Download ISS-1112

Social Action in Communities, Markets and Policies
Code
Weight of the course
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Lecturer
Teaching Methods
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ISS-1112
3 ECTS
TERM 1
Georgina Gomez
Georgina Gomez, Amrita Chhachhi
Participatory Lecture, Tutorials, Workshop
Written examination: 100%
Cisca Vorselman
Learning objectives
Students will develop an understanding of social life as a combination of stability and change.
They will become familiar with fundamental concepts in sociology and by the end of the course
they will have learnt to use the concepts learnt to analyse social action.
Course description
This course proposes to connect sociological theory with every day experiences. It aims to
improve our understanding of social reality by using a series of sociological concepts like
structure and agency, division of labour, differentiation and cohesion, power, legitimacy, class
and gender.
The course is organised in lectures by thematic groups, rather than theoretical paradigms. It
reads social processes across the social, economic and political domains, an approach that
follows the perspective of the classical sociologists. Max Weber, for example, titled one of his
main works “Economy and Society” and Emile Durkheim considered the division of labour in
production processes as a factor of social integration.
During the course, a number of sociological concepts will be brought to life and used to reflect on
issues like why we work extra hours that we are not paid for, what entitles our leaders to
command us -and we behave accordingly- or why we engage in efforts to push for social change.
The course is suitable for students with no previous knowledge of sociology but with a definite
interest in sociological approaches to the economy, political economy and organisations.
Indicative Readings
C.J. Calhoun, J. Gerteis, J. Moody, S. and I. Virk (Eds.) (2005), Classical sociological theory