SOCI 833: Special Topics in Sociology

SOCI 833-001: What is Politics?
(Fall 2016)

07:20 PM to 10:00 PM T

Innovation Hall 139

Section Information for Fall 2016

What: We routinely speak of “politics” or “the political.” But what do we mean when we say these words? Coercion and force? Policy? Consent and cooperation? Ideology? Something else? This course will explore the question by interrogating various objects that have been deemed political: e.g., friendship, taboo, law, morality, justice, violence, terror.

Why: The humanities and the interpretive social sciences have long struggled to give coherent account of what might be meant by power, politics, and the like. Successive waves of scholarship purport to offer new definitions, each founded on a critique of antecedent definitions. We ride the prevailing wave—but perhaps we, too, delude ourselves in thinking that we already know the answer to the question. Thus the interrogative approach of this course, which puts classics and postmoderns and their critics in conversation with each other: its goal is to provide working materials (“good to think with”) for engaged scholarship in the field of cultural studies, broadly understood to include textual, historical, and sociological research.

Course Information from the University Catalog