Week 1

Modernity and Sociology

Sociology emerged in the 19th century in response to a felt need for making sense of the crisis character of modern societies. This unit will chart some of the discipline’s most enduring attempts to discover the organizing imperatives that propel modern development. It considers the changing shape of such investigations and discusses an emerging conviction that fragmented and complex modern societies defy attempts to grasp the character of modernity as a whole. This is partly a story, then, of the self-transformation of the sociological enterprise. 

Week 2

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859)

French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United States of America and was both immensely impressed by and deeply fearful for the new world he saw taking shape. Modern societies were to be the birthplace of a new liberty that was joined to the principle of equality. This could be a world peopled by isolated, weak and fearful individuals or it might be one in which, recognizing their mutual dependencies, individuals joined together in a newly voluntary fashion to claim to build self-determined futures.  Tocqueville’s hopes and fears can still help to guide us in thinking about our cultural choices. He neglected, though, what was to be a powerful force in shaping modern life: a capitalist economy.

Week 3

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Marx’s perspective on capitalist society describes an essentially contradictory social system.  Whilst Marx perceived an antagonistic relation between capital and labour as the fundamental structural contradiction of bourgeois society, he was still prepared to acknowledge the historically progressive character of modernity.

Week 4

Karl Marx (continued)

We turn our attention to Marx’s reflections on the distinctive ‘scientific’ character of his diagnosis of modern society.  We look at some of the problematic features of this analysis, at the ongoing ‘crisis’ of Marxism, and raise the question of its continuing legacy. 

Week 5

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Like Marx, Nietzsche was a radical critic of modernity but in his sights were fundamentally different aspects and value structures of modern society.  Together with Marx, Nietzsche saw that modern society was characterised by divisions and antagonisms (divisions he described in moral rather than in structural terms).  At the centre of Nietzsche’s critique of modernity lies his assault on the principle of democracy - the ‘leveling’ spirit of the modern age. 

Week 6

Max Weber (1864-1920)

Together with Emile Durkheim, Weber has been described as ‘father’ to academic sociology.  Weber was particularly faced with the problems of consolidation of bourgeois society in the second half of the 19th century and the rapid industrialisation and modernisation of Germany.  The central theme in his diagnosis of modern social life is the problem of ‘rationalisation’. In this lecture we look at the general features of characterisation of the ‘iron cage’ of modernity.  We refer to his account of the process of bureaucratisation and outline his views on the specific forms of domination and legitimation that characterise modern society. 

Week 7

Max Weber (Continued)

In this lecture we continue to explore some of the sociological concepts and approaches that Max Weber coined for sociology and how they help us understand late modern societies.  The focus here will be on examples of rationalisation, value spheres and social action that leave us in a situation where what seems rational in one way can appear irrational in another way. We consider how Weber seeks to identify a type of personality whose characteristics can be seen as emblematic of the 'spirit of capitalism.' The 'type' is a methodological construct produced not by averaging out the typical features of real empirical individuals but as a composite or device for sociologists as an aid to interpretation. We then look at contemporary work ethics and how they have changed since Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

MID-SEMESTER BREAK

Week 8

Émile Durkheim

The fundamental problem that shaped Durkheim’s reaction to modern society concerned the nature of social solidarity.  He was convinced that the course of historical development had generated a contemporary crisis in social solidarity that was evidenced by the atomisation, alienation and fragmentation of existing bourgeois society. Durkheim contended that this was a pathological condition for which he coined the term anomie.

Week 9

Émile Durkheim (Continued)

Despite their manifold differences, religions, Durkheim tells us, have a common core. Each determines the boundaries between the profane and the sacred. Durkheim is interested in the deeply social character of religion. He thinks that its sociological investigation can reveal important insights into how modern solidarities are forged.

Week 10

The Frankfurt School

The Marxist-oriented Institute for Social Research was established at Frankfurt University in 1923.  This institute (which migrated to the U.S.A. in the 30s) formed the centre of a group of social researchers highly critical of and bleakly pessimistic about the future of late 20th century societies in all their different formations.  The critique of the ‘administered society’ developed by, in particular, T.W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, is the main theme of this lecture. We introduce the pessimistic Frankfurt School’s diagnosis of modernity as the ‘totally administered society’ and we consider some critiques of this bleak outlook on the future.  

Week 11

Michel Foucault

In this lecture we consider the main shape of Foucault’s highly influential diagnosis on the ‘carceral’ character of modernity.  Foucault goes much further than Weber or even Horkheimer and Adorno in his critique of modernity.  They could still uphold the ideal of the autonomous modern individual as a potential ally in the struggle against the increasingly rationalised, administered totalitarian society. Foucault can, by contrast, see in this ideal only another shape of oppression. 

In this lecture we examine some of the objections that have been directed at Foucault’s diagnosis of the carceral society and we trace some of the ways in which he has attempted to respond.

Week 12

Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher

Agnes Heller has described her analysis of modernity as a diagnosis of the ‘dissatisfied society.’  Her perspective attempts to discover in the dynamics of the dissatisfied society both dangers that threaten the survival of democraticising motivations and the grounds also upon which these motivations might be radicalised and renewed.

Week 13

Conclusion

In this final lecture we will try to work out, on the basis of the course material from the various weeks, what we can say about modernity and modern societies. Where do we go from here? What are the lasting issues and themes? What can we take forward from the range of theories we have looked at?