Sociology

In our last seminar I recieved some questions on the upcoming exams. I just wanted to go over some pointers:

1) I am sure a lot of you will be relieved to hear this! It is recommended that you concentrate on a minimum of four areas from the curriculum and not more than five. The exam comes in the format of essay questions and you will choose two questions from a list of eleven or so, by concentrating on five areas of the curriculum you would probably be better equipped to answer any question you choose in depth. On another note, the essay questions you chose as part of your previous assignments should have no bearing on the exam question you happen to choose in your exam. Continue reading ‘Questions on the upcoming exams’

Overproduction, the environment and the general law of capitalist accumulation

I recommend you start with Allan Schnaiberg’s treadmill of production theory (which ties in the production process within competitive capitalism with its impact on the environment). Then have a look at similar theoretical inputs by both Dunlap & Catton.

Then after that have a look at the more recent trends in environmental sociology, especially through discoures in which:

… notions such as modernity, postmodernity, risk society, and ecological modernization figure prominently (e.g., Mol and Spaargaren 1993; Spaargaren and Mol 1992). Equally significant has been the drift of sociologists of science, and their notions of the social construction of scientific knowledge, into the environmental sociology arena as interest has grown in researching the environmental sciences and the connections of environmental knowledge production to environmental politics and the environmental movement (Taylor and Buttel 1992; Wynne 1994; Yearley 1991).

Continue reading ‘Seminar Twenty One: Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism, Evironment and Crisis’

You can download the seminar’s presentation slide by clicking here …

To download the seminar’s handout click here …

To compliment the seminar’s slide, read Chapter 15 of ‘Sociology: Issues and Debates’ (Edited by Steve Taylor). The chapter is by Leslie Sklair and is titled ‘Globalization’. You can download the chapter by clicking here…

Further Reading

• For further reading I strongly recommend you take out ‘The Global transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate’ (Edited by David Held & Anthony McGrew).
• For an excellent online resource visit ‘The Globalization Website’ by clicking here …
• Also there is the excellent Fernand Braudel Center, which hosts articles by the Center at SUNY Binghamton for the study of large-scale, long-term change; the site offers papers by leading figures in world-system theory.

The seminar slides were based on Giddens’ ‘Sociology’ (Chapter 19). The slides also compliment Chapter 11 of ‘Sociology: Issues and debates’ (edited by Steve Taylor). The chapter is titled ‘Crime & Deviance’ and is written by David Downes.

Click here to download the presentation’s seminar slides, and click here to download the seminar’s handout.

I would also recommend you have a go through these extensivcnotes on the Sociology of Deviance and then to use it as a guide for your further readings.

http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/200/intrdev.html

And here are some books you may find useful for your further reading:

• Becker, H. 1997 Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance Simon & Schuster Ltd.
• Burke, R. 2005 An Introduction to Criminological Theory Willan Publishing
• Carrington, K., Hogg, R. 2002 Critical Criminology: Issues, Debates, Challenges Willan Publishing
• Cohen, S. 2002 Folk Devils and Moral Panics: Creation of Mods and Rockers Routledge.
• Downes, D., Rock, P. 2007 Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule-breaking Oxford University Press.
• Goode, E., Ben Yehuda, N. 1994 Moral Panics: Social Construction of Deviance WileyBlackwell.
• Kelly, D. 1996 Deviant Behavior: A Text-Reader in the Sociology of Deviance: St. Martin’s Press.
• Rubington, E., Weinberg,M. 1968 Deviance, the Interactionist Perspective: Text and Readings in the Sociology: Macmillan.
• Sumner, C. 1994 Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary Open University Press.

Intro

Let us look at the different meanings of power and then map out these meanings to the different theoretical approaches to power.

Three meanings of power:

1. Power as ‘capacity’ i.e. the possession of control or command over others. The conception of power here is that of capacity, meaning the capacity to get others to do what you want them to do.

2. Power as “legal ability, capacity or authority to act; especially delegated authority”. Here power is the ‘right’ that some people have to tell others what to do.

3. Power as the “ability to do or affect something or anything”. Power, in this sense, relates to human agency; that is, to one’s ability to ‘make a difference’ in the world.

Finally, it should be noted that these three meanings of power can overlap. Continue reading ‘Seminar Eighteen: Power and the new politics’