Social Change

16.920.571.01 // Tuesdays 4:10-6:50 at Lucy Stone Hall A 256 // Rutgers University, Spring 2001

Convenor: József Böröcz
 

office: Lucy Stone Hall B 207 // office hours: TBA // phone: 445-2435 // email: jborocz@rci.rutgers.edu

This is a graduate reading seminar probing the intellectual foundations of the comparative-historical sociology of change and modernity by mapping on each other two narratives: the--for lack of a better term--"scholarly" discourse of sociology and the related social "sciences," and "fiction" literature, treated as separate since the Enlightenment.

The course addresses some fundamental conceptual issues of comparative historical research and surveys some of the best studies on various aspects of social change available in English, paying special attention to notions of teleology and coloniality. The class works through discussions of the issues emerging from the readings, and József's occasional summaries of contextual and background info. Class discussion--a scholarly-intellectual give-and-take--is thus the most important component of this course. You are required to come completely prepared, including a thorough, "quality-time" reading of the texts and a mature, constructive, active and intellectually exciting agenda. There will be occasional short "homework" assignments.

Grading-an uncanny manifestation of the standardizing, normalizing and metacommercializing urge in modernity to quantify the qualitative-will be based on a judicial combination of (1) your contribution to constructing the class as an intellectual process, (2) your short assignments, and (3) your paper.

The books have been ordered via the Recto & Verso bookshop at 90 Albany St, New Brunswick (247-2324) and are on Graduate Reserve in Alexander Library. For the journal articles, please peruse the periodicals holdings. My manuscript (Social Change by Fusion) will be made available by special arrangement.
 

Paper:

Develop a 5000-word (=approximately 20 single side, double-space pages using Courier12-pt font, at least 1-inch margins) research paper on a topic that falls within the broadly-conceived subject matter of the course. Book reviews are unacceptable.

The ideal paper will relate some empirical material to a (set of) theoretical issue(s) relevant to questions of social change. Working versions will be presented conference-style (in 15-minute presentations) during the last class period.

The final version of the paper is due on the last day of classes (April 30, 2001). Hand in a Title-plus-150-word outline of the paper as soon as possible but no later than the eighth class. Please do use my office hours to discuss possible topics and approaches. You may submit your outline (but not your paper) via email (see my address above).
 
 






Schedule
 

week 1 /January 16/: Intro: Class Organization + Basics Issues in Social Change
 
 

My Twentieth Century, directed by Ildikó Enyedi (Hungarian, 1989) 104 min.

Homework: Think of this film as an essay on social change. Outline the most basic aspects of the vision of change underlying it. Length: between 500 & 800 words; deadline: 5 pm, Monday, January 22, 2001. Send it by email to jborocz@rci.rutgers.edu or put it in my mailbox on paper.


week 2 /January 23/: Modernity and (Its) Meaning(s)
 
Required scholarly reading(s): - Berman, Marshall. 1988 (1982). All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin USA. Only the following chapters:
  • Preface to the Penguin Edition (5-12)
  • Preface (13-36)
  • Goethe's Faust: The Tragedy of Development (37-86)
  • All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (87-130)
  • Petersburg and Paris: Two Modes of Modernism in the Streets (173-284)
- Habermas, Jürgen. 1991. "Modernity's Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance." Pp. 1-22 in Jürgen Habermas: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures. Translated by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Additional scholarly reading(s): Bendix, Reinhard. 1984. Force, Fate & Freedom. On Historical Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

 

week 3 /January 30/: Modernizationism Canonizes Teleology
 
Required scholarly readings: - Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 1964. "Social Change, Differentiation and Evolution." American Sociological Review, 29,3(June):375-86.

- Lerner, Daniel. 1968. "Modernization. Social Aspects." Pp. 386-95. in David L. Sills (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Volume 10. New York: The Macmillan Company & the Free Press.

- Inkeles, Alex and David H. Smith. 1974. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Only the following chapters:

  • 1 Introduction (3-14)
  • 2 Toward a Definition of Modern Man (15-35)
  • 20 The Process of Individual Modernization (278-88)
  • 21 Summary and Conclusions on the Social Significance of Individual Modernity (289-318).
- Portes, Alejandro. 1973. "Modernity and Development: A Critique." Studies in Comparative International Development, 1973, 8, 3(Fall): 247-279.

- Portes, Alejandro. 1973. "The Factorial Structure of Modernity: Empirical Replications and a Critique." American Journal of Sociology, 79, 1, Jul, 15-44.
Additional scholarly readings: Inkeles, Alex and David H. Smith. 1974. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Only the following chapters:
  • 9 The School as a Context for Modernization (133-43)
  • 10 Modernity and the Mass Media (144-53)
  • 11 The Factory as a School in Modernity (154-74)
Fiction: Mann, Thomas. 1992 (1942). Buddenbrooks. Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter. New York: Vintage International.

 

week 4 /February 6/: Comparative-Historical Analysis Abandons Teleology
 
Required scholarly readings: Böröcz, József. ms. Social Change by Fusion. Chapters:
  • Introduction (cca 20 pp)
  • Sticky Features (cca 50 pp)
  • The Master Direction
  • Modernizationist Mixtures
  • Evolution Becomes Teleology
  • A World Without Teleology
  • Fusion, or, A Non-Mechanical Notion of Change (cca 13 pp)
Osborne, Peter. 1992. "Modernity is a Qualitative, Not a Chronological, Category." New Left Review, 192(Mar/Apr):65-84.
Additional scholarly readings: Tiryakian, Edward. 1991. "Modernization: Exhumetur in Pace." International Sociology, 6,2:165-80.

 

week 5 /February 13/: Admirable Modernizationism: The Invention of Tradition and the Imagined Communities
 
Required scholarly readings: - Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds.) 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Only the following chapters:
  • Introduction: Inventing Traditions by Eric Hobsbawm (1-14)
  • Representing Authority in Victorian India by Bernard S. Cohn (165-210)
  • The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa by Terence Ranger (211-262)
  • Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914 by Eric Hobsbawm (263-308)
- Anderson, Benedict. 1991 (1983). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso.

 

week 6 /February 20/: Coloniality and Identity Disturbances
 
Required scholarly readings: - Cohn, Bernard S. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. The British in India. Princeton University Press.

- Stoler, Ann. 1996. "Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia." Pp. 286-323 in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.) Becoming National. A Reader. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. 


week 7 /February 27/: Coloniality and the Exhibitionary Order
 
Required scholarly readings: Mitchell, Timothy. 1991 [1988]. Colonizing Egypt. University of California Press.


week 8 /March 6/ 'East': Diminutive and/or Opposite-Always an Other
 
Required scholarly readings: - Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Only the following chapters:
  • Introduction (1-30)
  • 1 The Scope of Orientalism (31-112)
  • 3 Orientalism Now (201-328)
- Wolff, Larry. 1994. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Only the following chapters:
  • Introduction (1-16)
  • 1 Entering Eastern Europe: Eighteenth-Century Travelers on the Frontier (17-49)
  • 2 Possessing Eastern Europe: Sexuality, Slavery, and Corporal Punishment (50-88)
  • 7 Peopling Eastern Europe, Part I: Barbarians in Ancient History and Modern Anthropology (284-331)
  • 8 Peopling Eastern Europe, Part II: The Evidence of Manners and the Measurement of Race (332-55)
  • Conclusion (356-76)

 

March 6 is the deadline for the submission of your paper topic statement!!!


 

March 13: SPRING RECESS
 
 


week 9 /March 20/: Historical Semantics and Historicism
 
Required scholarly readings: - Koselleck, Reinhart. 1985 (1979). Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Keith Tribe. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Only the following chapters:
  • Modernity and the Planes of Historicity (3-20)
  • The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts (159-197)
- Iggers, Georg G. 1995. "Historicism--The History and Meaning of the Term." Journal of the History of Ideas, 56, 1(Jan):129-152.

- Ankersmit, F.R. 1995. "Historicism: An Attempt at Synthesis." History and Theory, 34,3:143-61.

 

week 10 /March 27/: Histories of Everyday Life
 
Required scholarly readings: Lüdtke, Alf (ed.). 1995 (1989). The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life. Translated by William Templer. Princeton, Princeton UP. Only the following chapters:
 
  • Introduction: What is the History of Everyday Life and Who Are Its Practitioners? By Alf Lüdtke (3-40)

    •  
  • "Missionaries in the Rowboat"? Ethnological Ways of Knowing as a Challenge to Social History by Hans Medick (41-71)

    •  
  • Mentalities, Ideologies, Discourses: On the "third Level" as a Theme in Social-Historical Research by Peter Schlöttler (72-115)

    •  
  • What Happened to the "Fiery Red Glow"? Workers' Experiences and German Fascism by Alf Lüdtke (198-251).

 

week 11 /April 4/ Microhistories: Method and/or Madness
 
Required scholarly readings: Ginzburg, Carlo. 1980. The cheese and the worms : the cosmos of a sixteenth-century miller. Translated by John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press. 
Fiction: Pavic, Milorad. 1989 (1983). Dictionary of the Khazars. A lexicon novel in 100,000 words. Female edition. Translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Christina Pribicevic-Zoric. New York: Vintage International.

 

week 12 /April 11/ Changing Regimes of Social Closure
 
Required scholarly readings: - Böröcz, József. 1997. "Stand Reconstructed: Contingent Closure and Institutional Change." Sociological Theory, 15,3(Nov):215-48.

- Manza, Jeff. 1992. "Classes, Status Groups, and Social Closure: A Critique of Neo-Weberian Social Theory." Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 12:275-302.
Additional scholarly readings: - Zelditch, Morris jr. 1968. "Status, Social." Pp. 250-7 in David L. Sills (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Volume 15. New York: The Macmillan Company & the Free Press.

- Cox, Oliver C. 1945. "Estates, Social Classes, and Political Classes." American Sociological Review, X:464-9.

- Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. "Fourth Lecture. Universal Corporatism: The Role of Intellectuals in the Modern World." Poetics Today, 12:4(Winter):655-69.

 

week 13 /April 18/ Post-State-Socialisms
 
Required scholarly readings: Bodnár, Judit. 2001. Fin de Millénaire Budapest: Metamorphoses of Urban Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Böröcz, József. 2001. "Change Rules." American Journal of Sociology. Forthcoming.

Böröcz, József. 2001. "Informality Rules." East European Politics & Societies", 14,2(Spring):348-80.

Additional scholarly readings: Stark, David & László Bruszt. 1998. Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eyal, Gil, Iván Szelényi and Eleanot Townsley. 1998. Making Capitalism without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites in eastern Europe. London and New York: Verso Books.


 

week 14 /April 25/ Student Papers Conference