Sociology 600, Fall 2014, Hogan, Purdue University
Office: Stone 307, Office Hours: WF 1:30-3 p.m.
Office phone: 426-4696 (leave no messages)
Phone messages: 49-4668; e-mail:
website: (select teaching SOC 600)
Classical Sociological Theory
This course provides a survey of classical sociological theory, focusing on the writings of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. As context for the development of sociological theory, we will read some essays from classical conservative, radical, and liberal theorists, culminating in enlightenment liberalism, represented by John Stuart Mill. Toward a bridge to contemporary theory and to the material covered in SOC 602 and SOC 603, we will read some essays by Georg Simmel, Sigmund Freud, and George Herbert Mead.
Each week there will be required and recommended readings. Students must do all of the required reading and come to class ready to discuss what they have read. For each section, the instructor will present an introductory lecture (on the first day). Thereafter, students are expected to come to class with questions for discussion. Also, groups of students will read and present (on the last class meeting for each major section) the recommended readings. Each student will choose a section of particular interest to her/him, and we'll organize the groups on the first day of class. Finally, for the last day of class, each student will choose one of the three recommended readings (Simmel, Freud, or Mead), which they will read and come to class prepared to discuss, in a roundtable discussion of the classics in Social Psychological (or micro) theory.
Students will write three analytical essays (~10 pages each), exploring or applying each of the major theoretical traditions. Students will also provide each member of the class with an annotated bibliography and outline for their segment of their group presentation. These papers, the in-class presentations, attendance, and class participation (plus a consideration of effort/improvement, discussed below) will be the basis for assigning letter grades (A=excellent, B=average, C=problematic, D=poor, F=unacceptable).
In addition to three analytical essays that will be graded, you will also be required to write weekly essays that will be collected but not graded. These papers will allow you to express your reactions to readings and discussions, to describe theories, theorists, and topics that you might wish to explore, to explore those topics as viewed from a particular theoretical approach, and to compare and contrast different approaches to the same topic. All of these essays will help you to write your way toward an analytical essay and will help me to help you in that effort. Save all the essays that I return to you with comments. At the end of the semester (with your final essay) you should return all of your essays to me. This will help me to appreciate both the degree of effort and the degree of improvement, both of which will tend to raise your grade.
All books (except Comte and Saint Simon, which are hard to get) will be available at Vons (you might want to buy a discount card to save 10%).
Schedule of Topics and Readings
1. Introduction and Overview (first class)
2. Pre-Sociological Theory (second class)
- Aristotle, Politics
- Saint Augustine, City of God
- Machiaveli, The Prince
- Moore, Utopia
- Rousseau, The Social Contract
- Locke, Of Civil Government
- Smith, Wealth of Nations
- Saint-Simon, Selected Writings
- Comte, General View of Positivism
- Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
- Hegel, Philosophy of Right
- Spencer, Herbert Spencer on Social Evolution
- Pareto, Rise and Fall of the Elites
- Tonnies, Community and Society
- Mill, On Liberty (required)
3. Marxism (weeks 3-6)
- Tucker reader (except Engels, three weeks: required)
- Engels (end of Tucker)
- Lenin, Imperialism
- The Civil War in France (Marx and Lenin)
4. Durkheim (weeks 7-10)
- Division of Labor (two weeks: required)
- Rules of the Sociological Method (required)
- Suicide
- Elementary Forms of Religious Life
5. Weber (weeks 11-14)
- Sociological Writings (2 weeks: required)
- Protestant Ethic (required)
- Sociology of Religion
- selections from Economy and Society (TBA)
6. Toward Contemporary Sociological Theory (last class: read one of the following)
- Simmel, Sociology of Georg Simmel
- Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
- Mead, Mind, Self, and Society
Weekly Writing
Over the course of my teaching career I have come to realize that even graduate students have a hard time writing analytical essays. Furthermore, I have discovered that analytical writing is, in fact, a synthesis of sorts. Students learn in first year English composition classes to write expressive, descriptive, exploratory, and analytical prose, but they have trouble applying this lesson in advanced social science courses. Consequently, we need to progress through the basics on the path to writing analytical essays, which is the essence of our weekly writing assignments. These are not graded but they are required and will be used both in helping you through the process of reading, thinking, and writing and in grading your efforts in this regard. Some substantial segment of your total grade in this course—perhaps 50% will be based on your effort, indicated in your weekly writing and in your class participation, more generally.
Quite apart from learning classical sociological theory, this course is designed to teach you to think and write analytically. In order to do so, it is imperative that you recapitulate the lessons that you have learned in English Composition.
The most fundamental, elementary forms of writing are description (just the facts) and expressive writing (feelings and opinions). The first challenge, which you must meet to pass this course, is to separate fact from opinions and feelings. Once you have mastered this, which is the essence of expressive and descriptive writing you will be prepared to try exploratory writing.
The most difficult form of writing is exploratory—where you adopt the opinions and feelings (or, in this class, the theoretical approach: perspective, model and focus) of someone else and attempt to apply these in a decidedly unnatural or artificial form of writing. The value of the exploratory is heuristic. It teaches the writer how to use different styles (in this course: different theories). For our purposes, your exploratory writing will be your attempt to apply classical theory to a sociological topic of your choice. Before you are ready to do so you must write expressive and descriptive essays on the topic and the theory. Then you can apply the theory to the topic as your first exploratory essay. For most of you, this first exploratory essay will be your effort to apply Marx to your topic (around week five). This might be followed by your first attempt to write an analytical essay, although many of you will not be ready to do this by week six.
The analytical essay is the ultimate synthesis. You bring back the alienated components of facts and opinions, including other people's opinions and your opinions (which are now informed by the facts developed in description and by the exploratory efforts to explain these facts from a different point of view). The analytical essay should be your answer to the question (or questions) that you have generated in the course of writing on this topic. Ideally, before writing your analysis you already have explored the views of the leading experts in the field (in this case, the major classical theorists) and have compared and contrasted these (as they were more or less successful in answering your question(s) and as they relate to your developing theoretical approach). Thus your final analytical paper should build on your efforts to apply all three classical theorists. This final paper, although not necessarily any longer than the two earlier papers, is expected to be the best evidence of your progress toward analytical thinking and writing.
Nevertheless, as you will discover, each of you will probably find one of the three theorists to be most compatible with your worldview, or most easily applied, or simply the one that provides the most compelling account of your problem or the best answer to your question. Thus your progress will be considered more in light of your weekly writings and class participation, and each of the three major essays will be considered as roughly equal (worth 15-20% each ) in determining your final grade.
Rules, etc.
As necessary, we will discuss the academic rules and the classroom rules involving turn-taking, mutual respect, courtesy, etc. My impression (based on the past two decades or so of teaching graduate students here at Purdue) is that you all know how to read, write, and talk within a classroom setting and have some sense of academic standards and practices. We will discuss these more, in theory and practice, later on. For now, only one issue deserves special attention.
Plagiarism: Presenting as your own ideas or words that you have borrowed from someone else is plagiarism. Plagiarism is the most serious of academic sins. Plagiarism is grounds for failure in the course and disciplinary measures that might include expulsion from the university.
The typical case of plagiarism is when a student is attempting to describe something in the assigned readings. If you are writing and your textbook is open then you should include a reference to that page (Tucker, p. 100). In fact, if you are looking for the answer in the text then you probably are not yet ready to write. Trying to rephrase the writing of a professional is much too hard. Invariably you wind up borrowing. It is easier to simply quote the text, but you don’t want your essay to be a string of quotes. The key is to read first, then think, then write. Repeat as necessary.
Bibliography (required reading in bold)
Aristotle. Politics (Oxford University Press, 1995)
Augustine, Saint. City of God (Doubleday, 1958)
Comte, Auguste. General View of Positivism (Robert speller and Sons, 1957)
Durkeim, Emile. Division of Labor in Society (Free Press, 1984)
---Rules of the Sociological Method (Free Press, 1982)
---Suicide (Free Press, 1987)
---Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Free Press, 1995)
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents (Norton, 1969)
Hegel, G.W. Philosophy of Right (Prometheus, 1996)
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason (Prometheus, 1996)
Lenin, V.I. Imperialism: The Highest State of Capitalism (China Books, 1975)
Locke, John. Treatise of Civil Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration (Irvington, 1965
Machiavelli, N. The Prince and Other Political Writings (Charles E. Tuttle, 1995)
Marx, K. and Frederick Engels,The Marx-Engels Reader (Edited by Robert C. Tucker) (Norton, 1978)
Marx, K., V.I. Lenin, and Nikita Fedorovsky. The Civil war in France (International, 1993)
Mead, G. H. Mind, Self, and Society (Univ. Chicago, 1967)
Mill, J.S. On Liberty (Prometheus, ?)
More, T. H. Utopia (Dover, 1997 or St. Matin's, 1995?)
Pareto, V. The Rise and Fall of Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology (Transaction, 1991)
Rousseau, J. J. The Social Contract (C.E. Tuttle, 1993)
Saint-Simon, C. H. Selected Writings (Hyperion Press, 1994)
Simmel, G. The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Free press, 1964)
Smith, Adam. Wealth of Nations (Viking Penguin, 1962)
Spencer, Herbert. Herbert Spencer on Evolution (Edited by J. D. Peel) (Univ. Chicago, 1984)
To[e]nnies, Ferdinand. Community and Society (Transaction, 1988)
Weber, Max. Sociological Writings (Continuum, 1993)
--- Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge, Chapman & Hall, ?)
---Sociology of Religion (Beacon Press, 1993)
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