SOCIOLOGY 811, "POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY," FALL
2009
Professor
Charles
Kurzman
Department of
Sociology, University of North
Carolina
at Chapel Hill
http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/Soc811.html
Updated October 7, 2009.
Class meetings: 205 Dey Hall, Fri.,
8:30-11:00 a.m.,
Aug. 28 - Dec. 11, 2009.
Office
Hours: 227 Hamilton Hall, by appointment (919-962-1241,
kurzman@unc.edu)
COURSE GOALS:
1) To
acquaint students with the field of political sociology.
2) To
prepare students for the comprehensive exam in
political sociology. (The reading list for the exam is available via
Blackboard.)
3) To
push students forward on their own research agendas.
COURSE
REQUIREMENTS:
1) Attendance and Participation (20 percent of final
grade)
Attendance means on-time arrival; participation
means the contribution of insightful comments on the basis of the
assigned
readings. If you cannot make it to class, please let me know in
advance.
You are allowed to miss one class during the semester; after that,
absences
count 2 points each. You are responsible for material covered and due
at
classes that you miss.
2) Weekly Reading Notes (22 percent of final grade)
Reading notes on the week's readings are due by
e-mail before the
beginning of each
class. These notes, approximately 600 words per book or 200 words per
article/chapter, should
include (a) the full bibliographic citation of the work, (b) the main
points
of the reading, including summaries of each chapter; (c) definitions of
major concepts and methods and examples of their use in the text, (d)
significant quotations
and items that you find interesting; (e) your
reactions/questions/critiques/linkages
with other authors/etc. (these analytical notes should be set aside
from
the descriptive notes via brackets or some other technique).
Always give page references throughout; these notes will serve as your
customized index to the reading. Each week's notes will be graded 2
points each
if complete and turned in on time, 1 point if incomplete or one class
late,
and 0.5 points if more than one class late. Please submit these notes
by
e-mail - not as an attachment, but by pasting the text into the body of
your message. See
a sample of my reading notes.
3) Annotated undergraduate
syllabus (18 percent of final grade)
An
original syllabus in political sociology (or related
field), with brief annotations explaining your choice of each reading
and assignment, is due by e-mail on November 1.
4) Research Proposal (40 percent of final grade)
In lieu of a research
paper, this course requires a research proposal, of the sort that is
commonly required for theses and fellowship/grant applications. The
proposal is due by e-mail before the last class session. It
should be approximately 2,000 words
in length and should propose an empirical comparative-historical test
of some substantive hypothesis from your home discipline. The proposal
should comprise
(i) Title: a short and descriptive title; (ii) Summary: a 150-word
paragraph summarizing the entire proposal; (iii) Literature: a 600-word
discussion of the literature on the hypothesis you propose to test;
(iv) Case Selection: a 250-word
justification of your case selection; (v) Method: a 1000-word
discussion of methodology, concluding with your preliminary findings
and a discussion of how various anticipated findings would reflect on
your hypothesis;
and (vi) References: a list of references cited in the paper. See sample
papers in a similar format from another course.
SCHEDULE:
Some of the readings are available
on the course Blackboard site.
Week 1: The Classics and the
Definition of Political Sociology
Introducing
our class and classmates
The
Circle of Justice:
"There can be no government without an army,
No army without money,
No money without prosperity,
And no prosperity without justice and good administration."
- Ibn Qutayba, The
Eyes of History (9th century), cited in the Interim
Afghanistan National Development Strategy, 2005, p. 14.
The
Personal Is Political:
"Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed.
Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made
tranquil and happy."
- Confucius, The
Great Learning (5th century B.C.), in James Legge, ed., The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1
(Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1893), pp. 358-359.
Reading
question: What are some of the "timeless" issues in the study of
"state-society" relations?
Week 2: The French Revolution and
Genesis Myths of Political Sociology
Mini-lecture: Paradigms of social
science, over Thomas Kuhn's objections
Institutionalism: Auguste Comte, "Plan of the
Scientific Operations Necessary for Reorganizing Society" (1822), in
Gertrud Lenzer, ed., Auguste
Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction, 1997), pp. 9-16.
Pluralism: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, Vol. 2, Section 4, Chapters V and VI
(1840)
Class analysis: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto
of the Communist Party (1848).
Feminism: Lucretia Mott, "Philadelphia
Discourse" (1849), in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and
Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History
of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1 (New York, NY: Fowler & Wells,
1881), pp. 368-375.
Multiculturalism: Alexander Herzen, "Ends and
Beginnings, Letter 8" (1863), from My
Past and Thoughts (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1982), pp. 670-676.
Postmodernism: Charles Baudelaire, "The
Mirror" (1869), in Paris Spleen
and La Fanfarlo, trans. Raymond MacKenzie (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing, 2008), p. 82.
Reading question: What role does the French Revolution play in each of
these paradigms?
Week 3: The Nation-State
Mini-lecture:
Weaving Iran into the tree of nations
Benedict Anderson, Imagined
Communities, new ed. (London, UK: Verso, 2006), Chaps. 1, 3, 11.
John W. Meyer, John Boli,
George M.
Thomas, and Francisco
O. Ramirez, "World Society and the
Nation-State," American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103, 1997, pp. 144-181.
Reading question: How do these approaches differ in their explanation
for the proliferation of the "nation-state" as the "natural" unit for
political organization?
Week 4.
Beyond the Nation-State?
Mini-lecture: The global flow of labor
Saskia Sassen, Losing
Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization
(New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1996), Chap 1.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 186-190,
198-203, 303-309, and Multitude
(New York, NY: Penguin, 2004), pp. 328-336.
Manuel Castells, End
of Millennium, 2nd ed.
(Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2000), pp.
333-337, 377-382.
Reading question: How is the
nation-state managing to maintain itself as the dominant political
unit, despite all these transnational trends?
Week 5.
Democracy
Mini-lecture:
Citizens and subjects
Dietrich
Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber
Stephens, and John
D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalism,
Development,
and Democracy (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), Chaps.
1-3.
Seymour
Martin Lipset, "The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited," American Sociological Review, Vol.
59, 1994, pp. 1-22.
Charles Kurzman and Erin Leahey,
"Intellectuals and Democratization, 1905-1912 and 1989-1996," American Journal of Sociology, Vol.
109, 2004, pp. 937-986.
Reading question: Who
wants democracy badly enough to struggle for it?
Week 6: The Welfare State in Western
Europe
Mini-lecture:
Voting for socialism
Evelyne
Huber and John D. Stephens, Development
and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), Chaps. 2, 3.
Peter
Hall and David Soskice, "An
Introduction
to Varieties of Capitalism." In Hall and Soskice, eds., Varieties of
Capitalism.
The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford,
UK: Oxford
University Press, 2001), Chap. 1.
John
Myles and Jill Quadagno, "Political Theories of the Welfare State," Social Service Review, Vol. 76,
2002, pp. 34-57.
Reading
questions: What accounts for persistent differences between states?
What accounts for shifts within a given state?
Week 7: The Welfare State in the U.S.
Mini-lecture: Pork-barrel parties.
Theda Skocpol, Protecting
Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the
United
States (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992), Preface and Chap.
1.
G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State: How Policy
is Made in America (New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter,
1990), Chaps. 1, 3.
Jeff
Manza, “Political
Sociological Models of the
U.S. New Deal.” Annual
Review of
Sociology, Vol. 26, 2000, pp. 297-322.
Reading question: How do these debates differ from the debates over
welfare states in Western Europe?
Week 8. Post-Colonial States
Mini-lecture: Beyond
North Atlantic "area studies"
Hamza Alavi, "The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and
Bangladesh," The New Left Review,
vol. 1, 1972, pp. 59-81.
Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The
Politics of the Belly, 2nd ed. (London, UK: Polity, 2009),
Chap. 9 and Conclusion.
Reading question: Why are post-colonial states viewed as distinct from
"developed" states?
Week 9.
The Disciplinary State
Mini-lecture: The
romanticism of free spaces
Michel Foucault, Discipline
and Punish (New York, NY:
Vintage, 1979), Book 3, Chap. 3.
Michel Foucault,
“Governmentality.” Pp. 87-104
in Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller, eds., The
Foucault Effect: Studies
in Governmentality (London, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
James C. Scott, Seeing
Like a State (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1998), Chaps. 1, 9-10.
Achille Mbembe, On
the Postcolony (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2001), Chap.
3.
Reading question: How do these
approaches differ from Max Weber's classic image of the modern state as
a rational bureaucracy with a monopoly on the means of coercion?
Week 10.
Civil Society
Mini-lecture: Three traditions of
civil society: obedient, oppositional, representative.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections
from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci
(New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971), pp.
235, 245-246, 259-263.
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster, 2000), Chaps. 1, 21, 22, and postscript.
Evan Schofer and Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, "The Structural Contexts of Civic
Engagement: Voluntary Association Membership in Comparative
Perspective," American Sociological
Review, Vol. 66, 2001, pp. 806-828.
Reading questions: What accounts
for persistent differences in civil society across states? What
accounts for shifts within a given state?
Week
11. Rebellion
Mini-lecture:
Brushes with political confusion.
Charles
Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution
in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), Chaps.
1, 7, 8.
Georgi Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), Introduction, Chap.
1, and Conclusion.
Reading question: Why do some rebellions, and not others, turn into
full-fledged revolutions?
Week 12. Syllabi
Suggested
reading: Sarah Sobieraj, ed., Political Sociology:
Syllabi and Instructional Materials, 4th ed. (Washington, DC:
American Sociological Association, 2000).
Suggested reading: Shamus Khan and Erik Schneiderhan, Political
Sociology Preliminary Exam Handbook (Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin, 2003).
Discussion of how to represent the field of political sociology.