products of the times and social conditions in which they were written, with the aim of cultivating a better understanding of the dialectical relationship between social knowledge and history. Course materials focus on the theory and practice of major eighteenth- and nineteenth-century developments ranging from the Enlightenment, modernity, and state formation to the birth of the individual and modern social institutions. The course, offered yearly, is intended to complement and deepen the study of theory offered in Foundations of Sociology I.

GSOC 5145
Globalization and the Politics of Public Memory [C]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Elzbieta Matynia
This course examines controversies over the politics of public memory that have become particularly intense at a time when social and political systems are being dismantled and reconfigured, ethnic identity reemerges as a powerful source of conflict, and nation-states are challenged by new global arrangements. The concepts of nation, identity and globalization inform our analysis as we examine a wide range of emblematic locations, among them the site of the Nazi Death Camp in Auschwitz, the ancient city of Krakow, and modern New York City. We discuss the relationship between history and memory, space and time (the usages of geography in constructions of the past), globalization and memorialization—as well as approaches to the crimes of the past in transformations from authoritarian to democratic order. We pay particular attention to a variety of representational strategies designed to elicit the “meaning” of memory sites, whether in the arena of public art, museum exhibitions, tourist attractions, or monuments and historic districts. Readings will include Pierre Nora, Benedict Anderson, Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Eric Hobsbawm, Hayden White, Jacques Le Goff, Maurice Halbwachs, and Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, as well as literary works by Milan Kundera, Ivo Andric, Gunter Grass, and Bruno Schulz.

GSOC 5196
Fundamentals of the Sociology of Culture [A]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Vera Zolberg
Critically analyzing the ways in which the term culture is used by social scientists and other scholars, we consider a broad range of activities and objects, ranging from the rarified to the ordinary, the prestigious to the everyday. We consider culture in relation to certain groups’ power and authority in constructing and maintaining— or contesting and transforming—the symbols and legitimacy of art, science, popular cultural forms, and the shared meanings of life. Among the forms we examine are social status, gender, race, and other social identities. The theoretical orientations on which we draw derive from Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Bourdieu, R. Williams, Geertz, Goffman, the Frankfurt School, and the American production of culture approach. Cross-listed as GLIB 5507.

GSOC 5288
Outsider Art [A]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Vera Zolberg
It is a cliché of current cultural criticism that traditional boundaries— between high and low art, between art and politics, between art and life itself—have become hopelessly blurred. When piles of bricks are displaced in museums, when music is composed for performance underwater—when a few minutes of silence is called “music”—the boundaries become so fluid that conventional understandings of art are strained. This is manifest in the difficulties that arise among art historians, aestheticians, social scientists and policy makers when they try to delineate what is art, what it should include or exclude, whether or not to support the artistic community with public funds.

This class seeks to understand these changes in the meaning of art in two ways. First we survey recent sociological theories of art, reading texts by Becker, Adorno, and Bourdieu, among others. We then examine how these theories illuminate a concrete empirical phenomenon, looking closely at yet another in the world of art, outsider art—that is, works created by “pure” amateurs (be they folk artists, madmen, hobbyists, or homeless people), putatively unsullied by academic or commercial pressures. Our larger goal is to explore myths of the socially marginal and the aesthetically pure, by analyzing the role that each myth plays in the ongoing transvaluation of contemporary society.

GSOC 5291
Ethnographies of Class [B]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Rachel Sherman
This course investigates the concept of social class and how it can be studied empirically using qualitative methods. We examine issues including class consciousness and action, social reproduction, and the lived experience of class. We look at how class position and identity play out in relation to consumption, work, and the family, and at how class intersects with gender and race. At the same time, we analyze different uses of qualitative methods, from Chicago School and grounded theory to Marxist and Bourdieuian approaches.

GSOC 6011
The Social Construction of Memory [A]
Not offered 2007-08. Three credits.
Vera Zolberg
Remembering and forgetting, usually thought of as individual matters, have social dimensions as well. In this course, we analyze the theoretical foundations of memory as a collective process. Through the classic writings of Halbwachs, Benjamin and more recent theorists, we consider how memory is constructed, its functions for social cohesion, its durability and dynamics. We confront classic approaches with recent writings that treat collective memory as multivocal and divisive, and analyze their contribution to the formation of national, ethnic, and gender identity. In addition to written texts, we consider the uses and impact of film and other media on the construction of memory and history.

GSOC 6014
Media and Critical Theory [F]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Jaeho Kang
This course primarily aims to examine those distinctive—yet highly controversial—accounts of the media developed by early members of the Frankfurt School and to assess the relevance of those accounts to the understanding of contemporary media culture, looking at the Frankfurt School’s analyses of various media’s development and at the shift from print to electronic media (i.e., radio, film, and TV), a shift itself interwoven in complex ways with mass culture and politics. We explore accounts of the spectacle of commodity culture and the growth of the information and entertainment industries in 19th-century Europe. Throughout, we critically approach the substantive debates that form the background of these analyses concerning the crisis of democracy and the emergence of Fascism, the relationship between propaganda and political unconsciousness, the aestheticization of politics, and the transformation of the public sphere. Main readings include the relevant works of Adorno, Benjamin, and Kracauer.

GSOC 6016
Sex and the City [F]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Terry Williams
Behind the purposive decision to engage in one act or another by the resident, the tourist, the voyeur, stands an intricate array of assumptions about how the city is configured and defined. To a certain extent, the way the city is demarcated and defined depends on the mental templates we employ regarding various eco-structural overlays that are both natural and people-made features of the environment. The city is encoded with unknown places, and the need to understand what the city is—in reference to desire—will be one of many key questions we hope to answer during the course. The course engages both theoretical and practical examinations of sex and the city. Other issues to explore are the politics of sex laws regarding public sexual behavior and the decrease in sex emporia and other sexual-related establishments, as well as the emergence of a de facto red light zone.

GSOC 6023
The Political Economy of the Media [F]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Paolo Carpignano
This course studies the relationship between two forms of mediation. The first is work, an activity which is said to mediate between human beings and nature. The second is communication, an activity that is preeminently understood as a form of social mediation. According to a commonly held view, these two types of activity refer to two different domains of production. Work is assigned the function of fabrication of objects, while communication is assigned the production of social relations. Associated with these notions of production are usually such concepts as “subject and object,” “interiority and exteriority,” “individual and social,” among others. This course argues that these distinctions—especially that between work and communication—have been blurred by the development of new forms of production in which the distinction between work and communication is difficult to maintain. This transformation has variously been called “postindustrialism,” “information society,” “economies of sign and space,” “post-Fordism,” “network society,” or “cognitive capital.” On the one hand, work is increasingly characterized by its immateriality, by its knowledge content, and by the communicative network it generates; on the other hand, social relations of communication are increasingly inseparable from the material condition of their mediation. For these reasons, media are not simply means of communication, but have to be seen as productive forces, and their analysis is central to the understanding of late capitalism and of its transformation. Cross-listed as NMDS 5230.

GSOC 6038
Advanced Seminar in the Sociology of Culture [A]
Not offered 2007-08. Three credits.
Jeffrey Goldfarb
In this course fundamental questions in the sociology of culture are examined. The meaning of culture in competing traditions of inquiry is considered, including the culture of everyday life, the culture of praxis and ideology, the culture of autonomous arts and sciences, and the culture of interpretation and symbols. The relationships among these different understandings and the relationships between power and culture are examined. An exploration of the works of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel open the course, leading to a more intensive analysis of the works of Horkheimer and Adorno, Habermas, Parsons, Foucault, Bourdieu, Goffman, and more recent sociologists.

GSOC 6039
Consumption and the City [D]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Terry Williams
The purpose of this course is to provide student-scholars with a forum for developing and formulating research questions concerning consumption and the city. In the spirit of the early Chicago School—where the city is seen as an arena for learning-and where participant-observation is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge—we intend to observe, act, and participate in the city as consumers with interest in bringing critical ideals to the discourse on consumption, consuming culture, and our personal relationship to goods. Student-scholars are expected to give one seminar presentation based on course readings.

GSOC 6054
Historiography and Historical Practice [B]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Oz Frankel
This course focuses on U.S. history to examine current permutations of historiographical interests, practices, and methodologies. Topics include identity politics, the culture wars, major trends and controversies in American historiography, the multicultural moment in historical studies, the emergence of race and gender as cardinal categories of historical analysis, the preoccupation with popular culture, the impact of memory studies on historical thinking, the recurrent agonizing over American exceptionalism and, recent attempts to globalize American history. Also examined are the intersection of analytical strategies borrowed from the social sciences and literary studies with methods and epistemologies of historicization that originated from the historical profession. Cross-listed as GHIS 5128.

GSOC 6063
Museums and Societies [A]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Vera Zolberg
Museums as we know them are creatures of the 19th century. They embody intersecting forces of nationalism and universalism, democratic revolutions and elite formation, socioeconomic transformations, and scientific and artistic traditions and innovations. Intended to tame, shape, represent, and glorify the modern era, museums were made to bear considerably more weight than most other cultural institutions. Their achievements in the 20th century have been both astonishing and disquieting to many observers. This course examines the origins, development, and transformations that these cultural institutions have undergone. It scrutinizes the makeup of their creators and the continuing metamorphoses of their substantive bases from a multidisciplinary perspective. We consider the future of museums in light of technological, political, scientific, and artistic developments.

GSOC 6067
Seminar: Globalization and Religion
Not offered 2007-08. Three credits.
José Casanova

GSOC 6071
Sociology of Race [E]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Sarah Daynes, Orville Lee
This course focuses on the notions of race and ethnicity, primarily taken as social constructions to which individuals and groups attribute symbolic meanings. The fact that the notion of race can “make sense,” and how this dynamic process works in society through both identification and categorization, is at the heart of our analytical frame. We explore the construction(s) of race and its social manifestations, as well as its intersections with identity and culture. The complexity of the process— whether we talk of the construction of an “idea,” its manifestations in everyday life, its role in the shaping of peoples or nations, its use to establish power or justify economic domination, its intersections with “cultural forms” such as religion or music, or the simple fact that it is an important part in the way individuals and groups establish boundaries in terms of identity and situate themselves in the world—puts it at the heart of the interaction that exists between the social and the cultural, as well as of the dynamic interplay between society, groups, and individuals. Readings are taken from sociology, anthropology, history, and cultural studies.

GSOC 6075
On Religion: Mauss, Durkheim, Weber [E]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Sarah Daynes
This course provides an extensive review and intensive reading of the works of Marcel Mauss, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, focusing on their analysis of the religious phenomenon, from their most famous to least known texts. Religion was a central issue for the founding fathers of sociological thought, an issue that they did not separate from their analysis of society, modernity, and power; beyond offering an in-depth analysis of classical sociology of religion, this course therefore provides students with a solid foundation in the conceptualization of the social put forward by classical sociology.

GSOC 6077
Televisuality [F]
Summer 2007. Three credits.
Paolo Carpignano
This course surveys the state of television theory by reading major authors and discussing key topics in the field of television criticism. Issues concerning video language, programming flow, “live” transmission, television genres, audience participation, interactivity, etc. are examined in order to understand what makes television different from other forms of mass media. Particular attention is given to television’s transition between spectatorship and hypertext, between analogical narrative and digital interactivity and to the role that television has had in transforming the notion of visuality in the last half century. Cross-listed as NMDS 5216.

GSOC 6083
European Constitutional Theory [C]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Andrew Arato
This combination lecture-seminar course consists of two parts. During the first part, which consists primarily of a series of lectures, the instructor presents theoretical underpinnings and key concepts of the works of Mounier, Sieyes, Condorcet, and Burke as the foundations of the main trends of European constitutional thought. Comparisons are made with North Americans like Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, as well as with selected Latin American thinkers. By looking at the constitutions inspired by the authors, we consider their relationship to the troublesome yet indispensable concept of popular sovereignty. We attempt to revisit and seriously revise the historical comparisons between France and America found in authors as early as Lafayette and as late as Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, and Marcel Gauchet. The second part of the course involves presentations by advanced students of seminar papers in progress on key authors of European constitutional theory such as A.V. Dicey, R. Carre de Malberg, M. Hauriou, Carl Schmitt, Herman Heller, Hans Kelsen, H.L.A. Hart, and others that students may choose. A few substitutions of North and Latin American authors influenced by European theories are permitted. This course can be taken by less advanced students who can choose either to not receive seminar credit or to obtain seminar credit by upgrading their paper for the course.

GSOC 6089
Market, Capital, and Culture: An Introduction to New Economic Sociology [B]
Fall 2007. 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. Prerequisite: Sociological Foundation I or equivalent.

GSOC 6093
Immigration and Citizenship in Western Liberal Societies [E]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Riva Kastoryano

GSOC 6098
The Constituent Power: History, Theory, and Practice [C]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Andrew Arato, Andreas Kalyvas
Although the modern age is often defined as the age of constitutionalism, the constituent power has generally not been considered central to political and legal thought, remaining an elusive, indeterminate concept of marginal theoretical interest. The events of 1989 changed that. Since then, there have been, from Central and Eastern Europe to Russia, from South Africa to Venezuela, from Afghanistan and Iraq to the European Union, multiple attempts to found new regimes and to make new constitutions. These dramatic events have placed constituent power back on the theoretical agenda. This course examines this distinct form of power, tracing its historical trajectory from early modern thought to today, and explores its significance and role in modern revolutions and constitutional law. Particular emphasis is given to how the theoretical and political dilemmas posed by the constituent power have been negotiated in historical practice. Questions related to the limitations of the constituent power, its modes of authorization, and its identification—that is, the “who” and the “how” of the constituent power—are of central importance. The course also addresses the relationship between the constituent power and democracy and looks at the theoretical and political implications of this modern encounter. In particular, we discuss how the constituent power relates to popular sovereignty, political representation, separation of powers, resistance, and systems of rights. We intend to critically engage with normative aspects of the constituent power with respect to the question of democratic legitimacy, amendment provisions, the possibility or desirability of popular foundings, and issues of consent, law, autonomy, and justice. Readings include Niccolï Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emmerich de Vattel, George Lawson, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Emmanuel Sieyäs, the Marquis de Condorcet, Carré de Malberg, Maurice Hauriou, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Hans Kelsen, and Antonio Negri. Cross-listed as GPOL 6411.

GSOC 6106
Secular Cosmopolitanism: The Clash of Civilizations and Multiple Modernities [A, B]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
José Casanova

GSOC 6108
Iraq: War, Occupation, Politics [C]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Andrew Arato
This series of lectures considers the politics of the war in Iraq with a focus on the U.S. attempt to impose a constitutional order. Drawing on the methods of comparative politics, legal theory, and to some extent international relations and historical sociology, we consider the nature of the political transition in Iraq and the linked constitution-making process. We highlight topics such as the nature of the old regime before the war, the exploration of probable causes of American intervention along with its legal status and attempted moral justification, and the nature and stages of the occupation. Comparisons with other occupation regimes in light of the international law of occupation are made. The bulk of the course is spent considering the Iraqi political process in the context of state destruction, the emergence of new forces—religious, secular, political, violent—and their inclusion or exclusion in the attempted process of building new institutions. The making of both the interim and the supposedly final constitutions are analyzed in detail, along with the role of external forces such as U.S. occupation authorities and UN officials. Finally, the role of internal U.S. and regional politics in the development of the Iraqi conflict is analyzed in detail, along with probable consequences for the United States and for the Middle East.

GSOC 6113
Media and Sociology of Sport [F]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Jaeho Kang, Barry Salmon
The World Cup comes around only every four years. Its recurrence marks the most viewed, most talked about, and certainly most important sporting event, international or otherwise. Truly global in scope, teams representing 32 countries meet in a monthlong series of competitions to determine which nation produces the best football—or, in the United States, soccer—team. A simple game, with origins in antiquity, football in general and the World Cup in particular provide a rich opportunity to engage broader concerns. The course follows the World Cup games as a significant global sporting event and as a lens through which to interrogate sport in interrelated discourses, most particularly of media, sociology, and philosophy. Comprising six main issues, the course examines and critically assesses some of the substantial theoretical debates in the field of media studies and sociology of sport, including hegemony and culture, media and the public space, collective identity, and the aesthetics of body. Cross-listed with Media Studies, NMDS 5246.

GSOC 6114
Gender, Identity, and Agency in a Globalizing World [C]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Elzbieta Matynia
Recognizing that the principle of gender equity is still poorly reflected even in societies that live under democratic, accountable governance, this seminar focuses on the intersection of gender and citizenship, especially in postcolonial and postcommunist societies, as they are challenged by both nation and globalization. The center of our examination is women in new or newly consolidated democracies, who at the beginning of this century find themselves caught between local, national, and global pressures. We consider various strategies through which local women (and local feminism) respond to these pressures. Our discussion on the capacity to introduce change in the context of movements for social transformation, or in the context of enabling democratic infrastructure, is informed by two key categories: identity and agency. We explore the relationships between women and nationalist projects, between nationhood and identity, gender and citizenship, public and private. We look at the relatively recent emergence of globalization, a supraterritorial system of growing interdependence, and consider its gender implications. While examining the role of women in local settings and in global civil society, we discuss the question of the universality of human rights, the principle of gender mainstreaming, and the tensions between feminism, liberalism, cultural relativism, and multiculturalism. Finally, we consider the question of a global civil society, and the prospects for (and implications of) global feminism. Cross-listed as GLIB 5229.

GSOC 6115
Theorizing the Field [E]
Not offered 2007-08. Three credits.
Sarah Daynes
In this course, we read important monographs that account for the evolution of ethnography over one century. The focus on social anthropology (both French and British, with a few American excursuses) allows us to read these ethnographies as sociological works. Indeed, social anthropologists make little distinction between anthropology and sociology, since both are seen as focusing on the social individual as well as on social structures and representations. We not only learn about the history of anthropological thought and gain from the specific empirical and theoretical interests that lie in each monograph, we also focus on two crucial relationships: first, between the ethnographer, her field, her object and/or her subject; and second, between theory and method. Four axes are central to our reflection: (1) the construction of the object and the birth of the subject (from cannibal tribesmen to postcolonial citizens); (2) the meaning and practice of fieldwork (from “the tent of the anthropologist” to the coffee shop next door); (3) the position of the ethnographer, distance, objectivity/subjectivity (from the imperial anthropologist to the informant as co-author); and (4) the question of rationality (from irrational beliefs to systems of meaning). Crosslisted as GANT 6080.

GSOC 6116
Constitutional Politics in the Modern World: Four Case Studies [C]
Not offered 2007-08. Three credits.
Andrew Arato
The course contrasts post-sovereign and populist democratic forms of constitution making in theory, as well as in the four cases. While South Africa and Venezuela in the 1990s represented pure types of the two opposing models, the failed cases of Iraq and the European Union represented mixed types. We explore two hypotheses in relation to the failures: one seeking to isolate the inability of post-sovereign constitutionmaking to work in the context of heterogeneous elements such as external imposition (Iraq) and plebiscitary democracy (Europe), and the other tracing the difficulties to unresolved problems of state making (Iraq) or polity making (Europe) that render constitutional synthesis impossible in any version.

GSOC 6117
Advanced Seminar: Sociology of Knowledge [E]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Sarah Daynes
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 space 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 focuses on the notion of 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.

GSOC 6123
Visual Sociology [A, D]
Fall 2007. Three credits.
Terry Williams
This course explores how individuals and social groups reveal and frame their culturally diverse worlds through the various uses and meanings of video graphic/photographic and cinemagraphic images. It is an extension of the seminar of engagement polycinematic montage experimental project where lived experiences constitute the basis of the dialogic pedagogy. We examine how social scientists, artists, and others address visual narrative concerns when conducting empirical research. We intend to question dominant visual discourses, while at the same time continue ongoing work related to the body, body politics, identity politics, and ethnocentric views of the Other as they pertain to the work of anthropologists, sociologists, documentary filmmakers, and artists. This is a community-centered knowledge course designed as an undergraduate-graduate collaborative in building a visual narrative project in order to affect the way people perceive everyday images. Students are expected to learn about the concerns of community residents, around whom they design a documentary project. The core team consists of one community resident, one graduate student, and one undergraduate. The approach employs ethnographic techniques with video and photography. All students must attend training sessions in videography and darkroom techniques. Cross-listed as LSOC 4519.

GSOC 6130
Sovereignty [C]
Not offered 2007–08. Three credits.
Andrew Arato
The course attempts to reconstruct the concept of sovereignty from an interdisciplinary point of view, drawing on political and intellectual history, anthropology, cultural sociology, political philosophy, legal and constitutional theory, international relations, and comparative politics. After briefly discussing some anticipations in a variety of cultural contexts, we focus on the founders Bodin and Hobbes, seeking to understand the hidden dualism of their conception involving abstract, state versus personalized, embodied sovereignty rooted in the “king’s two bodies” doctrine. We consider the reproduction of this ambivalence through the simultaneous external and internal political roles of the concept as manifested in early modern theories of the international order. Next, we reconstruct the move from governmental to popular sovereignty, along with the varieties of possible interpretation of the latter notion. The different roles of popular and national sovereignty concepts in the English, American, and French revolutions are especially important in our discussions. The second half of the course concentrates on two modern problem areas: attempts to embody popular sovereignty in modern authoritarian and democratic regimes, and attempts to domesticate, abolish, or legalize state sovereignty in international orderings. The course involves classical as well as modern readings from Bodin, Hobbes, Grotius, Vattel, Blackstone, and Rousseau to Schmitt, Carre de Malberg, Kelsen, Arendt, and Hart.

GSOC 6390/GPOL 6390
Transnationalism [C]
Spring 2008. Three credits.
Riva Kastoryano
A flourishing literature in social sciences with regard to the settlement of postwar immigrants emphasizes the intensification of transborder relations, and the social and political socialization and mobilizations beyond boundaries. Such transnational practices of social relations lead individuals and groups settled in different national societies to interact with each other in a new global space where cultural and political characteristic of national societies are combined with emerging multilevel and multinational activities. Transnationalism is a “global phenomenon.” It takes into account the context of globalization and economic uncertainty that facilitates the construction of worldwide networks. Its institutionalization requires a coordination of activities based most of the time on common references— objective or subjective—and common interest among members; a coordination of resources, information, technology, and sites of social power across national borders for political, cultural, economic purposes. It therefore becomes a new space of participation beyond territorially delimited nation-states challenging the single allegiance required by membership to a political community represented by one nation and consolidated by one state; it brings to light multiple membership and multiple loyalties leading to a confusion between rights and identity, culture and politics, states and nations, citizenship, and territoriality. Transnationalism can take different forms: from simple transborder social relations to a new understanding of nationalism. It creates new expressions of belonging and political engagement as well as a “de-territorialized” understanding of “nation.” It transforms territory into a space, produces new identifications—de facto transnational—creates a civil society beyond borders, and generates an unbounded public sphere. It fashions new power relationships with states which are concurrently engaging the process of globalization through economy and culture. Many questions with regard to membership, allegiances and affiliations arise from these developments. The main question is how transnationalism gives new strength to the national question and becomes a stake of legitimacy in the international system. This interdisciplinary course will try to answer these questions from an empirical, theoretical, and normative perspective. The discussions focus on identity politics and its effects on the identification of groups and people beyond borders, on the relationship with states, on international politics.

GSOC 6700
Research for Workshop for Asian Studies
Not Offered 2007-08. Three credits.
Eiko Ikegami
Please consult an advisor for course updates.

GSOC 6990
Independent Study [Core/Methods]
Fall 2007, Spring 2008. One, two, or Three credits.
This student-initiated course gives students the opportunity to pursue advanced research on a specific topic with the guidance of a faculty member. Prerequisites: MA, permission of the department chair, and permission of the instructor.

GSOC 6991
Internship [Core/Methods]
Fall 2007, Spring 2008. Three credits.
Internships may take place at institutions of higher learning, with governmental agencies, or at other sites as appropriate. Students meet regularly with an advisor and submit a written report at the end of the internship. Grading is pass/fail.

GSOC 6992
Practical Curricular Training [A, B, C, D, E, F]
Fall 2007, Spring 2008. One-half credit.
This course provides the opportunity to receive credit for professional training related to the degree. Students are expected to engage in such training for at least five hours per week. Training should take the form of teaching, research, or other work relevant to the student’s program of study. It may take place at institutions of higher learning, with government agencies, or at other sites as appropriate. Students meet regularly with an advisor and submit a written report at the end of the training. Grading is pass/fail.
 

OTHER RECOMMENDED COURSES

GANT6051
Critical Foundations of Social Theory

GANT6077
Cities and Globalization

GHIS6155
Globalization and Anticapitalism in Historical Perspective

GHIS6242
Chapters in the History of the Book

GHIS6826
Revolution and Empire

GPHI 6045
Hannah Arendt: Politics and Philosophy

GPOL6005
Globalization and Anticapitalism in Historical Perspective

GPOL6308
The Politics of Identity

GPOL 6133
Historiography and Historical Practice

MPLC 6065
Racial Disparities: Causes and Consequences
  

This page was last updated October 15, 2007.