LFU:online

Students will acquire via theoretical, historical and comparative analysis an understanding of the nature and development of key social institutions and of the social-scientific debates surrounding and methods of analysis applied to them. The course is of particular relevance to political and economic sociology, political science and organization studies.

This series of lectures will introduce students to institutional approaches in the social sciences. Institutionalism and neo-institutionalism are at the heart of classical and contemporary social theory and empirical research and are particularly influential in economic and political sociology, political sciences and organizational analysis. Together they constitute the major alternative to standard economic explanations of the social world. The lectures will take the two major institutions of capitalist modernity – the state and the market – as the main examples and will examine their origins, nature and development. Both classical and contemporary theories of social institutions will be discussed.

The lectures will be delivered online in OLAT. Each week students will be offered (i) a screencast lecture (audio over Power Points); (ii) study notes; (iii) relevant additional readings.

A written examination at the end of the course consisting of a list of question from which students will be expected to answer two (in English or German).

Austin Harrington (ed.) (2005) Modern Social Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Plus weekly readings.

positive completion of the compulsory module according to § 5 Para 1 No 2