ANSO 275-01, Social Theory, Fall 2001

Abstract

The major goal of this course is to help you identify and understand explanations of the social world and social actors that have become elevated to the status of social theory. (Theoreticians have done this by making explicit the basic assumptions and logical arguments that underpin these various world views and subjecting them to various tests of empirical verification and/or experiential veracity given events and phenomena in our own society as well as in other societies.) We hope to accomplish this goal by using lectures to present certain "classical" directions of thought in sociology and anthropology, having you undertake "critical" (in the original sense of the term) analyses of assigned readings of primary sources bringing your questions to each seminar based on your reading, and having you write a series of reflective essays on your intellectual engagement with theoretical schools and their principal theoreticians.