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CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 6, 2001
Latest update: November 18, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

Sociology of Law Readings
Week of November 19, 2001: Week 13

• Online Readings:

  • religion Divided We Fall: America's Two Civil Religions Excellent and relatively brief article by Robert Wuthnow
  • postcolonialism Homi K. Bhabha: Post Colonialist Note Particularly his definitiion of "hybridity."

  • applied sociology Which "Applied Sociology?" By S. M. Miller, who wrote with Alvin Gouldner. A teaching essay by itself.

• Hardcopy Readings:
  Constitutive Theory, ed. by Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic.
  • Read the text which corresponds to Agency and Structural Context and Interdependency

• Concepts for Conceptual Linking:

  • interdependence - See Agency and Structural Context
  • hybridization - See Homi K. Bhabha
  • conservative and liberal - See Left/Right Perspectives
  • applied sociology - See Which "Applied Sociology?"

• Some Suggested Measures of Learning:

  Comment on one of the following topics, or do something of your own choosing.

  1. Prepare the discussion topics on Divided We Fall: America's Two Civil Religions By Robert Wuthnow.

  2. Does Wuthnow suggest that religion in fact impacts on our law? How? or how not?

     Consider the unstated assumptions that are integral to our culture.

  3. Do you think we could add the metaphor of Society as the Intended Vehicle of a Chosen People to Rigney's metaphors of social theory?

     Remember that Rigney describes each or the metaphors he discerns as having creative analogies and dangerous pitfalls of misunderstanding when we fail to consider the underlying and unstated assumptions that go with these metaphors.

     Recall that a chosen people suggests "a God," for what would happen if a different God chose a different people? Also consider the possibility that the commandments say "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." But might it not be that we worship the same God under different names, and different myths? Only our strong certainty that we are "right" can assure us, and that "knowingness" leads to hubris.

  4. Does applied sociology affect the law?

     Consider the unstated assumptions on which laws are built to protect the property and position of those in a position to make the laws.