Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

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

Graduate Social Theory Readings
Week of November 19, 2001: Week 13

• Online Readings:

  • applied sociology Which "Applied Sociology?" By S. M. Miller, who wrote with Alvin Gouldner. A teaching essay by itself.
  • Role Models And Role Distance: A Remembrance of Erving Goffman by Gary T. Marx. Here's a good example of the historical sense of sociology you should have by the time you graduate. Marx throws in names on the assumption that all sociologists will know and recognize those names. See how well you do. I'm putting up some Alvin Gouldner to help.
  • An Overly Simplistic and Wildly Inaccurate Genealogy of the Work of Michel Foucault Teaching essay up soon. Be sure to check out the "gaze."
  • Homi K. Bhabha: Post Colonialist Pay particular attention to the problems of obfuscation in writing and to "hybridization."
  • Instructions for Thesis Project
  • jeanne's November Novel This is the novel jeanne has undertaken to write in November to match your writing of your thesis project. I think the experience of doing a thesis project, at least one that you do for yourself, in a specifically limited time frame, is an important learning tool for all graduate students.

• Hardcopy Readings:
  Readings in Social Theory, ed. by James Farganis.
  • Chapter 16. The Carceral by Michel Foucault. Pp. 409 - 418.

    Note particularly on p. 408 Farganis' remark: "Foucault demonstrates how the human sciences have become techniques of power by shaping the views and behaviors of human subjects. Scientific knowledge, in this instanace the human sciences, is not a separate sphere of activity engaging the talents and interests of a rarified community of scholars. On the contrary the knowledge produced in these disciplines has had a profound impact on their views of themselves and others around concepts of normality and deviance. . . ."

• Concepts for Conceptual Linking:

  • "utilitarian worldliness" - p.111
  • "begging and religion" - p. 111
  • "labor as a calling" and "capitalism" - p.112

• Some Suggested Measures of Learning:

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

  1. Discuss one of the Topics of Discussion on Homi K. Bhabha.

  2. Discuss one of the Discussion Topics on Erving Goffman

  3. Discuss Foucault's "gaze."

     Consider the importance of power and surveillance in Foucault's thoughts. See An Overly Simplistic and Wildly Inaccurate Genealogy of the Work of Michel Foucault .

  4. Should applied sociology include sociological counseling? How would that be different from the present day orientation of psychological counseling?

     Consider Vance Peavy's approach in Thinking Out Loud On a More Abstract Level. Look also to his site for some answers: The SocioDynamic Counseling Website: A Constructuvust Perspective.