POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
Sociology 920:290
Location and time: Murray Hall 208, TF 11:30-12:50
Office Hours: Lucy Stone Hall, A336; Mondays 9:00-11:00 and by appt.
Phone:
732-445-3705
E-mail: pmclean@rci.rutgers.edu
Website : http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~pmclean/
Political sociology encompasses a truly vast and disparate variety of topics and theoretical perspectives. As a result, it is hard to find much agreement about just what does or does not belong in a political sociology course. The areas studied by political sociologists, for example, include political parties, pressure groups, voting behavior, comparative political systems, warfare, democracy and economic development, political elites, political culture, the nature of the state, and the nature of power itself. Political sociologists today may draw on the conflict- and economy-based view of politics articulated by Marx and his followers, the elite- and organization-based political sociology of Max Weber and Robert Michels and their followers, the political culture- and institution-based view of politics articulated by Alexis de Tocqueville, or any of these perspectives in combination. Indeed, the lines between these perspectives are blurry. Furthermore, although many political sociologists focus on political structures and political power in the United States today, in fact any number of contemporary or historical cases have been studied to deepen our understanding of how politics works and how political institutions function. . This class is designed as an overview of some of the different perspectives and key arguments comprising the field, including both classical texts and contemporary books and articles.
As a discipline, political sociology is close to political science, because both disciplines address issues related to politics. However, political sociology does differ from political science in a variety of imprecise yet substantial ways. First, political sociologists often emphasize the relationships between political institutions and other social institutions and groupings—whether kinship, social classes, prestige groupings, or ideologies—rather than study political institutions on their own. Second, political sociology often tends to have a broader (especially historical) sweep than political science. Third, political sociologists tend to adopt more narrative and comparative methods of analysis, rather than formal or mathematical ones. Finally, political sociology is often (though not always) political in a normative and occasionally partisan way—something that is not seen as typically in political science. Thus political sociologists aim not only to understand political structures, ideas, and processes, but also to critique them.
Your grade in this course
will be based on the following requirements: 1) a midterm test to be held in
mid-October (worth 25% of the final grade); 2) one 5-page paper, due around the
ninth week of the semester (25% of the final grade); 3) participation in
classroom discussions (10%); and 4) a final exam (40%). Failure to take the midterm, hand in the
paper, or take the final exam, will result in automatic failure of the course.
I
have ordered the following books for this course through the Rutgers bookstore
in New Brunswick:
1)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America (Penguin, 2003, trans. Bevan)
2)
G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?: Power, Politics, & Social Change
(McGraw-Hill, 2006)
3)
Tom Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas?
(Metropolitan, 2004)
4)
Javier Auyero, Poor People’s Politics (Duke, 2001)
There are MANY other required readings, but these
are available either through: 1) electronic reserve at Alexander library; 2) my
website (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~pmclean/),
which should duplicate the electronic reserve holdings; or 3) JSTOR, the
electronic journal article retrieval system.
I will provide more detailed instructions on retrieving these materials as
the occasion arises. You should note,
however, that many reserve readings are used in the first few weeks of the
course.
Lecture Schedule and Weekly Reading Schedule
Week 1 Introduction
to the Course
September 2: Syllabus
distribution, special permission number requests, etc.
Part 1: Some Preliminary Considerations
Concerning Power
Week 2 of RU Semester
September 6: The Three Faces of Power
Read:
John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness:
Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley, pp. 3-29 (reserve/my
website)
September 9: Hobbes’ Atomistic Vision of Power and Its
Consequences
Read:
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, author’s
introduction, and chs. 10, 11, 13, and 17 (reserve/my website)
Week 3 of RU Semester
September 13: The Second, and Especially, Third, Faces of
Power: Michel Foucault
Read:
Michel Foucault, “Lecture Two: 14 January 1976,” pp. 92(bottom)-108 in his Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and
Other Writings, 1972-1977 (reserve/my website)
September 16: Power as a Social Network Concept
Read: Richard
M. Emerson, “Power-Dependence Relations,” American Sociological Review
27,1 (February 1962): 31-41. (online through JSTOR)
Read:
Georg Simmel, “The Triad,” in The
Sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 145-169 (reserve/my website)
Read:
Domhoff, Who Rules America?: Power, Politics,
& Social Change, pp. 217-220
Part 2: Classical Political Sociology
Week 4 of RU Semester
September 20: Marxism and Neo-Marxists on the State
Read: Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, pp.
594-617 (reserve/my website)
Read: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 144-53, 167-68, 180(bot)-182(mid), 242-247, and 260-64 (reserve/my website)
September 23: The Shift from
Power to Domination and Authority: Max Weber
Read: Max Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 53-54, 941-954. Continue into the second chunk of reading if possible: pp. 212-30, 241-54 (reserve/my website)
Week 5
September 27: Weber on the Types of Legitimate
Domination
Read: Max Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 212-30, 241-54 (reserve/my website)
September 30: Tocqueville on American Institutions and
Political Mores
Read: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume I: Part I, author’s introduction and chapter 3; and Part II, chapters 7-8
Week 6
October 4: Tocqueville on Race, Politics, and the
Future in America
Read:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume I, Part II, ch. 9; pp. 370-6,
398-426, 438-42, 464-70; and conclusion (pp. 479-85)
October 7: Tocqueville on American Political Culture and Moral Sentiments
Read:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II, Part I, author’s preface and
chapters 9-21; Part II, entire; and Part III, chapters 1-4, 8, 11-12, 17-19
Week 7
October 11: Midterm Examination
Part
3: The American Polity
October 14: The Ruling Elite in American
Democracy
Read:
G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America:
Power and Politics, Introduction, and chapters 1, 8 and 2
Week 8
October 18: Mechanisms and Arenas of Control in
the American Political System
Read:
Domhoff, Who Rules America?, chapters
3, 4, and 5
Read:
Domhoff, Who Rules America?, chapters
6 and 7
Week 9
October 25: Contemporary Conservatism in America
Read:
Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with
Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Introduction and chs.
1, 2 (pp. 43-59 and 62-7 only), and 5
October 28: More on Conservatism, and Thinking about Wedge Issues
Read:
Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with
Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, chs. 6, 8, 9, 10, 12,
and Epilogue
Week 10
November 1: Bringing
Tocqueville Up to the Present, and Back to the Past:
Social Capital, and 19th
Century American Associations
Read:
Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6,1 (1995):65-78
(reserve, or http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_ democracy/ v006/6.1putnam.html)
Read:
Jason Kaufman, For the Common
Good?American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity, introduction and
chapter 4 (reserve/my website)
November 4: American Political Culture Today
Read:
Katherine Cramer Walsh, pp. 1-3, 9-11, 46-52, 91-100, 113-116, 152-3, 156-64
(reserve/my website)
Read:
Nina Eliasoph, “‘Close to Home’: The Work of Avoiding Politics,” in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn
Spillman, pp. 130-140 (reserve/my website)
Week 11
November 8: The Extraordinary Origins of the American
Welfare State
Read:
Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional
Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy, introduction and
chapter 3 (reserve/my website)
Part 4: Looking Beyond America for Critical Political Dynamics
November 11: An Historical Study of Political Elites
Read: Paul McLean, “Widening Access While Tightening Control: Office-Holding, Marriages, and Elite Consolidation in Early Modern Poland,” Theory and Society 33:167-212 (reserve/my website)
Week 12
November 15: Clientelism in Urban Politics
Read:
Javier Auyero, Poor People’s Politics:
Peronist Survival Networks & the Legacy of Evita, pp. 1-13, 89-110,
119-136
November 18: The Client’s Point of View in Urban
Politics
Read:
Auyero, Poor People’s Politics,
chapter 5 and “Conclusions”
Week 13
November 22: NO CLASS—RUTGERS FOLLOWS A WEDNESDAY
SCHEDULE
November 25: THANKSGIVING RECESS
Week 14
November 29: Democracy and Development: Is There a
Connection?
Read:
Adam Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development:
Political Institutions and Material Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990, pp. 1-7, 36-51, 78-83,
87-90, 92-109, 136-7, 269-78 (reserve)
December 2: Nationalism as National Character, versus
Nationalism as Discourse
Read:
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and
Nationhood in France and Germany, Introduction and chapter 4 (reserve/my
website)
Read:
Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed:
Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, pp. 13-21
(reserve/my website)
Week 15
December 6: Thinking About Political Violence
Read:
Roger D. Peterson, Understanding Ethnic
Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe,
chapters 2 and 6 (reserve/my website)
December 9: Social Scientists Tackle 9/11
Read:
Craig Calhoun,
Paul Price, and Ashley Timmer, eds., Understanding
September 11, selections by Juergensmeyer and Keohane (reserve/my website)
Week 16
December 13: no
new readings; review and question period
FINAL EXAM:
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22,
12:00-3:00 p.m., MURRAY HALL 208