University of Cambridge

Faculty of Human, Social, and Political Science

HSPS Tripos Part IIA, Soc 2, for the academic year 2023-2024

Social Theory

Paper Contacts

Paper/course coordinator: Professor Patrick Baert (pjnb100@cam.ac.uk)

Lecturers: Professor Patrick Baert (pjnb100@cam.ac.uk)

Dr Filipe Carreira da Silva (fcs23@cam.ac.uk)
Dr Joe Davidson (jpld2@cam.ac.uk)
Dr Shannon Philip (sp2008@cam.ac.uk)
Dr Navid Yousefian (ny292@cam.ac.uk)

Outline of the Course

Aims and Objectives

• To provide students with a comprehensive introduction to the major traditions and key
contributions to contemporary social theory.

• To enable students to read the work of major authors in some depth.

• To develop analytical skills and intellectual understanding so that students can engage in an
analysis of theoretical debates in an informed and rigorous manner.

• To explain the relevance of contemporary social theory for substantive problems of social and
political analysis.

Course content

This paper introduces students to a range of well-defined topics, from the Frankfurt School to the
most recent work on risk, identity, difference, sexuality and feminist theory. Students should acquire
a firm grasp of key theoretical approaches enabling them to read the work of contemporary social
theorists in some depth. The period covered runs from 1920 to the present day, but the emphasis is
on recent (post-1960) developments. The traditions and orientations are situated in their social and
intellectual context, and the writings of key thinkers are examined textually in detail. The strengths
and limitations of different perspectives are discussed and, where appropriate, their relevance to
social research explored. Among the perspectives and authors covered are the following: pragmatism,
Mead and symbolic interactionism; Goffman; existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism;
Bourdieu; Foucault; theories of sexuality; Arendt; the Frankfurt School and critical theory;
Habermas; Bauman; the development of Marxist thought in the twentieth century; the cultural turn;
the post-human; feminist theory; decolonial, postcolonial and subaltern studies.

1
Modes of teaching and assessment
The paper is taught by lectures, supervisions and revision classes around themes and texts. Lectures
will provide an overview of issues and debates and detailed discussions of key texts. Supervision is
essential for this paper and should be arranged in consultation with a Director of Studies.
Supervisions will be directly concerned with the general concepts, texts and theories that have been
covered in the lectures. It is essential for students to have 6 supervisions (plus revision sessions) and
to write a minimum of four essays over the course of the year.
There are classes and lectures in the Easter term, both for revision, and to make connections between
the different components of the paper. The exam paper is undivided and covers the lecture
programme. Students will be required to pick three questions in the exam.

Supervision
Supervisions will be organised by the course organiser in the first lecture.

How this Paper/Course Relates to Others?

This paper builds further on the first-year sociology paper (Soc1) as it elaborates on the contemporary
relevance of the sociological classics, in particular Marx, Du Bois, Weber and Durkheim. For
example, this paper discusses Marx’s and Weber’s influence on Sartre and the Frankfurt School, Du
Bois’s influence on contemporary ‘Black social theory’, or Durkheim’s impact on structuralist
thought. It also discusses recent reappropriations of Marx and Durkheim in the humanities and social
sciences. The paper is particularly useful for understanding some of the theoretical debates in the
other sociology papers. It provides an ideal basis for the advanced social theory paper (Soc6). This
paper also goes well with history of political theory papers.

2
Outline of Lectures

Michaelmas 2023

Lectures

Lecture 1. Introduction. American pragmatism, G.H. Mead and symbolic interactionism (PB)
Lecture 2. Erving Goffman and the sociology of everyday life (PB)
Lecture 3. Existentialism and existentialist feminism: Sartre, de Beauvoir (PB)
Lecture 4. Existentialism and anti-colonial movements: Fanon (JD)
Lecture 5. Francophone postcolonialism: Achille Mbembe; Françoise Vergès (JD)
Lecture 6. Practice theory: Pierre Bourdieu (PB)
Lecture 7 : Homo economicus and rational choice theory (PB)
Lecture 8. Michel Foucault: Archaeology, Genealogy, Ethics (PB)
Lecture 9. Hannah Arendt and the humanist critique of modernity (PB)
Lecture 10. The Frankfurt School, the critique of Enlightenment, and critical theory (PB)
Lecture 11-12. Gender and sexuality (SP)

Readings

1. Introduction. American pragmatism, G.H. Mead and symbolic interactionism

*Baert, P. and F.C. Silva 2010. Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Cambridge:
Polity.
*Benzecry, C., M. Krause and I. Reed (eds.) 2017. Social Theory Now. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Jones, P. and L. Bradbury. 2017. Introducing Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity. (3rd edition)
Stones, R. (ed.) 2017. Key Sociological Thinkers, 3rd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Turner, B.S. (ed.) 2016. The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell. (new edition)
Blumer, H. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism; Perspectives and Method. New York: Prentice Hall.
Joas, H. 1995. G.H. Mead. Cambridge: Polity.
*Mead, G.H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
*Mead, G.H. 2011. Mead. A Reader. London/New York: Routledge. (Especially Chapters 1-6)
Rock, P. 1979. The Making of Symbolic Interactionism. London: MacMillan.
Silva, F.C. 2007. G.H. Mead; A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity.
Silva, F.C. 2008. Mead and Modernity; Science, Selfhood, and Democratic Politics. Lanham, Md:
Lexington Books. (Especially Chapters 1, 9-12)

Essay questions:

What’s distinctive about G.H. Mead’s account of the self?

For G.H. Mead, in what sense is the self a social self?

2. Erving Goffman and the sociology of everyday life

Burns, T. 1992. Erving Goffman. London: Routledge.

Giddens, A. 1987. Social Theory and Modern Sociology. Cambridge: Polity. (Especially Chapter 5)
*Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
*Goffman, E. 1961. Asylums. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

3
*Goffman, E. 1964. Stigma. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Goffman, E. 1979. Gender Advertisements. Boston, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Goffman, E. 1972. Encounters; Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. London: Penguin.
Goffman, E. 1983. ‘The Interaction Order’. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1-17.
*Manning, P. 1992. Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology. Cambridge: Polity.
Shulman, D. 2016. The Presentation of Self in Contemporary Social Life. London: Sage.
Jenkins, R. 2008. ‘Erving Goffman: A Major Theorist of Power?’ Journal of Power 1 (2): 157–68.
Tyler, I., and T. Slater. 2018. ‘Rethinking the Sociology of Stigma’. The Sociological Review 66
(4): 721–43.

Essay questions:

Critically assess Goffman’s views on the role of stigma in modern society.

How can Goffman’s analysis be used to understand power dynamics in society?

3. Existentialism and existentialist feminism: Sartre, de Beauvoir

*Sartre, J-P. [1948] 1976. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken.
Sartre, J-P. 1964-65. Black Orpheus. The Massachusetts Review, 6 (1), pp. 13-52.
*Priest, S. (ed.) 2001. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings. London: Routledge (collection of key
writings, see especially chapters 1, 9, 10, 12 and 16).
*de Beauvoir, S. [1949] 1997. The Second Sex. London: Vintage Books (especially ‘Introduction’
in Volume I, ‘Childhood’, ‘Woman’s Situation and Character’ and ‘The Independent
Woman’ in Volume II) – Note: the recent translation by Constance Borde and Sheila
Malovany-Chevallier is superior to the older translation by H. M. Parshley.
de Beauvoir, S. 2004. Philosophical Writings. Urbana: University of Illinois Press (especially’
Existentialism and Popular Wisdom’ and ‘What is Existentialism?’).
Cox, G. 2008. The Sartre Dictionary. London: Continuum (good reference book for key terms).
Tidd, U. 2003. Simone de Beauvoir. London: Routledge (especially 1, 3 and 4).
Crowell, S. (ed). 2012. The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (especially chapters 11, 12, and 16).
*Reynolds, J. 2014. Understanding Existentialism. London: Routledge (especially chapters 1, 3, 4,
and 6) – good, clear introduction.
Churchill, S. and J. Reynolds. (eds.) 2014. Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts. London: Routledge
(especially 16 and 17).
Marcuse, H. 1948. Existentialism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 8, 309-36.
Flynn, T. R. 1984. Sartre and Marxist Existentialism: The Test Case of Collective Responsibility.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gordon, L. R. 1995. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.
McBride, W. (ed.). 1994. Existentialist Politics and Political Theory. New York: Garland
(especially 1, 2 and 4).
*Judaken, J. (ed.). 1997. Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism.
New York: SUNY Press (Especially chapters 1, 6, 7 and 10).
Baert, P. 2015. The Existentialist Moment; The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Di-Capua, Y. 2018. No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press (especially Introduction and chapter 2).
Fallaize, E. 1998. Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge (especially the
section ‘Reading The Second Sex’).

4
Spelman, E. V. 1990. Simone de Beauvoir and Women: Just Who Does She Think “We” Is? In
Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, pp.
57-79.
Moi, T. 1994. Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. Oxford: Blackwell
(especially chapters 6 and 7).
Simons, M. 2001. Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of
Existentialism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield (especially chapters 2 and 11).
Kruks, S. 2005. Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Privilege. Hypatia, 20 (1), 178-205.
*Hengehold, L. and N. Bauer (eds). 2017. A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir. Oxford: Wiley
(especially chapters 4, 21, and 26).
Stone, A. 2018. Hegel and Twentieth-Century French Philosophy. In The Oxford Handbook of
Hegel, ed. D. Moyar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Essay questions:

What is the relationship between existentialism and collective political action?

How convincing is Sartre’s account of racism and antiracism?
“De Beauvoir’s feminism is more important than her existentialism”. Critically discuss with
reference to The Second Sex.

4. Existentialism and anti-colonial movements: Fanon

*Fanon, F. [1952] 2017. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto.

*Fanon, F. [1961] 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Grove.
Fanon, F. [1959] 1965. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove.
Gibson, N. 2003. Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination. Cambridge: Polity.
*Nayar, P. K. 2012. Frantz Fanon. London: Routledge.
Gordon, L. R. 2015. What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought. New
York: Fordham University Press.
*Arnall, G. 2020. Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change. New York:
Columbia University Press (especially the Introduction).
Alessandrini, A. C. (ed.). 1999. Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge
(especially chapters 3, 5 and 10).
Gordon, L. R., T. D. Sharpley-Whiting, and R. T. White. (eds) 1996. Fanon: A Critical Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell (especially chapters 6, 10, 11)
Mercer, K. 1996. Decolonization and Disappointment: Reading Fanon’s Sexual Politics. In The
Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read. Seattle: Bay
Press, pp. 114-131.
Bhabha, H. K. 1994. Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative. In The
Location of Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 40-65.
Gates, H. L. 1991. Critical Fanonism. Critical Inquiry, 17 (3), 457-470.
Robinson, C. 1993. The Appropriation of Frantz Fanon. Race & Class, 35 (1), 79-91.
Haddour, A. 2018. Frantz Fanon, Postcolonialism and the Ethics of Difference. Manchester:
Manchester University Press (especially chapter 1 and 2).
López, A. J. 2013. Occupying Reality: Fanon reading Hegel. South Atlantic Quarterly, 112 (1), 71-
78.
Mbembe, A. 2012. Metamorphic Thought: The Works of Frantz Fanon. African Studies, 71 (1), 19-
28.
Wynter, S. 2001. Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, Identity, the Puzzle of Conscious.
Experience, and What it is Like to Be “Black”. In National Identities and Sociopolitical

5
 Changes in Latin America, ed. A. Gomez-Moriana and M. Duran-Cogan. London:
Routledge, pp. 30-66.
Moten, F. 2008. The Case of Blackness. Criticism, 50 (2), 177-218.
Olaloku-Teriba, A. 2018. Afro-Pessimism and the (un)logic of anti-Blackness. Historical
Materialism, 26 (2), 96-122.

Essay questions:

“Racism makes recognition impossible”. Discuss with reference to Fanon’s work.

Critically analyse Fanon’s conception of Blackness.

5. Francophone postcolonialism: Achille Mbembe; Françoise Vergès

Mbembe, Achille. 1992. Provisional Notes on the Postcolony. Africa: Journal of the International
African Institute, 62 (1): 3–37.
*Mbembe, A. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15 (1): 11-40.
Mbembe, A. 2021. Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press (especially Chapter 4).
Vergès F. 2010. ‘There Are No Blacks in France’: Fanonian Discourse, ‘the Dark Night of Slavery’
and the French Civilizing Mission Reconsidered. Theory, Culture & Society, 27 (7-8), 91-
111.
Vergès, F. 2019. Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender. e-flux, 100, 1-13.
*Vergès, F. 2020. The Wombs of Women: Race, Capital, Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press (especially Introduction, Chapter 3, and Conclusion).
Bobby Banerjee S. 2008. Necrocapitalism. Organization Studies, 12,1541-1563.
Morgensen, S. L. 2011. The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now. Settler
Colonial Studies, 1, 52-76.
McIntyre, M. and Nast, H. J. 2011. Bio(necro)polis: Marx, Surplus Populations, and the Spatial
Dialectics of Reproduction and “Race”. Antipode, 43, 1465-1488.
*Sandset, T. 2021. The necropolitics of COVID-19: Race, class and slow death in an ongoing
pandemic. Global Public Health, 16, 1411-1423.
*Snorton, C. Riley, and Haritaworn, J. 2013. Trans Necropolitics: A Transnational Reflection on
Violence, Death, and the Trans of Color Afterlife. In Transgender Studies Reader 2, ed. S.
Stryker and A. Z. Aizura. New York: Routledge, pp. 66-76.
Weate, J. 2003. Postcolonial theory on the brink: A critique of Achille Mbembe’s On the
Postcolony. African Identities, 1 (1), 1-18.
Weheliye, A. G. 2014. Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist
Theories of the Human. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (especially Chapter 4).
Young, R. J. C. 2015. Empire, Colony, Postcolony. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (especially Chapter
11).

Essay questions:
How far is coloniality dependent on the regulation of life and death?
Is necropolitics a useful concept for understanding contemporary inequalities?

6. Practice theory: Pierre Bourdieu

*Bourdieu, P. and L. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity

Press.

6
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge
(especially Part II).
Bourdieu, P. [1972] 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
*Bourdieu, P. 1977. Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In Power and Ideology in
Education, ed. J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 487-511.
Harker, R., Mahar, C. and C. Wilkes (Eds.) 1990. An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu.
London: MacMillan. (Especially Introduction, Chapters 1-2)
*Swartz, David. 1992. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Grenfell, M. J. (ed.) 2014. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, R. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge.
Calhoun, C., LiPuma, E. and M. Postone (Eds.) 1993. Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
*Sallaz, J. J. (ed.) 2018. The Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu. Oxford: Oxford University
Press (especially chapters 16, 18, and 29).
Wacquant, L., and A. Akçaoğlu. 2017. Practice and Symbolic Power in Bourdieu: The View from
Berkeley. Journal of Classical Sociology 17 (1): 55–69.
Lamont, M. and A. Lareau. 1988. Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in Recent
Theoretical Developments. Sociological Theory 6 (2): 153–68.
Krais, B. 2006. Gender, Sociological Theory and Bourdieu’s Sociology of Practice. Theory,
Culture and Society, 23 (6), 119-134.
Lovell, T. 2000. Thinking Feminism With and Against Bourdieu. Feminist Theory, 1 (1), 11-32.
Go J. 2013. Decolonizing Bourdieu: Colonial and Postcolonial theory in Pierre Bourdieu’s Early
Work. Sociological Theory, 31 (1), 49-74.
White, A. I. R. 2022. Who Can lead the Revolution? Re-thinking Anticolonial Revolutionary
Consciousness through Frantz Fanon and Pierre Bourdieu. Theory & Society, 51, 457-485.
Singh A. 2022. Exploring the Racial Habitus through John’s Story: On Race, Class and Adaptation.
The Sociological Review, 70 (1), 140-158.
Willis, P. 1983. Cultural Production and Theories of Reproduction. In Race, Class and Education,
ed. L. Barton and S. Walker. London: Taylor & Francis, pp. 107-138.
Rancière, J. [1983] 2004. The Sociologist King. In The Philosopher and His Poor. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, pp. 165-202.
Pelletier, C. 2009. Emancipation, Equality and Education: Rancière’s Critique of Bourdieu and the
Question of Performativity. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30 (2),
137-150
Lane, J. F. 2006. Bourdieu’s Politics: Problems and Possibilities. London: Routledge.
Burawoy, M. 2019. Symbolic Violence: Conversations with Bourdieu. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Fowler, B. 2020. Pierre Bourdieu on Social Transformation, with Particular Reference to Political
and Symbolic Revolutions. Theory & Society, 49, 439-463.
Desan, M. H. 2013. Bourdieu, Marx, and Capital. Sociological Theory, 31 (4), 318-342.

Essay questions:

How does Bourdieu explain the role of culture in the reproduction of inequality? Do you agree?
Is Bourdieu’s social theory elitist?

7. Homo economicus and rational choice theory

7
Coleman, J. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Coleman, J. & Fararo, T. (ed.) 1992. Rational Choice Theory; Advocacy and Critique. London:
Sage
Elster, J. 1979. Ulysses and the Sirens; Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Cambridge: CUP.
Elster, J. 1983. Sour Grapes; Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. Cambridge: CUP.
Elster, J. (ed.) 1986. Rational Choice. New York: New York University Press.
Elster, J. 2007. Explaining Social Behaviour; More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Ermakoff, I. 2017. On the frontiers of rational choice. In: Social Theory Now, eds. C. Benzecry,
M. Krause, I. Reed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 162-200.
Friedman, J. (ed.) 1996. The Rational Choice Controversy; Economic Models of Politics
Considered. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Green, D. and Shapiro, I. 1994. Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Herfeld, C. and J. Marx. 2023. Rational choice explanations in political science. In: The Oxford
Hanbook of Philosophy of Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 54-85.
*Hedström. P. 2005. Dissecting the Social; On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wittek, R., T.Snijders, and V.Nee (eds.) 2020. The Handbook of Rational Choice Social Research.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Essay questions:

What type of rational choice theory is most effective for the social sciences?
What are the strengths and limitations of game theory for analyzing social and political
phenomena?

8. Michel Foucault: Surveillance, sexuality, freedom

Primary texts
*Foucault, M. [1975] 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin
(especially Part I, Chapter 1: The body of the condemned and Part III).
*Foucault, M. [1976] 1998. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. London: Penguin (especially Part I,
Part II, Part IV: Chapter 2, Method, and Part V).
*Rabinow, P. (ed.) 1997. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984: Volume One: Ethics,
Subjectivity and Truth. London: Penguin (especially ‘Technologies of the Self’, ‘On the
Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress’, and ‘The Ethics of the Concern
for Self as a Practice of Freedom’).
Rabinow, P. (ed.) 1985. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon (especially ‘What Is
Enlightenment?’, ‘Truth and Power’, and ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’).
Dreyfus, H. and P. Rabinow, 1982. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
*Mills, S. 2003. Michel Foucault. London: Routledge.
McNay, L. 2005. Foucault: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Taylor, D. (ed.) 2010. Michel Foucault: Key Concepts. New York: Routledge. (Especially Chapters
1-4, 9-12).
May, T. 2014. The Philosophy of Foucault. London: Routledge.
Lawlor, L. and J. Nale. 2015. The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

8
Taylor, C. 2017. The Routledge Guidebook to Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. London:
Routledge.
Allen, A. 2010. The Entanglement of Power and Validity: Foucault and Critical Theory. In
Foucault and Philosophy, ed. T. O’Leary and C. Falzon. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 78-98.
*Davis, A. Y. 2006. Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition. In A Companion to African-
American Philosophy, eds T.L. Lott and J.P. Pittman. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 360-368.
Deleuze, G. 1992. Postscript on societies of control. October, 59, 3-7.
*Downing, L. (ed.) 2018. After Foucault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – overviews of
Foucault’s relationship with queerness, race and gender (especially chapters 6, 7 and 10).
Falzon, C., O’Leary, T. and Sawicki, J. (ed.) 2013. A Companion to Foucault. Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell (especially Part IV).
Fraser, N. 1985. ‘Michel Foucault: A “Young Conservative”?’ Ethics 96 (1): 165–84.
Hoy, D. 1986. (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader. London: Blackwell.
Lorenzini, D., and M. Tazzioli. 2018. Confessional Subjects and Conducts of Non-Truth: Foucault,
Fanon, and the Making of the Subject. Theory, Culture & Society, 35 (1), 71-90.
McNay, L. 2007. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self. Cambridge: Polity.
Moss, J. 1998. The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell (especially
chapters 1, 2, 6, and 7).
Oksala, J. 2005. Foucault on Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Owen, D. (ed.) 2014. Michel Foucault. London: Routledge (especially chapters 1 and 2).
Stoler, A. L. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the
Colonial Order of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wood, D.M. 2007. Beyond the Panopticon? Foucault and Surveillance Studies. In Space,
Knowledge and Power, ed. J.W. Crampton and S. Elden. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 245-264.

Essay questions:

What can the genealogy of sexuality or the prison tell us about modern power relations?
Does Foucault’s ethics of the self successfully reconcile power and freedom?

9. Hannah Arendt and the humanist critique of modernity

Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, H. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt.
Arendt, H. 1961. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Faber &
Faber.
*Baehr, P. (ed.) 2000. The Portable Hannah Arendt. London: Penguin (especially Parts III and V).
*Baehr, P. and P. Walsh. eds. 2018. The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt. London: Anthem
Press. (Especially Introduction, Chapters 1-4)
Bernstein, R. 2018. Why Read Hannah Arendt Now? Cambridge: Polity.
Bowring, F. 2011. Hannah Arendt. A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press. (Especially
Chapters 1-2, 5)
Villa, D. ed. 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. (Especially Chapters 1, 3-4).
Baehr, P. 2002. Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Critique of
Sociology. American Sociological Review, 67 (6), 804-831.
Benhabib, S. (ed.) 2010. Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press (especially chapters by Bernstein, Neiman, and Kateb).
*Benhabib, S. 1990. Hannah Arendt and the Redemptive Power of Narrative. Social Research, 57
(1): 167-196.

9
Benhabib, S. 2000. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Latham: Rowman & Littlefield
(especially chapter 3).
Birmingham, P. 2003. Holes of Oblivion: The Banality of Radical Evil. Hypatia, 18 (1): 80-103.
Castoriadis, C. 1983. The Destinies of Totalitarianism. Salmagundi, 60, 107-122.
Grosse, P. 2006. From Colonialism to National Socialism to Postcolonialism: Hannah Arendt’s
Origins of Totalitarianism. Postcolonial Studies 9 (1): 35–52.
“Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism: Fifty Years Later”, special issue of Social
Research, 2002, 69, 2 (especially articles by Lefort, Taminiaux, and Benhabib).
King, R. H. (ed.) 2007. Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Nation, Race, and
Genocide. New York: Berghahn (especially chapters by Gines, Bernasconi, and Shorten).
Kristeva, J. 2001. Hannah Arendt. New York: Columbia University Press.
Losurdo, D. 2004. Towards a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism. Historical Materialism,
12 (2): 25-55.
*Rothberg, M. 2009. At the Limits of Eurocentrism: Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of
Totalitarianism. In Multidirectional Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 33-
65.
Vázquez, R. 2006. Thinking the Event with Hannah Arendt. European Journal of Social Theory, 9
(1), 43-57.
Villa, D. R. 1999. Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Stanford:
Stanford University Press (especially chapters 1 and 8).

Essay questions:

What is valuable about Hannah Arendt’s approach to totalitarianism?

How useful if the idea of the ‘banality of evil’?

10. The Frankfurt School, critique of Enlightenment and the notion of critical theory

Horkheimer, M. [1947] 2005. The Eclipse of Reason. London: Continuum.

*Horkheimer, M. and T. Adorno. [1944] 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical
Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
*Horkheimer, M. 1972. Traditional and Critical Theory. In Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New
York: Continuum, pp. 188-243.
O’Connor, B. (ed.) 2000. The Adorno Reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (especially chapters 3, 8
and 11).
Geuss, R. 1981. The Idea of a Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(Especially Introduction, chapter 3)
Held, D. 1990. Introduction to Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press (especially chapters 6, 7
and 8).
*O’Connor, B. 2012. Adorno. London: Routledge (especially chapter 2).
Rush, F, 2003. Conceptual Foundations of Early Critical Theory. In The Cambridge Companion to
Critical Theory, ed. Fred Rush. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 6-39.
*Wilson, R. 2007. Theodor Adorno. London: Routledge, especially chapter 1.
*Allen, A. 2014. Reason, Power and History: Re-reading the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Thesis
Eleven 120 (1): 10-25.
Bhambra, G. K. 2021. Decolonizing Critical Theory?: Epistemological Justice, Progress,
Reparations. Critical Times, 4 (1), 73-89.
Brunkhorst, H. 2000. Enlightenment of Rationality: Remarks on Horkheimer and Adorno's
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Constellations, 7, 133-140.

10
Dubiel, Helmut. 1985. Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, especially Part I.
*Habermas, Jürgen. 1982. The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-Reading Dialectic of
Enlightenment. New German Critique 26: 13-30.
Heberle, R. (ed.) 2006. Feminist Interpretations of Theodor Adorno. University Park: Penn State
University Press, especially chapters 3, 4 and 7.
Rocco, C. 1994. Between Modernity and Postmodernity: Reading Dialectic of Enlightenment
against the Grain. Political Theory, 22 (1), 71-97.
Rose, G. 1978. The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno.
London: Macmillan.
Stone A. 2006. Adorno and the Disenchantment of Nature. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 32 (2),
231-25.
Vázquez-Arroyo, A. Y. 2008. Universal History Disavowed: On Critical Theory and
Postcolonialism. Postcolonial Studies, 11 (4), 451-473.

Essay questions:

Is the Frankfurt School’s account of enlightenment too pessimistic?

“The purpose of critical theory is emancipation”. Assess this claim with reference to the first
generation of the Frankfurt School.

11-12. Gender and sexuality

*Butler, J, 1990, Gender Trouble, Routledge (Section 1: Subjects of Sex, Gender and Desire)
*Lugones, M. 2007. ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System’. Hypatia 22 (1):
186–219.
Davis, Angela, Chapter 13 of Women, Race and Class (1981), available here:
https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/davis-angela/housework.htm
Ahmed, S. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Allen, Paula Gunn. 1986/1992. The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian
traditions. Boston: Beacon Press.
Butler, J. 2011. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Collins, P.H. 2004. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New
York, NY: Routledge.
Connell, R.W., 1995. Masculinities. Routledge.
Glenn, E.N. 2015. ‘Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S.
Race and Gender Formation’. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1 (1): 52–72.
Halberstam, J. J. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New
York: NYU Press. https://nyupress.org/9780814735855/in-a-queer-time-and-place.
Kong, T.S.K. 2016. ‘The Sexual in Chinese Sociology: Homosexuality Studies in Contemporary
China’. The Sociological Review 64 (3): 495–514.
Lugones, María. 2010. ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’. Hypatia 25 (4): 742–59.
McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. New
York: Routledge.
McRobbie, A., 2009. The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. Sage.
Mohanty, C.T. 1988. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’
Feminist Review Autumn 30: 61-88

11
Noble, S.U. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press.
(Especially Chapter 2).
Oyewùmí, Oyéronké. 1997. The invention of women: Making an African sense of Western gender
discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Philip, S., 2022. Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and
Violence in the Postcolony. Cambridge University Press.

Essay questions:

Critically assess the relationship between gender and sexuality.

To what extent are contemporary conceptions of sexuality and gender rooted in European
modernity?
To what extent are gender and sexuality technologies of control?

12
Lent 2024

Development of Social Theory (II)

Lectures

Modernity and its critics: The German tradition of critical theory

Lecture 1-2. Habermas and critical theory (FCS)
Lecture 3. Critical theory today: Honneth and Fraser (FCS)

Modernity, postmodernity and the posthuman

Lecture 4. The postmodern turn: Modernity and postmodernity (FCS)
Lecture 5-6. The cultural turn: Rediscovering Marx and Durkheim (FCS)
Lecture 7-8. The ontological turn: New materialisms (FCS)

Provincializing modernity: A view from the margins

Lecture 9-10. Pragmatism, ‘Black social theory’ and the sociology of knowledge (NY)
Lecture 11-12. Postcolonial and decolonial theory: Sociology, Eurocentricism, and the imperial
episteme, Southern theory (NY)

Readings

1-2. Habermas and critical theory

*Habermas, J. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press. (originally: 1962)
Habermas, J. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press. (originally: 1973)
*Habermas, J. 1979. ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’, in Communication and the Evolution of
Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1-68. (originally: 1976)
*Habermas, J. 1990. ‘Discourse Ethics’, in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 43-115. (originally: 1983)
*Habermas, J. 1987. “The Concept of the Lifeworld and the Hermeneutic Idealism of Interpretive
Sociology”, in The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A
Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambridge: Polity Press, 119-152. (originally: 1981)
*Habermas, J. 1987. ‘The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld’, in The Theory of Communicative
Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 153-198. (originally: 1981)
*Habermas, J. 1987. ‘Marx and the Thesis of Internal Colonization’, in The Theory of
Communicative Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist
Reason. Cambridge: Polity Press, 332-373. (originally: 1981)
*Habermas, J. 1996. ‘Modernity: An Unfinished Project’, in S. Benhabib & M. Passerin
D’Entrèves (eds.), Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity
Press, 38-58. (originally: 1981)
Habermas, J. 1988. ‘Law and Morality’, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, VIII. Salt Lake
City, pp. 217-299.
*Habermas, J. 1996. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: Polity Press. (originally: 1992)
Habermas, J. 1994. ‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’, Constellations, 1(1): 1-10.
Habermas, J. 2008. Between Naturalism and Religion. Cambridge: Polity Press. (originally: 2006)
Calhoun, C. ed. 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

13
McCarthy, T. 1978. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
*McCarthy, T. 1991. ‘Practical Discourse: On the Relation of Morality to Politics’, in Ideals and
Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 181-199.
*Outhwaite, W. 2009. Habermas: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Thompson J. and D. Held (eds), 1982. Habermas: Critical Debates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(Especially Chapters 6, 10, 12)

Essay questions:
What are the main shortcomings of Habermas’ notion of the public sphere?
Is deliberative democracy effective in countering political disaffection?

3. Critical theory today: Honneth and Fraser

*Habermas, J. 1987. ‘The Tasks of a Critical Theory of Society’, The Theory of Communicative
Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 374-404. (originally: 1981)
Habermas, J. 1998. ‘The Normative Content of Modernity’, in The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 336-367. (originally: 1985)
Honneth, A. 1991. The Critique of Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Especially Part II ‘The
Rediscovery of the Social: Foucault and Habermas’) (originally: 1985)
*Honneth, A. 2005. The Struggle for Recognition. Cambridge: Polity Press. (Especially Chapters 4-
9) (originally: 1992)
Honneth, A. 2007. Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity
Press. (originally: 2000)
*Fraser, N. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social
Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Especially Chapters 6-8)
*Fraser, N. and A. Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical
Exchange, London: Verso.
Fraser, N. 2007. ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public
Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24(4): 7-30.

Essay questions:
What, if any, are the tasks of a critical theory of society today?
Can redistributive politics be reconciled with the politics of recognition?

4. The postmodern turn: Modernity and postmodernity

Rorty, R. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
(Especially Chapters 7-8)
*Lyotard, J.-F. 2004. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
(originally: 1979)
Harvey, D. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
*Bauman, Z. 1993. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
*Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.
*Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. 2007. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.
*Beck. U. 1992. Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE. (originally: 1986)

14
Beck, U. 1999. World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity.
Smith, D. 1999. Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connor, S. 1989. Postmodernist Culture. London: Blackwell.
Best, S. and D. Kellner. 1991. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: The
Guilford Press.
Callinicos, A. 1990. Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Essay questions:

Is Lyotard’s incredulity toward metanarratives justified?

Critically evaluate Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity.

5-6. The Cultural Turn: Rediscovering Marx and Durkheim

Merton, R.K. 1967. ‘On the ‘History’ and ‘Systematics’ of Sociological Theory’, in On Theoretical
Sociology. New York: Free Press, 1–37.
Levine, D. 1995. Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press. (Especially Chapters 1, 13, Epilogue)
*Silva, F.C. and M.B. Vieira. 2019. ‘Introduction’, in The Politics of the Book. A Study on the
Materiality of Ideas. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1-16. (see also
Chapters 1, 3)
*Gramsci, A. 2005. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
(Especially Part I, Chapter 1; Part II, Chapter 2) (originally: 1971)
*Said, E. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin. (Especially Chapter 1, Afterword) (originally:
1978)
Anderson, P. 1976. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: New Left Books.
*Hall, S. 1994. ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’, in Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A
Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 227-237.
*Spivak, G. 1988. ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture.
Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 271-313.
Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Especially Introduction, Chapters 1, 4-5)
Durham, M. and D. Kellner. (eds.) 2006. Media and Cultural Studies. Keywords. 2nd edition.
London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kellner, D. 2005. ‘Western Marxism’, in Modern Social Theory: An Introduction, edited by Austin
Harrington. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 154-174.
Go, J. 2018. “Postcolonial Thought as Social Theory”, in Social Theory Now, eds. C. Benzecry, M.
Krause, I. Reed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 130-161.
*Durkheim, E. 1995. Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by K. Fields. New York: The
Free Press. (originally: 1912) (Especially ‘Translator’s Introduction’; Book III, Chapter 5,
section IV, Conclusion)
Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process. New York: Aladine De Gruyter.
Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Clifford, J. and G. Marcus. (eds.) 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
*Alexander, J.C. 2003. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
*Alexander, J.C. and P. Smith (eds.). 2005. The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. (Especially Introduction, Chapter 6)
Alexander, J.C. 2006. The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Especially Chapter 4).

15
Reed, I.A. 2018. “On the Very Idea of Cultural Sociology”, in Social Theory Now, eds. C.
Benzecry, M. Krause, I. Reed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 18-41.
Alexander, J.C. 2012. Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life. London: Palgrave.
Magnani, R. and Watt, D. 2018. ‘Toward a Queer Philology’, Postmedieval, 9(3): 252–268.

Essay questions:

Why, according to Spivak, are western efforts to speak for the other bound to fail? Do you agree?
In which respects, if any, is cultural sociology superior to the sociology of culture?

7-8. The ontological turn: New materialisms

*Appadurai, A. (ed.). 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Especially Chapters 1-2)
*Sullivan, L. 1986. ‘Sound and senses: Toward a Hermeneutics of Performance’, History of
Religions 26: 1-33.
*Miller, D. (ed.), 2005. Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Miller, D. 2009. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hodder. I. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things.
London: Wiley-Blackwell. (Especially Chapters 1, 5, 8, 10)
*Boivin, N. 2008. Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Impact of Things on Human Thought.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bennett, J. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
*Haraway, D. 1994. ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in
the 1980s’, in The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory. Edited by S.
Seidman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 82-116. (originally: 1984)
*Hayles, K. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Mol, A. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press. (Especially Chapter 6)
*Barad, K. 2003. ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes
to Matter’, Signs 28: 801-831.
*Braidotti, R. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. (Especially Chapters 1-3)
Zerilli, L. 2005. Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
(Especially Introduction, Chapters 1, 4)
Haraway, D. 2016. ‘Playing string figures with companion species’, in Staying with the Trouble.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 9-29.
Ahmed, S. 2010. ‘Orientations Matter’, in D. Coole, S. Frost (eds.) New Materialisms: Ontology,
Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 237-257. (See also
Introduction)
Roden, D. 2015. Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. London: Routledge.
(Especially Chapter 1).

Essay questions:

Do things have agency?

‘By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.’ (HARAWAY) Discuss.

16
9-10: Pragmatism, ‘Black social theory’ and the sociology of knowledge

*Bhambra, G.K. 2014. ‘A sociological dilemma: race, segregation and US sociology’. Current
Sociology, 62(4), 472–492.
*Collins, P.H. 1998. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press. (Especially Introduction, Chapter 2).
*Du Bois, W.E.B. 1898. ‘The Study of the Negro Problems’. The Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science 11: 1–23.
Collins, P.H. 2019. Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist
critique of antidiscrimination doctrine (pp. 139–168). In University of Chicago legal forum.
Crenshaw, K. (2014). Martin luther king encounters Post-racialism. Kalfou, 1(1).
Glen Sean Couthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. The
University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Introduction; Ch 1; 131-133; 139-149; Conclusion.
Hooks, B. (1982). Ain't I a woman: Black women and feminism. Introduction + Ch 1 & 3
Rose, Tricia. “Public Tales Wag the Dog: Telling Stories about Structural Racism in the Post-Civil
Rights Era.” Du Bois Review 10.2 (2013): 447-469. (23 pp.)
Christian, B. 1987. ‘The Race for Theory’. Cultural Critique, (6), 51–63.
Collins, P.H. 1986. ‘Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black
Feminist Thought’. Social Problems, 33(6), 14–32.
Collins, P.H. 2011. ‘Piecing Together a Genealogical Puzzle: Intersectionality and American
Pragmatism’. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 3: 88–112.
Steve Biko, I write what I like, ed. Aelred Stubbs (1978) with a foreword by Lewis R. Gordon
University of Chicago Press, 2002. Foreword by Lewis R. Gordon; Ch 5 (Black Souls in White
Skins?)
Meghji, A. 2019. ‘White power, racialized regimes of truth, and (in)validity’. Sentio, 1(1).
Morris, A. 2015. The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology.
(Especially Introduction, Chapter 5)
Wright II, E., & Calhoun, T. C. 2006. ‘Jim Crow Sociology: Toward an Understanding of the
Origin and Principles of Black Sociology via the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory’. Sociological
Focus, 39(1), 1–18.
Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” The Feminist Wire, October 7,
2014. Available at: http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/
Robin D. G. Kelley and Fred Moten, “Do Black Lives Matter?” A conversation held on December
13, 2015 at Bethany Baptist Church, Oakland. Available at: https://vimeo.com/116111740.

Essay questions:

Critically assess the Black sociological tradition’s contributions to social theory.

‘Social theory can be used to support hierarchical power relations [and] social theory can also
challenge unjust ideas and practices’ (Collins). Discuss.
Critically assess Collins’ argument that we need to separate questions of ‘what counts as knowledge
from questions of who decides what knowledge is’.

11-12: Social theory and the imperial episteme

*Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2014. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

17
*Connell, R. W. 1997. ‘Why Is Classical Theory Classical?’ American Journal of Sociology 102
(6): 1511–57.
https://doi.org/10.1086/231125.
*Go, Julian 2016. Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press.
*Meghji, Ali. 2020. Decolonizing Sociology. Cambridge: Polity.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2007. ‘Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the
Grammar of de-Coloniality’. Cultural Studies 21 (2–3): 449–514.
Alatas, Syed Farid, and Vineeta Sinha. 2001. ‘Teaching Classical Sociological Theory in
Singapore: The Context of Eurocentrism’. Teaching Sociology 29 (3): 316–31.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1319190.
Bhambra, G. 2007. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Edward Said, Orientalism (Routledge, 1978), pp. 1-112.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (1952), trans. Charles Lam Markhmann. London: Pluto
Press, 2008. Preface by Ziauddin Sardar; Introduction; Ch 5 (The Fact of Blackness); By way of
conclusion.
Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (UC Press, 2001), pp. 1-23, 66-102, 173-211.
Achille Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in
Africa,” trans. Steven Rendall. Public Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, Winter 2000:259-284.
Grosfoguel, R. 2017. ‘Decolonizing Western Universalisms: Decolonial Pluri-Versalism from
Aime Cesaire to the Zapatistas’. In Towards a Just Curriculum Theory: The Epistemicide, edited
by João M Paraskeva, 147–64. New York, NY: Routledge.
Go, J. 2013. ‘The Emergence of American Sociology in the Context of Empire’. In Sociology &
Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline, edited by George Steinmetz, 83–103.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Go, J. 2017. Postcolonial thought and social theory. Brown University Symposium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4RmaYRt6pM
Glen Sean Couthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. The
University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Introduction; Ch 1; 131-133; 139-149; Conclusion. Purchase
or Gauchospace.
Puar, J. K. (2015). Homonationalism as assemblage: Viral travels, affective sexualities. Revista
lusófona de estudos culturais, 3(1), 319-337.
Puar, J. K., “Abu Ghraib and US Sexual Exceptionalism” and “Conclusion” from Terrorist
Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke U. Press, 2007), pp. 79-113, 203-228.
Alexander, M. J. (1994). Not just (any) body can be a citizen: The politics of law, sexuality and
postcoloniality in Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas. Feminist Review, 48(1), 5-23.
Sadia Abbas, At Freedom’s Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament (Fordham, 2014), pp. 1-
40; 97-148.
Meghji, A. 2019. Histories of sociology and decolonising education. Surviving Society podcast.
https://soundcloud.com/user-622675754/e052-ali-meghji-histories-of-sociology-and-decolonising

Essay questions:

To what extent is the 20th century social theory canon Eurocentric?

To what extent is canonical social theory guilty of ‘analytical bifurcation’ (Go), or ‘abyssal
thinking’ (de Sousa Santos)?

18
Easter 2024 - Revisions

Week 1. Revisions for the lectures of Michaelmas

P Baert et al.

Week 2. Revisions for the lectures on Lent

FC Silva et al.

Student Feedback
Your chance to put forward your opinions on the papers you take!

For Sociology Papers, student feedback is collected anonymous questionnaires distributed at

various points in the academic year. It is crucial that you fill these out and give feedback on your
papers. Getting good feedback from students makes the course better and shows the outside world
how Cambridge degrees consider their students’ views.

Course organisers take students’ concerns and suggestions into consideration each year when
preparing their paper outlines and selecting supervisors for the year. So please remember to fill out
a form.

19