SOC745A: SOCIAL THEORY IN LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Course
Course
Course
Course

Instructor Name
Timings
Space
Description

Jillet Sarah Sam

M, Th 11:30 am- 1:00 pm
KD 206

This course provides an introduction to influential streams in sociological

thought after the Second World War. Apart from engaging with the
distinctive aspects of each perspective, we will also consider how they
engaged with each other. In other words, we will understand how shifts in
sociological thought built upon the work that preceded it.
Since this is a PhD level seminar course, it differs from the lecture format
you may have encountered at the UG or Masters level. The lecture
courses sought to ensure that you know the basic arguments associated
with different schools of thought. At the PhD level, more is expected from
you. The attempt here is to help you develop thinking skills that are
required as a professional sociologist. So over the course of the semester
you will push yourself to critically engage with these arguments
evaluate them on the basis of your reading or data, apply the arguments
to your own work, and contribute to theoretical production. The goal here
is that by the end of the semester you should be equipped to
understanding, evaluating and pushing forward theoretical perspectives,
particularly in relation to your own work.
Course Content
Week 1 (Jan 5)

Introduction

Week 2 (Jan 9, 12) Structural-functionalism and Structuralism

Structural-Functionalism
Required Reading
Parsons, T. 1938. The role of ideas in social action. American
Sociological Review, 3(5):652-664.
Talcott Parsons. 1959. The School Class as a Social System:
Some of its Functions in American Society. Harvard Educational
Review 29:297318.
Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils. 1951. Values, Motives and
Systems of Action. In Toward a General Theory of Action, edited

by Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils, 5379. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press. Can be accessed online at
https://archive.org/details/towardgeneralthe00pars
Structuralism
Required Reading
Maryanski, A. and Turner, J. (1991). The offspring of
functionalism: French and British structuralism. Sociological
Theory, 9(1):106-115
Radcliffe-Brown, A. (1940). On social structure. The Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,
70:1-12
Levi-Strauss, C. (1963). Social structure. In Structural
Anthropology (pp. 277323). Basic Books.
Week 3 (Jan 16,19) Critical Theories
Required Readings
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, 1944/1969, The Culture
Industry, pp. 120-176 in Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated
by John Cumming (New York: Seabury.
Jrgen Habermas. 2002. Civil Society and the Political Public
Sphere. Pp. 358-376 in Contemporary Sociological Theory, ed.
Craig Calhoun et al. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Week 4 (Jan 23, 26) Post-colonial theory
Required Reading
Frantz Fanon. 1963 The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove.
(Excerpts Foreward: Framing Fanon, Preface, On Violence,
The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness, and On
National Culture)
Said, Edward The Scope of Orientalism in Orientalism. London:
Penguin. (Excerpts: P1-58)
Week 5 (Jan 30, Feb 2) Post-structuralism 1
Required Reading
Michel Foucault. 1995. The Body of the Condemned pp 3-31.
Docile Bodies, Means of Corrective Training, and
Panopticism pp. 135-228. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth
of the Modern Prison. Vintage: 2nd edition.
Michel Foucault. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An

Introduction, (Excerpts: Part one, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 5

pp. 3-73, 135-159.)
Identify and communicate the school you want to work on as part of your
W-I-P
Week 6 (Feb 6, 9) Post-structuralism 2
Required Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. The Genesis of the Concepts of Habitus
and Field. Sociocriticism 2, 2:1124.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. The Forms of Capital. Pp. 241-58 in
Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of
Education, edited by J.G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood
Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Selection: Structures,
Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power (159197).
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. Some Properties of Fields. Pp. 72-77 in
Sociology in Question. Sage. (************)
Week 7 (Feb 13,16) Subaltern Studies
Required Readings
Guha, Ranajit. 1997 Introduction. In Subaltern Studies Reader,
Minnesota and London: University of Minnesota Press. (Pp. ixxxii)
Gayatri Spivak. Can the Subaltern Speak? Pp 271-313 in
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary
Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (University of Illinois 1988)
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of
Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press. (Excerpts: Preface,
Ch1 and Ch 2)
Week 8: (Feb 20, 23) Feminist Theories
Required Readings

Dorothy Smith. 1990. Womens Experience as a Radical

Critique of Sociology, and The Ideological Practice of
Sociology pp. 1-57 in The Conceptual Practices of Power: A
Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Boston: Northeastern
University Press.
Donna Haraway.
1991. A Cyborg Manifesto in Science,

Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth

Century," pp.149-181in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The
Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. PDF Also available
at:
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/HarawayCyborgManifesto-1.pdf
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses boundary 2. 12
(3): 333-358.
Butler, Judith. 1990/1999. Preface and Subjects of
Sex/Gender/Desire, pp. 1- 44 in Gender Trouble.

Week 9 (Feb 27, March 2): MID-SEM EXAM

Submit and discuss W-I-P outline
Week 10 (March 6 and 9) Post-modern theory
Required Readings
Jacques Derrida, Difference, pp. 61-79 in Peggy Kamuf, ed., A
Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (Columbia, 1991)
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations pp. 166-184 in
Mark Poster, ed., Selected Writings (Stanford, 2001)
Week 11 (March 13, 16): MID SEMESTER BREAK
Week 12 (March 20, 23) Cultural Studies
Required Readings
Stuart Hall in Morley and Chen, Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in
Cultural Studies. The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without
Guarantees, pp. 25-46. On Postmodernism and Articulation:
An Interview with Stuart Hall, pp. 131-151. The Meaning of
New Times, pp. 223-237. Cultural Studies and its Theoretical
Legacies, pp. 262-275. New Ethnicities, pp. 441-449. What
Is this Black in Black Popular Culture? pp. 465-475.
Week 13 (March 27, 30) Intersectionality
Required Readings
Crenshaw,
Kimberl.
1991.
Mapping
the
Margins:
Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women
of Color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241-99.
Glenn, Evelyn N. 1998. "Gender, Race, and Class: Bridging the
Language-Structure Divide." Social Science History 22(1):29-38.
McCall, Leslie. 2005. "The Complexity of Intersectionality." Signs

30(3):1771-800.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. Learning from the Outsider Within:
The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist thought Social
Problems 33, 6: S14-S32.
Rege, Sharmila. 1998. Dalit women talk differently: A Critique
of Difference and towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position
Economic and Political Weekly 33, 44: WS49-WS42.

Week 14 (April 3, 6) Symbolic Interactionism

Required Readings
Goffman, Erving. 1956. The presentation of self in everyday life.
Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research
Centre
Submit first draft of W-I-P
Week 15 (April 10, 13)
Presentation of W-I-P
Week 16 (April 17th and 20th)
Presentation of W-I-P
Week: FINAL EXAM (April 24th-May 3rd)
Submit revised draft of W-I-P
Assessments
The evaluation scheme is indicated below.

Class participation: This is a seminar course meant for PhD

students. It requires intense participation by all students.
Consequently, you are expected to be present in all classes having
read-up thoroughly. Given the goals of this course, most of the talk
will need to come from you. I shall not be giving a lecture in class,
and in fact my role here will be to facilitate discussion and push
you on your arguments. So prepare to talk about what you have
read. You will not be able to make the most of this course unless
you are able to vocally thrash your ideas out in class. This is a very
crucial skill that all PhD students and professional sociologists are
trained in. Hopefully through active participation in this course you
develop the argumentation skills required to write about and
present your own work to the professional community over the
years to come.
If I feel that the discussion in class is not satisfactory, I shall put
you under the spotlight (throw very specific questions at you).

Since we are all adults, I expect you to keep the discussion

professional. I also expect you to talk to your peers, and not at or
down to them.

Weekly reflection and question: In order to help you process

what you have read for each week, I require you to submit a 500word reflection mini-essay on the text, including a couple of
questions. This submission should consist of a critical response to
what you have just read, where you can outline what you found to
be most interesting about the text or the argument presented and
why you found that interesting. As part of this response, you are
also expected to put across a maximum of two questions. Think of
this assignment as an interview with the author. What
questions would you ask them about their work? Ideally the
essay should frame the questions you are asking. The one thing
you do not want to do here is to simply summarize what you
have read. Submissions are due on backpack (discussions) by 12
noon each Sunday, so that the team leading discussion that week
can work with them.

Leading seminar discussions: A team of two students will lead

discussions regarding a particular school of thought each week.
Discussion leaders are expected to meet before class sessions to
coordinate the session and plan to manage time.
1. Tuesday: Getting to know the school
The presentation on Tuesday should touch upon the following
questions:
a) What was the socio-historical context in which this school
emerged and the particular text was created? How does this
text fit into the intellectual trajectory and career of the
author?
b) Briefly summarize some big take aways from the text(s). It is
likely that each one of us will read the text from our own lens,
but we want to ensure that there is some common ground of
understanding that we can start discussions with.
c) Finally, the presentation should include few questions to start
off discussion in the class. Include your own questions along
with the mini-essays submitted by others in the class.
The presentation will not exceed more than 45 minutes.
2. Thursday: Spotlight Articles
On Thursday we will discuss journal articles that centrally engage
with the particular school and theorist covered in the preceding
class. There shall be no presentation per se in the Thursday
classes. The team is expected to facilitate the discussion.

Work-in-Progress: Through the semester, you will need to

demonstrate how you have applied a particular one school of
thought to fashion a work in progress: a paper you are working on
or the literature review for your own thesis etc. Some formal
assignments will help you along in this task:
1. Work-in-Progress Outline: Submit a two-page outline of a paper/litreview/thesis proposal, where you identify a sociological problem
and the specific school you would like to engage with as part of this
work in progress. Meet to discuss the draft during mid-term week.
2. Work-in-Progress Draft 1: Submit a 15-page draft of your work-inprogress after incorporating feedback received from your
presentation. Due on April 6.
3. Work-in-Progress Presentation: In class presentation and discussion
of each students work-in-progress.
4. Work-in-Progress Draft 2: Submit a 15-page draft of your work-inprogress after incorporating feedback received from your
presentation. Due on April 25th.
Contact
In case you wish to clarify or discuss something related to class, please
approach me after the lecture sessions. Alternatively you can send an
email at jssam@iitk.ac.in to schedule an appointment to meet with me.
Expectations regarding classroom behavior
Class will start at 11:30 am sharp, so please make sure you get there on
time. Since this is a seminar course it requires intense involvement on
your part. Consequently, you are expected to be present for all classes. If
you miss class, you will need to submit formal documentation explaining
your absence.
This classroom is a space where students often try out and argue
different ideas. So I intend for it to be a safe space, where everyone feels
comfortable contributing to discussions and is not intimidated by others.
It is expected that you will engage in classroom discussions in a
respectful manner. Please treat your classmates and instructor with the
same courtesy and respect that you think you deserve.