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Queen’s University – Department of Sociology
SOCY 901*
Social Theory
Fall 2014
Rob Beamish
D424 Mackintosh-Corry Hall
Wednesday 2:30-5:30
Jeffrey Hall 115
Required Texts
Schutz, Alfred. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press.
Smith, Dorothy. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1986. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration.
Berkeley: University of California Press. (Available electronically at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://solomon.soth.alexanderstreet.com/cgibin/asp/philo/soth/sourceidx.pl?sourceid=S10023878)
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge UK: Polity Press.
Course Description
Developing a required course in sociological theory for MA and PhD students is a complex balancing act: students will enter the course with very different backgrounds in theory, in general,
and sociological theory in particular; they will have differing interests in theory, metatheory,
and sociological theory; various expectations of what they hope to achieve in a core course in
sociological theory; and certain apprehensions about the course and the instructor’s expectations. In addition, there are the “Departmental” expectations for a 12 week, core theory course
that complicate course design. Finally, 12 weeks is a short period of time to cover what could
be a large number of theorists, issues, and considerable substantive material. Everyone would
design the course differently.
I have redesigned the course considerably on the basis of last year’s experiences. My goals remain largely the same although they too have shifted a bit. This year, I have chosen to focus on
the work of four theorists—Alfred Schutz and his phenomenological approach to social theory,
Dorothy Smith and her early, second-wave, feminist approach to theory which, in many ways,
complements Schutz’s emphasis upon the everyday lifeworld, Anthony Giddens theory of
“structuration,” and Pierre Bourdieu’s “constructivist structuralism” and “structuralist constructivism.” Each of these thinkers is a “modernist” theorist.
I have concentrated on modernist thinkers not because I reject post-modernist theory but due
to my belief that post-modernist theory cannot be properly “appreciated” without really understanding what some of the best modernist theorists had established. The critique of postmodernist theory must be seen against the strongest representatives of modernist theory.
None of the thinkers we will study are “classical” theorists but each of them draws explicitly
upon Marx and Weber, in every case, and Durkheim in the case of Giddens and Bourdieu. I believe a foundation in classical theory is critically important but in a 12 week course, one has to
make difficult decisions and mine has been to focus on more contemporary, modernist theory.
There will, I hope, be opportunities in other courses for you to explore classical theory more
extensively and intensively during your graduate studies.
Last year, the main focus of the course was drawn from the title of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
The Adventures of the Dialectic which contained essays that were highly critical of Jean-Paul
Sartre’s overly subjectivist, existentialism, on the one hand, and the crude, objectivist position
found in Marxism-Leninism. I was interested in what I called “the adventures of the subject and
object dialectic.” In many ways, that still remains a primary focus—how can sociological theory
grasp the relations among subject, object, and social action. This year, rather than stressing the
subject/object relation as much, I want to focus on Weber’s central question in Economy and
Society—what is the nature of social action? This also became the key question, though it was
phrased differently, for “Western Marxism” beginning with Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy and Georg Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness. The theme remains critically important
among contemporary sociologists following the so-called “linguistic turn” in social theory.
To address the issue, we will begin with one of the most extensive statements of the nature of
social action that builds directly upon Weber’s work—Schutz’s The Phenomenology of the Social
World (although the original German title, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt [The Meaningful Construction of the Social World] may be a more instructive title regarding Schutz’s project). I believe that this is one of the most important books written in sociology in the twentieth
century although it has also been largely ignored by those outside the phenomenological approach to understanding social life; my reasons for that claim will, I believe, become clear as we
study Schutz’s book.
The essays gathered together in Dorothy Smith’s The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology were not written in response to Schutz’s work at all. They were written in response to mainstream sociology in the 1970s with Smith drawing upon her knowledge of Marx
and her experiences as a woman to develop, as the sub-title indicates, a feminist sociology. You
will feel that some of the material is dated but you will also have the opportunity to explore a
feminist sociological theory that tries to establish a completely new ontological foundation to
the understanding of social action.
Giddens and Bourdieu are a study in contrasts. Giddens consciously set out to establish a sociological theory that would build upon and surpass what he termed “the orthodox consensus” in
sociological theory in the 1970s—a combination of Parsonian structural-functionalism and
“naturalism” (the use of a methodology modeled on the natural sciences). Bourdieu did not set
out to explicitly establish a new sociological theory; his work developed in response to the
strong subjectivist strands in post-WWII French thought epitomized by Sartre’s existentialism,
on the one hand, and the overly structuralist developments in social theory ushered in by
Claude Levi-Strauss in anthropology and Louis Althusser in sociology and political studies, on
the other. In both cases, however, Giddens and Bourdieu have developed theories that seek to
integrate the subjective aspects of social life with the “objective” (or “structural”) aspects within which human action takes place.
Before engaging with Schutz, Smith, Giddens, and Bourdieu, we will begin with some recent
overview essays regarding theory. These will provide you with a fairly comprehensive overview
of the state of sociological theory at the present time. These essays will provide some context
for the material covered in the course.
Assignments
Throughout the course, I will have you work in small groups to present certain aspects of the
material that you have read for the week. This will allow you to be actively engaged with the
course texts and give you the opportunity to articulate some of the key ideas we will be considering each week. You will then write up those “presentations” to share with others. At the end
of the course, I will ask you to present an argument as to why one particular theorist is, in your
view, superior to the others. The theorist does not have to be Schutz, Smith, Giddens, or Bourdieu—she or he could be someone else who you feel surpasses the positions developed by
those we studied in the course. The key focal point for the assessment will be “the nature of
social action”—who, in your mind, best captures the complex nature of social action and provides the most comprehensive account of its nature and how we can critically grasp it as sociologists.
Week One: The Differing Nature of Sociological Theory
Suggested Required Readings:
Turner, Bryan. 2009. “Introduction: A New Agenda for Social Theory?” The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Retrieved at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=158
/tocnode?id=g9781405169004_chunk_g97814051690041
Delanty, Gerard. 2009. “The Foundations of Social Theory.” The New Blackwell Companion to
Social Theory. Retrieved at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=158
/tocnode?id=g9781405169004_chunk_g97814051690042
Holmwood, John. 2009. “Contemporary Sociological Theory.” The New Blackwell Companion to
Social Theory. Retrieved at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=158
/tocnode?id=g9781405169004_chunk_g97814051690043
Evans, Mary. 2009. “Feminist Theory.” The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Retrieved at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=158
/tocnode?id=g9781405169004_chunk_g978140516900413
Pakulski, Jan. 2009. “Postmodern Social Theory.” The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Retrieved at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=158
/tocnode?id=g9781405169004_chunk_g978140516900414
Turner, Stephen. 2009. “The Future of Social Theory.” The New Blackwell Companion to Social
Theory. Retrieved at
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=158
/tocnode?id=g9781405169004_chunk_g978140516900429
Other Readings
Giddens, Anthony. 1982. “Classical Social Theory and the Origins of Modern Sociology.” Pp. 4067 in A. Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, Berkeley: University of California
Press. (on Moodle)
Giddens, Anthony. 1979. “The Prospects for Social Theory Today.” Pp. 234-59 in Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan Press.
George Steinmetz, (ed.). 2005. Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (available electronically at Queen’s
Call number: H61 .P5875 2005).
Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. 1996. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press (chapter one on Moodle).
Jay, Martin. 1982. “Should Intellectual History Take a Linguistic Turn? Reflections on the Habermas-Gadamer Debate.” Pp. 86-110 in D. LaCapra and S. Kaplan (Eds.), Modern European
Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
(available electronically through Queen’s library D1055.M59).
Parsons, Talcott. 1959. “Some Problems Confronting Sociology as a Profession.” American Sociological Review 24(4):547-59 (on Moodle).
Featherstone, Mike. 1986. “French Social Theory: An Introduction.” Theory, Culture & Society
3(3):1-5 (On Moodle).
Hirst, Paul. 1972. “Recent Tendencies in Sociological Theory.” Economy and Society 1(2):216-28
(on Moodle).
Barrett, Michèle. 1999. “Rethinking the Marxist/Feminist Encounter.” Imagination in Theory:
Essays on Writing and Culture. Cambridge UK: Polity Press, pp. 135-56 (on Moodle).
Karl Popper. 1976. “The Logic of the Social Sciences.” Pp. 87-104 in The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology. London: Heinemann.
Theodor Adorno. 1976. “On the Logic of the Social Sciences.” Pp. 105-22 in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. London: Heinemann.
Albert, Hans. 1974. “The Myth of Total Reason: Dialectical Claims in the Light of Undialectical
Criticism.” Pp. 157-94 in Anthony Giddens, ed., Positivism and Sociology. London: Heinemann.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1974. “Rationalism Divided in Two: A Reply to Albert. Pp. 195-223 in Anthony Giddens, ed., Positivism and Sociology. London: Heinemann.
Winch, Peter. 1958. The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hall, Stuart. 1992. “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.” Pp. 277-85 in L. Grossberg, G.
Nelson and P. Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
Dworkin, Dennis. 1997. Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the
Origins of Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke University Press.
Lee, Richard. 2003. Life and Times of Cultural Studies: The Politics and Transformation of the
Structures of Knowledge. Durham: Duke University Press.
Week Two: The Phenomenology of the Social World
Required Reading: Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, pp. 3-96.
Supplementary Reading: Stonier, Alfred and Karl Bode. 1937. “A New Approach to the Methodology of the Social Sciences,” Economica 4(16): 406-24.
http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2626877
Week Three: The Phenomenology of the Social World (continued)
Required Reading: Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, pp. 97-138
Week Four: The Phenomenology of the Social World (continued)
Required Reading: Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, pp. 139-250
Week Five: Everyday World as Problematic
Required Reading: Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic, pp. 17-48, 49-104
Week Six: Everyday World as Problematic (continued)
Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic, pp. 105-50, 151-79, 180-210, 211-26
Week Seven: Giddens’ The Constitution of Society
Required Reading: Giddens, The Constitution of Society, pp. 1-40
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Week Eight: The Constitution of Society (continued)
Required Reading: Giddens, The Constitution of Society, pp. 41-98
Week Nine: The Constitution of Society (continued)
Required Reading: Giddens, The Constitution of Society, pp. 162-207, 227-63
Week Ten: Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice
Required Reading: Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, pp. 25-65
Week Eleven: The Logic of Practice (continued)
Required Reading: Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, pp. 66-111
Week Twelve: The Logic of Practice (continued)
Required Reading: Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, pp. 112-41