SEMINAR IN SOCIAL
THEORY
NIAS, 2nd
term 2012-13
Carol Upadhya
Timings: Wednesdays,
11.30 - 1.30
Name of
instructor: Prof Carol Upadhya
Credits: 3
Description:
The course is
a reading seminar for committed students who want to work through some specific
readings in social theory for their PhD projects. The broad themes that will be
covered are:
1) Problem of structure and agency; practice
theory
2) Subjectivity, self, power
3) Class analysis
Tentative topics and
readings:
1.
Classical theory - Marx - historical materialism, value, commodity, exploitation,
class
relations Jan 16
Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and
Modern Society Theory (Cambridge UP, 1971), pp 1-64
Marx, from Collected Works (www.marxists.org):
Theses on Feuerbach (Vol 5, pp 6-8)
The German Ideology (Vol 5, pp 27-37;
59-62)
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1: Prefaces to 1st and 2nd
editions; Sections 1-3, Commodity, Use-
Value, Exchange-Value; Section 4, Fetishism of
Commodities; Chap 7, Labour Process and Surplus Value; Chap 10, Sections 1-2,
Working Day; Chap 26, The Secret of Primitive Accumulation.
Marx, Capital, Vol. 3. Chapter 52,
Classes
2.
Classical theory - Weber - theory of social action; class and status;
domination,
authority Jan
23
Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and
Modern Society Theory (Cambridge UP, 1971),
pp
119-184, 224-242.
Max Weber, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge 1992[1930]), Chaps 1-3, 5.
Weber, Economy and Society; An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology: Chap
1 (Social action),
pp 3-28; Chap
3 (Domination and legitimacy), pp 212-222; Chap 4 (Status groups and classes),
pp 302-307; Chap 9 (Class, status, party), pp 926-940; Chap 10 (Economic
domination), pp 941-955.
Susan J. Hekman, Weber’s ideal type: a contemporary
reassessment, Polity Vol. 16, No. 1: 119-137, 1983
3.
Habermas – theory of communicative action Jan
30
Jurgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative
Action: Vol I: Translator’s
Introduction, pp v-xlii; Chap
3, Social action, purposive activity, and communication; Vol II, Chap 5, part
1, pp 1-42; Chap 6, System and lifeworld, pp 113-197.
4.
Giddens – structuration theory; modernity and self Feb 20
Anthony Giddens, The
Constitution of Society (Polity, 1984), Introduction and Chaps 1, 4, 6.
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity; Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford
UP), Introduction, Chaps 1 & 3
5.
Bourdieu - practice theory March 13
Pierre Bourdieu,
The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard
Nice (Stanford University Press, 1990), pp 1-141.
Moishe Postone,
Edward LiPuma, and Craig Calhoun, Introduction: Bourdieu and social theory. In Calhoun et al (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1993), pp 1-13.
Craig Calhoun, Habitus, field, and
capital: the question of historical specificity. In Calhoun et al (eds),
Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), pp 61-88.
6.
Structure and agency – recent interventions March
20
Sherry B Ortner, Anthropology and
Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2006), Introduction, Chaps 2, 5, 6.
Paul Kockelman, Agency: the relation
between meaning, power, and knowledge. Current Anthropology 48(3): 375-401,
2007.
Ivan
Karp, Agency and social theory: A review of Anthony Giddens. American
Ethnologist 13(1):131-137, 1986.
Edward
LiPuma, Culture and the concept of culture in a theory of practice. In Calhoun et al (eds), Bourdieu: Critical
Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), pp 14-34.
Brenda
Farnell, Getting out of the habitus: an alternative model of dynamically
embodied social action. J. R. Anthropol. Inst. 6(1): 397-418, 2000.
7. Actor-network
theory - Latour March
28
Bruno Latour,. Reassembling the
Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005), pp. --
Latour, Bruno. 1998. On actor-network theory: a
few clarifications.
8. Class
analysis – Bourdieu and beyond April 3
Pierre Bourdieu,
Language and Symbolic Power. Transl. G Raymond, M. Adamson (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991), Introduction and Chapters 1, 7, 11.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1984) pp ---.
Pierre Bourdieu, The forms of capital, in J.G. Richardson (ed), Handbook of Theory and Research for the
Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp 241-58.
Edward LiPuma and Sarah Keene Meltzoff, Toward
a theory of culture and class: an Iberian example. American Ethnologist 16(2): 313-34, 1989.
9. Class
analysis – neo-Weberian, neo-Marxian approaches; class
outside the West April
10
Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp --.
Mark
Liechty, Suitably Modern; Making New
Middle Class Culture in a New Consumer Society (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003), Chaps 1&3.
Mazzarella, William. 2005. Middle class. In R. Dwyer (ed), South Asia Keywords.
Rachel
Heiman, Carla
Freeman, Mark
Liechty (eds), The
Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (School for Advanced Research Press, 2012),
Introduction.
10. The
Foucaultian turn – power and subjectivity April
17
Michel Foucault, The subject
and power, Technologies of the self, Preface to The History of Sexuality,
Vol II;
[additional readings TBA]
[Critical readings TBA –
from Dreyfus and Rabinow, et al]
11.
Deleuze?? April 24
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