Theories of Society II

Catalog description

The wide range of theoretical paradigms that characterized the discipline of sociology from the emergent period of modernity to our current postmodern era is investigated. In the first half of the course, the traditions of critical theory; structural functionalism; symbolic interactionism; and phenomenology as key schools of thought in the modernist period are examined. In the second half, the most contemporary, and overlapping, additions to the theoretical landscape in sociology in our study of feminist and gender theories; critical race theories; post-modernism; and global theoretical perspectives are examined. Throughout the course, there will be critical engagement in a kind of "sociology of knowledge" as we situate these central ideas and schools of thought in the classic theoretical traditions from which they may intellectually descend, as well as in the more current political and economic contexts that influenced the emergence of these contemporary perspectives.