LFU:online

Institut für Soziologie Institut für Soziologie

Giuseppe Sciortino, PhD Giuseppe Sciortino, PhD

408022

Cultural sociology and the study of politics

VU 1

Block

jährlich

keine Angabe

Introduction: The course explores ways of conceptualising the role played by symbolic processes in social sciences analyses of contemporary society. Particularly, it will investigate how such symbolic processes adapt, cross-cut, ignore or challenge the modern political system based on geographically bounded nation-states. The aims of the course are consequently two. First, to identify and discuss some recent ways of conceptualizing culture in contemporary social theory. Cultural sociology is a growing and quickly expanding field, that provides quite an array of new concepts and perspectives. To provide an adequate overview of such resources is the first aim of the seminar. Second, it is still uncertain how such conceptual resources may be used to differentiate analytically between cultural processes and political definitions based on a claim on cultural homogeneity in a fertile and consistent way. The second aim of the seminar is consequently to verify in which ways such resources may be brought to test in the current debate on global transformations (but also in a re-appraisal of modernity itself).

Required Reading. * Jeffrey C. Alexander, 2003, The Meaning of Social Life, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3-10, 11-26., 27-84, pp. 193-228. *Roger Friedland, John Mohr, 2004, Matters of Culture. Cultural Sociology in Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp.71-109, 184-195. *David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, Jonathan Perraton, 1999, Global Transformations, Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp. 327-375. *Parsons, Talcott, 1970, The System of Modern Societies, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, pp. 4-28, 86-121. *Spillman, Lyn, 2002, Cultural Sociology, Blackwell, London, pp. 98-107, 130-140, 141-148, 287-328. *Charles Tilly, 1984, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, Russell Sage, New York, 1-59. *Wallerstein, Immanuel, 2000, The Essential Wallerstein, The New Press, New York, pp. 253-354.

Beginn: 10.06.2005