|
Postmodernism - Syllabus
SOCIOLOGY INDEX |
| Cultural
Studies and Postmodernism - Syllabus - College of Liberal Arts - Texas
A&M Georgetown University - Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Modernity and Modernism from the Maghreb to the Middle East
Professor Ossman
Although some see modernity as distinctly European or Western, others argue that multiple
modernities have been developed throughout the world. This course focuses on this debate
as it has developed from the Maghreb to the Middle East since the end of the nineteenth
century. The class starts with a perusal of various definitions of modernism and modernity
and an examination of their interpretation in European contexts. It then goes on to
consider how modern art, social ideals and political programs associated with modernity
played a role in colonial projects and the post-colonial ideologies that have shaped the
distinctive experiences of modernity one encounters in the Middle East and throughout the
Arab World. Through a series of readings focusing on the relationship of aesthetic
modernism to forms of subjectivity and political organization students will explore how
discourses of authenticity and tradition can themselves be seen as reflecting a
specifically modern understanding of history and culture. Modern manners of conceiving of
landscape, language and time are related to the way that political entities like states
are conceived and how we delimit and define regions like the "Arab World" or the
" Middle East". These also influence how aesthetic production's are conceived,
financed and received by local, national and international audiences. The class will give
students a chance to develop their skills in analyzing the press, television, music and
the cinema, architecture and other aesthetic forms. Each student will develop a research
project on a particular genre, culture industry or cultural practice in order to explore
the relationship between modernism and specific ideologies, religious doctrines or social
practices. We will then investigate how aesthetic form is or is not related to the
development of modern lifestyles as well as religious and political movements and
doctrines. |
SOCI-334 The Sociology of
Postmodernism = The King's University College 2004-05, Fall 3(3-0-0)
This course will examine the seemingly
uneasy relationship between Christian worldviews and Postmodern culture. In addition to
outlining the principal contours of Postmodernism (e.g., the fragmentation of "grand
narratives", the relativity of truth claims, and the celebration of
"difference"), we will consider the various ways in which Christianity is able
to respond to the challenges posed by contemporary Western culture.
Cultural Studies and Postmodernism -
Syllabus - Spring 2000 - Dr. S.G. Mestrovic - College of Liberal Arts - Texas
A&M - http://clla.tamu.edu/lbarplan/l20400a.htm
In this course, we shall attempt to gain an overview of
the salient theories and issues in cultural studies as these pertain to sociology as well
as some of the other social sciences broadly defined. Postmodernism is arguably the most
influential intellectual movement in the social sciences today, and is frequently invoked
in studies of culture. We shall examine what this concept means, the controversies that
surround it, some of its critics as well as defenders. We shall also seek alternatives to
postmodernism or at least ways to move beyond some of its perceived limitations.
Additionally, under the rubric of postmodernism, we shall tackle media studies, morality,
and nationalism.
The course is structured so as to offer an eclectic blend of critical theory,
psychoanalysis, Chicago School ethnography, postmodern social theory, and the use of
sociological "classics," including Alexis Tocqueville as the first ethnographer
and Veblen as the forerunner of leisure studies. Thus, in attempting to grasp the meanings
of culture and postmodernism, we shall be tracing the development of the social sciences
from their modernist origins in the 19th century to the present.
REQUIRED BOOKS
We will cover many books in this course. You are expected to purchase and read in full the
books specified below. The other books in the course outline will be placed in the library
on reserve. You may refer to them for discussion, use them as resources for your final
paper, or otherwise use portions of them for this course, but you will not be required to
read and digest them entirely.
Pauline Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences
David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd
Jean Baudrillard, America
Stjepan Mestrovic, The Coming Fin de Siecle
Akbar Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam
COURSE OUTLINE
Weeks 1 and 2: THE ORIGINS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Why did the social sciences begin in Europe in the nineteenth century? How did they begin?
Is sociological theory fundamentally anti-cultural? What is culture? Who are the social
theorists of culture? Are the "founding fathers" of the social sciences
(Durkheim, Freud, Marx, Simmel, Freud, etc.) still relevant? Georg Simmel as one neglected
founder of cultural studies. Can postmodernism sustain cultural studies even though it
purports to study culture? What comes after postmodernism? Emile Durkheim's sociology
located in his cultural context: Charles Baudelaire and "the dandy," T.S.
Eliot's, "The Wasteland," the influences of Friedrich Nietzsche versus Arthur
Schopenhauer.
Assisgned Text: Mestrovic, The Coming Fin de Siecle
Supplementary Texts from Reserve:
Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Stjepan Mestrovic, Durkheim and Postmodern Culture
Keith Tester, The Life and Times of Postmodernity
Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Its Social Forms
Anthony Giddens, The New Rules of Sociological Method
Week 3 and 4: THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL CHARACTER
National character: Does it exist? What is American about America (Russian about Russia,
Norwegian about Norway, etc.) Collective identity to parallel the notion of individual
identity. The role of the media, education, and history. If there is a national character,
how does it affect relations among various cultures? If there is no national character,
what are the impediments to the Enlightenment ideal of a world society based solely on
individualism? Can social traditions be created synthetically?
Assigned Text: David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd
Supplementary Texts from Reserve:
Seymour Martin Lipset, The Continental Divide
Thomas Cushman, Notes From Underground: Russian Musical Counterculture and the Dilemmas of
Capitalist Modernity
Week 5: AMERICA AS A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EXPERIMENT
Is America the dawning of the "inauthentic universe" for the rest of the world
to follow, as the postmodernist, Jean Baudrillard, charges? Jean Baudrillard as tourist,
and the new sociology of tourism that involves "expeditions" into sites of
deviance. Contrast with Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Tocqueville's
ambivalence toward America as key to the future; the impact of industrialization,
urbanization, immigration:What remains of Tocqueville's America. What Tocqueville missed:
The poor and the misfits. What Tocqueville emphasized: Native and African Americans. Was
Tocqueville an optimist or a pessimist concerning America? And what about America's
leadership in the world? Against both Baudrillard and Tocqueville, is all this
Americacentrism misplaced?
Assigned Text: Jean Baudrillard, America
Supplementary Texts from Reserve:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Chris Rojek, Forget Baudrillard?
Week 6: THE METROPOLIS VERSUS THE COMMUNITY
Many in the social sciences today are discussing "communitarianism" as an
alternative to what is perceived to be the harsh, alienating, and competitive social world
unleashed by modernity. How is today's "communitarianism" different from 19th
century concerns with "community?" Is all community an unqualified good? Should
community be fostered, and how? Are there dark sides to community? How does postmodernism
affect our ideas of community? Is a community possible in the electronic/media/internet
age? Why or why not?
Assigned Text:
Akbar S. Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam
Supplementary Texts on Reserve:
Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life"
Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society
Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart
Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right
Amitai Etzioni, The Active Society
Week 7: DIFFERENTIATIONS WITHIN THE NATION-STATE: GENDER, ETHNICITY, RELIGION, SOCIAL
CLASS, POLITICAL STYLES AND PARTIES AND IDEOLOGIES--TOWARD THE BALKANIZATION OF THE WEST
Freedom to choose: The dilemmas of pluralism. What differences within America matter most:
ethnicity, class, region, religion, rural-urban, gender, age, race? What are the gains and
losses, pushes and pulls? Is the world moving towards the "fusion" model
envisioned by many modernists of a world community or cosmopolitan global village? Or is
it moving, instead, toward the "fusion" model envisioned by many critics of
modernity such as Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, even Baudrillard and the
postmodernists?
Assigned Reading (from Reserve):S. Mestrovic, The Balkanization of the West
Supplementary Readings from Reserve:
Daniel P. Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics
Douglas Massey, American Apartheid
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics
Week 8: WHAT COMES AFTER POSTMODERNISM?
The growing discontent with the concept of postmodernism. Is postmodernism just an
extension of modernity? Or is postmodernism a rebellion against modernity? Is it a viable
concept? Does it mask another, underlying phenomenon, and if so, what might it be called?
The role of emotions in the modernity project. Postmodernism as an overemphasis on the
world as script/text/cerebral image. Introducing the concept of postemotionalism.
Assigned Text: Pauline Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences
Supplementary Texts (from Reserve):
Mestrovic, Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War
Keith Tester, Media, Morality and Society
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity
Week 9: MEDIA AND CULTURE
Is the modern information medium just another aspect of culture, to be studied routinely
as culture, or is it something unique? Case study: The Persian Gulf TV war. Was the Gulf
War just a tv war? Was the Western media "objective," and what could that mean?
Ditto the media coverage of the current Balkan War. Are the populations in modern
democracies truly informed, or objects of propaganda, as warned by critical theorists?
Assigned Text (from Reserve): Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War
Supplementary Texts:
Jean Baudrillard, Essays on the current Balkan War from Liberation (to be photocopied and
distributed in class)
Thomas Cushman & Mestrovic, This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia
Week 10: LEISURE AND CULTURE
Veblen as the founder of leisure studies. Riesman on Veblen as two social critics.
Conspicuous consumption and leisure. Is tourism the paradigm for social policy and other
institutional approaches to reality? (The West as the "hotel" to which we
retreat after we "tour" poverty and crime in ghettos and developing countries).
What does leisure tell us about postmodernist societies?
Assigned Text (from reserve): Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape
Chris Rojek, Decentering Leisure
Umberto Eco, Travels Through Hyper-Reality
| |
|