UCSD
Sociology 201B Professor Gershon Shafir
We will explore and compare the most general conceptions of modern society and its discontents in the works of two founders of sociology: Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. We will pay special attention to the ways in which these theorists embody major cultural trends of the post-Enlightenment era, and examine their assessment of the relationship between knowledge and society, morality and society, and politics and society.
First Meeting: Introduction: Positivism and Modernism - The Second Generation
REQUIRED READINGS
EMILE DURKHEIM:
Second Meeting:
The Division of Labor in Society, trs. By W.D. Halls, N.Y., Free Press, 1984.
Preface to the First Edition, pp. xxv-xxx
Introduction, pp. 1-8
Book I: chs. 1, 2, 3, 7, pp. 11-87, 149-175
Book II: chs. 1, 3 (section 1), pp. 179-199, 229-233.
Book III: chs. 1, 2, pp. 291-322.
Conclusion, pp. 329-341
Preface to the Second Edition, pp. xxxi-lix.
Third Meeting:
Suicide, trs. By John A. Spaulding, N.Y., Free Pres, 1951.
Introduction, pp. 41-53.
Book II: chs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, pp. 145-276.
Book III: ch. 3, pp. 361-392.
Fourth Meeting:
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trs. By Karen E. Fields, N.Y., Free Press, 1995.
Introduction, pp.1 -18.
Book I: chs. 1 sections 3 & 4, 2 section 5, pp. 33-44, 65-67.
Book II: chs. 6, 7, pp. 190-241.
Book III: chs. 1, 5 section 4, pp. 303-329, 412-417.
Conclusion, pp.4 18-448.
"Value Judgments and Judgments of Reality," in Sociology and Philosophy, pp. 90-95.
Fifth Meeting:
"The Principles of 1789 and Sociology," in Robert Bellah ed., Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 34-42
"Individualism and the Intellectuals," in Bellah ed., pp. 43-57.
MAX WEBER:
Sixth Meeting:
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, N.Y., Dover, 1958, entire book.
Most of the other selections are from C.Wright Mills & Hans Gerth, eds., From Max Weber, N.Y., Oxford University Press, 1964 (Related or similar articles, sometimes in clearer translations, are to be found in Max Weber, Economy and Society, Volumes I-III, N.Y., Bedminster Press, 1968. I suggest that you consult the relevant pages, which I indicated in parentheses, to clarify the text in the Gerth & Mills reader).
Seventh Meeting:
"The Social Psychology of World Religions," pp. 267-285 (E&S, Volume II, ch. VI. pp. 422-427, 437-439, 447-451, 490-492, 502-508, 515-517, 518-529) in From Max Weber.
"The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilizations," in The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, NLR, pp. 389-411.
General Economic History, New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1981, Part IV, chs. XXVII pp. 312-314, ch. XXVIII, pp. 315-337.
Eighth Meeting:
"The Sociology of Charismatic Authority," pp. 245-252 (E&S, Volume III, ch. XIV pp. 1111-1117, 1121-1123), in From Max Weber.
"Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions," pp. 323-358 in From Max Weber.
Ninth Meeting:
"Class, Status, Party," pp. 180-195 (E&S, Volume II ch. IX pp. 926-939) in From Max Weber.
"Bureaucracy," pp. 196-233 (E&S, Volume III, ch. XI pp. 956-1003, 1148-1156, especially Appendix II, pp. 1393-1405) in From Max Weber.
Tenth Meeting:
"Politics as Vocation," pp. 77-128 in From Max Weber.
"Science as Vocation," pp. 129-156 in From Max Weber.
RECOMMENDED READINGS on DURKHEIM:
The best single introduction to Durkheim's project is Robert N. Bellah's Introduction to the volume edited by him.
Anthony Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory, N.Y., Basic, 1977.
Morris Ginsberg, "Durkheim's Ethical Theory," in Robert A. Nisbet ed. Emile Durkheim, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1965, pp. 142-152.
Susan Stedman, Jones, Durkheim Reconsidered, Cambridge, UK, Polity, 2001.
W.S.F. Pickering ed., Durkheim Today, New York, Berghahn Books, 2002.
Gianfranco, Poggi, Durkheim, N.Y., Oxford University Press, 2000.
Jeffrey Prager, "Moral Integration and Political Inclusion: A Comparison of Durkheim's and Weber's Theories of Democracy," Social Forces, Vol. 59, No. 4, June 1981.
Michèle H, Richman, Sacred Revolutions : Durkheim and the Collège de Sociologie, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
William, Watts Miller, Durkheim, Morals and Modernity, Montreal, McGill-Queens University Press, 1996.
RECOMMENDED READINGS on WEBER:
An excellent introduction to Weber's project is in Rogers Brubaker, The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber, London, Allan & Unwin, 1984.
Robert J. Antonio & Ronald M. Glassman, A Weber-Marx Dialogue, Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1985.
Raymond Aron, "Max Weber and Power Politics," in Otto Stammer ed., Max Weber and Sociology Today, N.Y., Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 83-100.
J.M. Barbalet, "Beruf, Rationality, and Emotion in Max Weber's Sociology," Archive European de Sociologie, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2000, pp. 329-351.
Diggins, John P, Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy, NY, Basic Books, 1996.
Regis A. Factor & Stephen P. Turner, "The Limits of Reason and Some Limitations of Weber's Morality," Human Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1979, pp. 301-334.
Harvey, Goldman, Max Weber and Thomas Mann: Calling and the Shaping of the Self, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991.
Stephen Kalberg, Max Weber's Comparative Historical Sociology, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Donald Levine, "Rationality and Freedom: Weber and Beyond," Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 51, No. 1, 1981, pp. 5-25.
Guenther Roth & Wolfgang Schluchter, Max Weber's Vision of History, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979.
Gershon Shafir, "The Incongruity between Destiny and Merit: Max Weber on Meaningful Existence and Modernity," The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 4, December 1985, pp. 516-530.
William H. Swatos, Jr. & Lutz Kaelber eds., The Protestant Ethic Turns 100: Essays on the Centenary of the Weber Thesis, Boulder, Paradigm Publishers, 2005.
Richard Swedberg, "The Changing Picture of Max Weber's Sociology," Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 29, 2003, pp. 283-306.
Stephen Turner ed., Cambridge Companion to Weber, Cambridge UP, 2000.
Sam Whimster & Scott Lash, Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity, London, Allen & Unwin, 1987.
BIOGRAPHIES:
Lewis Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought, N.Y., Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977.
Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, London, Allan Lane, 1973.
Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber, N.Y., Knopf, 1970.
Fritz K., Ringer, Max Weber: An Intellectual Biography, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004.