Sociology

of Recent Soci(ologic)al Theory

Professor: József Böröcz

VERSION 0.2 – INCOMPLETE SYLLABUS –
MOS DEF SUBJECT TO CHANGE

1
“Learning Goals”

In this graduate seminar, we shall read and critically engage a set of statements by scholars
who worked in time periods that are closer to today than the “classics”—i.e., after the
broad outlines of the field of the social sciences had already been set. We aim to develop
several closely linked skills: In addition to familiarizing ourselves with the thought patterns
of the authors we use, we also aim to place the works we read in the social, historical, and
cultural contexts that have produced them. In other words, we aim to lay some foundations
for a sociology of social theory, a job that is much more ambitious than just reading a few
excerpts from the vast number of texts referred to as “soci(ologic)al theory”.

George Ritzer, the great US-based theoretical sociologist, argued, almost two generations
ago, that sociology was a multiple-paradigm science. Because of the woefully un-
integrated character of our “field,” not to mention the ever-escalating volume of writing
that’s published, it is impossible to produce a single, solid, and interlinked “paradigm” of
post-classical soci(ologic)al theories. It is impossible to “represent the field” in a single,
“straightforward” model. So, the selection of the readings will reflect a modicum of value
judgment on my part. “It’s not a bug. It’s a feature,” to quote a multi-billionaire with a
remarkable PR. I am not apologizing for the selection; I am just happy letting you know that
this is what you will get.

2
Course logistics:

This is a graduate reading seminar in theory. Class discussion—a scholarly-intellectual
give-and-take—is the most important component of this course. You are required to come
completely prepared, including a thorough, “quality-time” reading of the assigned texts and
a mature, constructive, active, and intellectually exciting, forward-looking agenda. If you
are not prepared, there is no need for you to bother coming to class.

You are responsible for preparing a 350-to-500 word, typed outline—a sketch of ideas,
focusing on key concepts, definitions, insights, a heuristic conceptual comparison table, a
set of graphs, provocative questions, etc., whatever you deem useful—of what you consider
to be the “essence” of the work discussed during the given week. It is your responsibility to
share each your memo via the “Discussions” function in canvas, no later than 7:00pm on
each Wednesday before the class meeting. Thereafter, you are required to download
everybody’s memos and think about them as part of your preparation for the class
meeting on Thursday afternoon. Remember: you are not only writing the memos to the
Professor; they are tools that the group will use, including yourself. Those memos serve as
(1) a basis for in-class discussions, (2) a reminder of some of the crucial components of the
material, (3) help you prepare for the final exam at the end of the semester (see below).
There is no formal class presentation or paper assignment for this course.

Final Exam:

Your course grade will come from two components. /1/ My evaluation of your overall
performance in the class (based on your memos, attendance and in-seminar performance)
and /2/ your final exam. The latter is an oral exam—DATE AND TIME TBA. To facilitate
preparation, you will receive a list of essay questions during the last week of the semester.
(There will be no big surprises: the essay questions will overlap with the topics that
emerge from the readings and class discussions.) You are responsible for preparing a short
but concise, professional presentation on each of the topics. The exam preparation is of
course open-notes, open-books; the exam itself is closed-books, closed-notes.

3
Schedule

Week 1—January 19

Introduction:
• Class Organization
• Agenda
• Tools for Theory
• Manifold critique up-front

4

Week 2—January 26

For A Critical Sociology of Sociological Theory (A Lot of Critique, Leaving An
Enormous Job To Be Done)

Required readings:

Seidman, Steven. 2013. “The Colonial Unconscious of Classical Sociology.” Political Power
and Social Theory, special issue of Postcolonial Sociology, 24:35-54.

Steinmetz, George. 2010. “Neo-Bourdieusian Theory and the Question of Scientific
Autonomy: German Sociologists and Empire, 1890s-1940s.” Political Power and
Social Theory, 20: 71-131.

Böröcz, József and Mahua Sarkar. 2012. "Colonialism." Encyclopedia of Global Studies. Ed.
Helmut K. Anheier, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Victor Faessel. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE, 2012. 229-234. SAGE Reference Online. Web. 22 Mar. 2012. See link

Böröcz, József and Mahua Sarkar. 2012. "Empires." Encyclopedia of Global Studies. Ed.

5
 Helmut K. Anheier, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Victor Faessel. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE, 2012. 476-480. SAGE Reference Online. Web. 22 Mar. 2012. Follow link

Go, Julian. 2017. “Decolonizing Sociology: Epistemic Inequality and Sociological Thought.”
Social Problems, 64:194-199.

Bhambra, Gurminder. 2011. “Historical Sociology, Modernity, and Postcolonial Critique.”
The American Historical Review, 116, 3(June): 653-662.

Boatcă , Manuela and Sé rgio Costa. 2010. “Postcolonial Sociology: A Research Agenda.” Pp.
13-31 in Gutierrez, Rodriguez, Encarnacion, et al. Decolonizing European
Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches, Taylor & Francis Group.

Recommended readings:

Alatas, Farid Syed. 2004 "Indigenization: Features and problems." Asian anthropology.
239-256.

Patel, Sujata. 2013. “Orientalist-Eurocentric Framing of Sociology in India: A Discussion
on Three Twentieth-Century Sociologists.” Political Power and Social Theory,
special issue Decentering Social Theory, 25: 105-128.

Video:

Alatas, Farid Syed. 2021. “Challenging the Sociological Canon. Keynote at a Symposium on
North and South.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97aiS-zgdaU LECTURE
STARTS AROUND 15:00 in the video.

6

Week 3—February 2

Structural Functionalism and Its Pliant Handmaiden, Modernizationism
(happily projecting imperialist symbolic violence onto the world,
labeling everyone outside “the West” “traditional”/ “backward”)


Readings:

Parsons, Talcott. 1964. “Evolutionary Universals in Society.” American Sociological
Review, XXIX,3(June):339-57.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel. 1974. “Studies of Modernization and Sociological Theory.”
History and Theory, 13, 3 (Oct): 225-252.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel. 2017. “Multiple Modernities.” Pp. 1-31 in Multiple Modernities.
Routledge.


Further reading:

Durkheim, Emile. 1933 (1893). Division
of Labor in Society. Translated by
George Simpson. New York: The
Free Press. ONLY the following
excerpts:
. Introduction—The Problem (39-
46)
. BOOK ONE, THE FUNCTION OF
THE DIVISION OF LABOR
(49-232)
. Conclusion (396-410).


Commentaries:

Gouldner, Alvin. 1970. The Coming Crisis
of Western Sociology. New York:
Basic Books. ONLY Chapter 4:
Period IV “Parsonsian Structural-
Functionalism” (138-56).

Portes, Alejandro. "Modernity and development: A critique." Studies in Comparative
International Development 8.3 (1973): 247-279.

7

Week 4—February 9

Classes under Advanced Capitalism (ignoring
90-95% of the world)

Required readings:

Wright, Erik Olin. 1976. “Class Boundaries in
Advanced Capitalist Societies.” New Left
Review, 98 (July-August): 3-41.

Marx, Karl. 1844. “Estranged Labour.” Economic
and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1848. Manifesto of the Communist Party.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

Further Reading:

Marx, Karl. 1844. The rest of the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm

Engels, Friedrich. 1845. The Condition of the Working Class in England.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/


Film to Watch:

Hall, Stuart. 1983. Marx and Marxism

8

Week 5—February 16

A Historical-Sociological Critique of Global Capitalism as “A System”


Main readings:

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. ”The Rise and Future
Demise of the World Capitalist System:
Concepts for Comparative Analysis.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History,
16, 4 (Sep): 387-415.

Brenner, Robert. 1977. “The Origins of Capitalist
Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian
Marxism.” New Left Review, 104
(July/August): 25-92.

Böröcz, József. 2009. ”Global economic weight in the longue durée: nemesis
of west European geopolitics.” Chapter 1 (pp. 15-64) in The European Union and
Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical Economic Analysis.

Böröcz, József. 2009. “Geopolitics of Property Relations: State Socialism under Global
Capitalism.” Pp 110-150 (Chapter 3) in The European Union and Global Social
Change. A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis. London: Routledge.

Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2006. “World-Systems Analysis in the Context of Transmodernity,
Border Thinking, and Global Coloniality.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 29,
2: 167-187.

Commentaries:

Skocpol, Theda. 1977. “Wallerstein’s World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and
Historical Critique.” American Journal of Sociology, 82, 5 (Mar): 1075-1090.

Aronowitz, Stanley. 1981. “A Metatheoretical Critique of Immanuel Wallerstein’s ‘The
Modern World System’.” Theory & Society, 10, 4, (Jul): 503-520.

Denemark, Robert E. and Kenenth P. Thomas. 1988. “The Brenner-Wallerstein Debate.”
International Studies Quarterly, 32, 1 (Mar): 47-65.

Video:

Wallerstein: The Global Systemic Crisis and the Struggle for a Post-Capitalist World

9
 Week 6—February 23


The Great Transformation
and Its Countermovements


Main reading:

Polányi, Karl. 1944 (2001)
The Great
Transformation: The
Political and Economic
Origins of Our Time.
Boston, MA: Beacon
Press.


Commentaries:

Block, Fred. 2003. “Karl Polanyi and the Writing of the Great Transformation.”
Theory & Society, 32: 275-306.

Burawoy, Michael. 2003. “For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary
Convergence between Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi.” Politics and
Society, 31, 2 (June): 193-261.

Dale, Gareth. Karl Polanyi: A life on the left. Columbia University Press, 2016.

Block, Fred and Margaret Somers. 2017. “Review: Karl Polanyi in an Age of
Uncertainty.” Contemporary Sociology, 46, 4 (July): 370-392.


Film:

Nancy Fraser: Crisis of Capitalism, Crisis of Governance: Reading Karl Polányi in the
21st Century.

10

Week 7—March 2

The Great Theoretical Relay toward Economic Sociology:
(Durkheim)àMaussàPolányiàGranovetter (could be read as a non-
Eurocentric approach . . . maybe)


Mauss, Marcel. 1990 (1923). The Gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic
societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. Foreword by Mary Douglas. New York:
W.W. Norton.

Polányi, Karl. 1992 (1957). “The Economy as Instituted Process.” Pp. 29-51. in
Richard Swedberg and Mark Granovetter (eds.) The Sociology of Economic
Life. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; OR: in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg
and Harry W. Pearson (eds.) 1957. Trade and Market in the Early Empires.
Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of
Sociology, 78, 6 (May): 1360-1380.

Granovetter, Mark S. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of
Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology, 91, 3 (Nov): 481-510.

Commentaries:

Krippner, Greta, Mark Granovetter,
Fred Block, Nicole Biggart, Tom
Beamish, Youtien Hsing, Gillian
Hart, Giovanni Arrighi, Margie
Mendell, John Hall, Michael
Burawoy, Steve Vogel and Sean
O’Riain. 2004. “Polanyi
Symposium: a conversation on
embeddedness.” Socio-Economic
Review, 109-135.

11

Week 8 – March 9

Modernity: Teleologization of Time, Europeanization of Space, Moral
Geopolitics of Exclusion

Main Reading:


Habermas, Jürgen. 1985 (1987). “Modernity’s
Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-
Reassurance.” Translated by Frederick
Lawrence. Lecture I. (pp. 1-22) in The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Polity Press.

Dussel, Enrique. 1993. “Eurocentrism and
Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt
Lectures).” Boundary 2, 20,3, The
Postmodernism Debate in Latin America,
(Autumn): 65-76.

Quijano, Aníbal. 2000. “Coloniality of Power,
Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla:
Views from the South, 1, 3: 533-580.


Further Reading:

Habermas, Jürgen and Jacques Derrida. 2003. ”February 15, or What Binds
Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the
Core of Europe.” Translated by Max Pensky. Constellations, 10, 3: 291-297.
Originally appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Commentaries:

Papastephanou, Marianna. 2011. “Eurocentrism beyond the ‘universalism vs.
particularism’ dilemma: Habermas and Derrida’s joint plea for a new
Europe.” History of the Human Sciences, 24, 5 (December): 142-166.





SPRING RECESS

12


Week 9—March 23

Class, Status and Estate: Historical Sociology of German Bourgeois Society (Historical
Sociology Triumphant—at the Cost of Restricting Validity to a Pinpoint)

Readings:

Weber, Max. 1978 (1920) “Status Groups and
Classes.” Pp. 302-7 in Economy and Society,
Volume 1. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

Böröcz, József. 1997. “Stand Reconstructed:
Contingent Closure and Institutional Change.”
Sociological Theory, 15, 3(Nov):215-48.

Dahrendorf, Rolf. 1959 (1957) “A Sociological
Critique of Marx.” Pp. 117-56 (Chapter IV) in
in Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society.
Stanford: Stanford UP.

Murphy, Raymond. 1988. Social Closure. The Theory
of Monopolization and Exclusion. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. ONLY the following chapters:
“An Introduction to the Theory of Closure” (1-14)
“The Struggle for Scholarly Recognition” (15-42).

Cox, Oliver C. 1945. “Estates, Social Classes, and Political Classes.” American Sociological
Review, X:464-9.

Wenger, Morton G. 1980. “The Transmutation of Weber’s Stand in American Sociology and
Its Social Roots.” Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 1: 357-78.

Kozyr-Kowalski, Stanisław. 1983. “Max Weber’s Theories of Social Estates.” The Polish
Sociological Bulletin, 1-4: 85-102.

Kocka, Jürgen. 1985. “Marxist Social Analysis and the Problem of White-Collar Employees.”
State, Culture and Society, 1,2(Winter):137-51.

Recommended tv series: Babylon Berlin (a fictionalized social portrait of Berlin society,
sketched in a tv-series set in post-World-War-I period of German history, directed
by Tom Tykwer, loosely based on books by Volker Kutscher)

13
 Week 10—March 30

Imagined Histories of Imagined Communities—Is Nationalism A European Export
and Necessarily Retrograde?

Readings:

Anderson, Benedict. 2006 (1983). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London, Verso.

Commentary:

Chatterjee, Partha. 1999. “Anderson’s Utopia.” Diacritics, 29, 4 (Winter): 128-134.

Chatterjee, Partha. 1991. “Whose Imagined Community?” Millennium, 20(3), 521–525.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. “Nation and Imagination.” Pp. 149-179 in Provincializing
Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition). Princeton UP.

Film: Lagaan, Once Upon A Time in India (2001—a fictionalized account of Indian
villagers’ resistance to British colonial oppression, by Ashutosh Gowariker)

14
 Week 11—April 6

Guest: Ádám Havas (University of Barcelona)

Bourdieu’s Constructivist Structuralism

Main readings:

Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J. D. Wacquant, pp. 7-19, 36-41 in An Invitation to Reflexive
Sociology,
Bourdieu, Pierre, “The Logic of Fields,” pp. 94-115 in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology
(Chicago, 1992)
Bourdieu, Pierre, “The Forms of Capital,” pp. 241-258 in J. G. Richardson, ed., Handbook of
Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Greenwood, 1986)
Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction, pp. 1-7, 372-396 (Harvard, 1984)


Commentary:

John Levi Martin, “What is Field Theory?” American Journal of Sociology 109, 1 (July 2003):
1-49

Film:

Sociology Is A Martial Art (A documentary portrait of Bourdieu, accessible with an RU
library login)

15
 Week 12—April 13

“Missed” Categories of Modernity: ‘Race’

Main readings:

Dubois, W.E.B. 2007 (1903) Souls of Black
Folk. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White
Masks. Translated by Charles Lam
Markmann. New York: Grove Press.

Césaire, Aimé. 2000 (1955) Discourse on
Colonialism. Translated by Joan
Pinkham. New York: Monthly
Review Press. Pp 29-78.

Commentaries:

Robinson, Cedric J. 1983. Black Marxism.
The Making of the Black Radical
Tradition. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

Kelley, Robin D. G. 2000. “A Poetics of Anticolonialism.” Preface, pp. 7-29 in Discourse on
Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Film:

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask. (Dir.: Isaac Julien. BBC, 1995 (50 min). accessible via
kanopy after a RU library login)

16

Week 13—April 20

How Provincial Eurocentrism Misses Huge Things and Makes A Huge Mess Overall


Readings:

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. “Introduction: The Idea of Provincializing Europe.” Pp. 3-23
in Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New
Edition). Princeton UP.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History.” Chapter 1 (pp.
27-46) in Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(New Edition). Princeton UP.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. “The Two Histories of Capital.” Chapter 2 (pp. 47-71) in
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New
Edition). Princeton UP.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. “Adda: A History of Sociality.” Chapter 7 (pp. 180-212) in
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New
Edition). Princeton UP.

Buck-Morss, Susan. 2000. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical
Inquiry, 26, 4 (Summer): 821-865.

Smartt Bell, Madison. 2004. All Souls’ Rising. Vintage.

Video series: Exterminate All The Brutes (a video docu-
series by Raoul Peck, based on Sven Lindqvist’s
eponymous book)

17

Week 14—April 27

. . . and Now, Some Really Bad News. . . “Culture”

Readings:

Lukács, Georg. 1923 “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” Chapter
from History and Class Consciousness.

Adorno, Theodor Wissengrund and Max Horkheimer. 1947. „”The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Originally a chapter in the Dialectic of
Enlightenment.

Benjamin, Walter. 1935. ”The Work of Art in the Age of Technological
Reproduction.” Originally a section in Illuminations.

Hall, Stuart. 1992. ”Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies.” Originally
published as pp. 277-294 in ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula
Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies. New York and London: Routledge.

Video: Noam Chomsky, Political Economy of the Mass Media (an 1989 lecture at the
University of Wisconsin, based on his book Manufacturing Consent)


Recap, extra discussion, uncovered agenda items, tying of loose ends


Final Exam: DAY TBA, TIME TBA

18
The Department of Sociology encourages the free exchange of ideas in a safe,
supportive, and productive classroom environment. To facilitate such an
environment, students and faculty must act with mutual respect and common
courtesy. Thus, behavior that distracts students and faculty is not acceptable. Such
behavior includes cell phone use, surfing the internet, checking email, text
messaging, listening to music, reading newspapers, leaving and returning, leaving
early without permission, discourteous remarks, and other behaviors specified by
individual instructors. You may use laptop computers in the classroom, but USE OF
THE INTERNET IN THE CLASSROOM IS PROHIBITED UNLESS SPECIFICALLY
REQUIRED BY THE PROFESSOR. Courteous and lawful expression of disagreement
with the ideas of the instructor or fellow students is, of course, encouraged.

If a student engages in disruptive behavior, the instructor, following the University
Code of Student Conduct, may direct the student to leave class for the remainder of
the class period. Instructors may specify other consequences in their syllabi. Serious
verbal assaults, harassment, or defamation of the instructor or other students can
lead to university disciplinary proceedings.

The Rutgers Sociology Department strives to create an environment that supports
and affirms diversity in all manifestations, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, age, social class, disability status, region/country of origin, and
political orientation. We also celebrate diversity of theoretical and methodological
perspectives among our faculty and students and seek to create an atmosphere of
respect and mutual dialogue. We have zero tolerance for violations of these
principles and have instituted clear and respectful procedures for responding to
such grievances.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of another person’s work. In this class, it also
means quoting a substantial amount of another person’s work instead of using your
own voice. Any cases of suspected plagiarism will be investigated and reported to the
university administration. You are expected to be aware of university guidelines on
academic integrity. Please review the website:
http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/ .

While quoting a source, use quotation marks correctly, and identify the author’s
name, date of publication, title of publication, page number and publisher. You may
use any style (MLA, APA, Chicago etc.) as long as you use it consistently. In the case of
internet sources, identify the full URL of the source and the date you accessed it.

The University Code of Student Conduct is at:

http://studentconduct.rutgers.edu/university-code-of-student-conduct

If you have the need to consult the Office of Special Problems, please do so:
http://disabilityservices.rutgers.edu/

19