Sociological Theory Exam #1

The exam on Monday October 6th will be an in-class, multiple-choice exam.  It will be designed primarily to test your understanding of the course materials, not your ability to memorize obscure details.  If you understand the following concepts and issues, you should do well. Please arrive on time and bring a #2 pencil with a good eraser.

Why it was difficult to "discover" society, and why sociology is a difficult but not impossible science, according to Collins and Makowsky
The major sources of illusion
The pitfalls of psychological reductionism and too-liberal identification with physical sciences

Saint-Simon: his parable of the idlers and what it meant.  The ideology of industrialism. The distinction between state and society.
Auguste Comte: Inventor of the term, "sociology." Social physics and his positivist vision of sociology. Basic features of positivism in the social sciences and why it is controversial.

What Salzman is trying to show in his discussion of Margaret Mead and the subsequent controversy about her work.
The distinction between meta-theory, heuristic theory, and substantive theory. Be able to recognize examples of each. Know what meta-theory Mead and most sociologists and anthropologists of her day subscribed to.
Understand why theories can only be supported, not proven.
Nomothetic vs. idiographic theories and explanations
Concepts and propositions as the building blocks of theories.
Emic vs. etic perspectives

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
why the book was path-breaking and controversial
what view of science Kuhn was criticizing
Kuhn's basic model of scientific development.  Be familiar with paradigm, normal science, anomalies, extraordinary science, scientific revolution.
Understand whey normal science is "inherently conservative" and yet produces scientific revolutions over time.
Implications of Kuhn's work for sociology.
Sociology as a multi-paradigm science

Karl Marx
the two central themes in Marx's sociological thought, as presented in class
The Communist Manifesto: its theory of social structure and social change. 
how Marx defined social class.  The distinction between class-in-itself and class-for-itself
class polarization and proletarianization
his view of the capitalist class (bourgeosie)
Marx's theory of politics and the state
Stages of class development and the role of intellectuals
The Preface: how Marx's emphasis is different from the Communist Manifesto's
the base/superstructure model of society and how it contains a theory of social revolution
mode of production: how the relationship between the productive forces and relations of production changes
the concepts of contradictions and social revolution
Ideology and false consciousness
Religion as the "opiate of the people"--what Marx meant

Marvin Harris and cultural materialism. Be familiar with his analysis of cow veneration in India and of the ban on eating pork in the Middle East. The basic tenets of his approach.
The emic/etic and mental/behavioral distinctions
Anthropological political economy--its key ideas.
The meaning of the various criticisms of materialism: cultural construction, agency, extreme positivism

Marx as a "child of the Enlightenment" and as a "modernist." What this means.
The anti-modernists and their implicit sociology.
How Alexis de Tocqueville relates to these positions.
DeTocqueville's concern with democratic liberty and democratic tyranny; why he chose to study the United States. His analysis of why the U.S. was relatively successful in combining democracy and liberty for some. How his ideas provide the basis of an influential model of the preconditions of successful democracy and of the emergence of totalitarianism.
The Old Regime and the French Revolution--how DeTocqueville explained the weakness of civil society in France.

Friedrich Nietzsche: his distinction between "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" styles of culture and how he used this distinction to critique Western civilization.
What he meant by Christianity as a slave religion and how his analysis provided new tools in the sociology of knowledge.
"The Madman"--what Nietzsche is saying in this piece. His search for a new morality in a "post-God" age.

Liberal social thought in the English-speaking world: how it was different from the dominant continental trends
The two wings of liberalism, as discussed by C&M.
Darwin's importance. Evolution as a fundamental paradigm shift.
Social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. How Social Darwinism strengthened laissez-faire Liberalism.
The collapse of Social Darwinism; Darwin's longer-term legacy

What Salzman means by saying that anthropology was "a child of evolution."
The concept of cultural evolution. The major theoretical issues in evolutionary thought: directionality, mechanisms of change, the issue of progress.
Different versions of contemporary evolutionism and contemporary criticisms of evolutionary theories.

Marx and MicroCase Exercise: while you are not responsible for remembering specific findings, you should understand the basic issues and be able to interpret the tables you generated. Know how to state a hypothesis properly and test it with data.

September 29, 2008