Historical Sociology of Modernity

Catalog description

The notion of modernity - conceived as a schema for making sense of long-term processes of social and cultural change, and as a uniquely European phenomenon that was universalized through the impact of colonial empires and the world market, -- provides the deep conceptual framework for both classical social theory and contemporary theories of development. These dominant motifs, and the meta-theories that seek to legitimate them, continue to be the subject of heated scholarly controversy. In this course, we explore some of these controversies through engagement with a range of critical studies that seek to rethink the historical sociology of the modern world.