Download University of Texas at Austin Sociology Department Theory Area

University of Texas at Austin Sociology Department
Theory Area Comprehensive (Comps) Exams 2010-2011
Monday April 18th, 9am–1pm Day One
You have four hours within which to answer two questions from the list of seven below.
Where you are not asked to address the work of a specific theorist, make sure that in your
answer you draw substantively on the work of at least one author from the classical
theory list and at least one author from the contemporary list. Write out the full
question as written below and the number at the start of each answer.
Classical list
Simone de Beauvoir
W.E.B. Du Bois
Emile Durkheim
Norbert Elias
Frantz Fanon
Sigmund Freud
Erving Goffman
Herbert Blumer
Karl Marx
C. Wright Mills
Georg Simmel
Talcott Parsons
Max Weber
Contemporary list
Zygmunt Bauman
Ulrich Beck
Pierre Bourdieu
Judith Butler
Nancy Chodorow
James Coleman
Patricia Hill Collins
Randall Collins
Michel Foucault
Anthony Giddens
Paul Gilroy
Jurgen Habermas
Michael Mann
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Charles Tilly
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1. The State
Drawing comparatively on the work and ideas of two theorists, outline the ways in which
the modern nation state has contributed to and been impacted by both European
colonialism and industrial capitalism.
2. Inequality
Choose three of the following four theorists, Max Weber, Karl Marx, James Coleman and
Charles Tilly, and compare and contrast how they approach the question of inequality.
How, according to each of the three theorists, is inequality produced and reproduced?
3. Violence
Compare the discussion of violence in Norbert Elias’s work with the ideas of two of the
following theorists: Randall Collins, Michael Mann, and Michel Foucault. Which aspects of
violence does each of the three theorists focus on? What kind of similarities,
complementarities, and contrasts do you find in their explanations of causes, uses, and
dynamics of violence?
4. Ontology and method
Sociologists argue that understandings of the social world are fundamentally shaped by
social location. That is, one’s position in society is reflected in one’s theoretical approach,
apparatus, and focus. Show how this basic insight has been incorporated and elaborated in
the work of three different theorists.
5. Modernities
Pick three theorists, and discuss (by comparing and contrasting) their understandings of
modernity. What are the discontents of modernity according to them?
6. Culture and Economy
Compare the work of Pierre Bourdieu with two of the following theorists: Emile
Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, Frantz Fanon. Specifically, how do the three theorists
conceptualize the relationship between the economic relations and cultural relations in
society?
7. The Body
To what extent can the body be seen as a site of resistance and human agency? In your
answer clarify how you understand the terms “resistance” and “agency” and their
relationship to embodied forms of politics. Draw on at least two theorists in your answer.
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