SOCL 502

REVIEW: MID-TERM

Origins of Sociology:

• European stages of history (Classical, Dark/medieval, Renaissance, Age of Science, The Enlightenment)
• What was the key question that social thinkers addressed when examining these era’s?
• Economic reorganization and the industrial revolution
• Role of the French revolution in social thought
• Differences between French and British Enlightenment thinkers

Auguste Comte:

• Political stability during his youth
• His positions on the role/purpose of social science
• Career trajectory (why)
• Social Physics
• Law of 3 stages:
  • Theological Military
  • Metaphysical Judicial
  • Scientific Industrial/Positivistic
• The development of the sciences
• Course of Positive Philosophy
• His place as a methodological founder
• Social statics and social dynamics
• Organismic analogy
• His impact on current social thinking

Herbert Spencer:

• Educational background
• Evolution of society
• Unifying principle of sciences
• Society as an organism
• Influence of Malthus
• Overpopulation’s impact
• Darwin
• Survival of the fittest

Emile Durkheim:

• Social Facts
• Invisible social world/social influence
• How do we know things are socially influenced?
• Durkheim (CONT.)
• Religion
  • Essential qualities
  • The sacred and the profane
  • What is it?
  • It’s role in all societies
• Moral order
  • Relation to social structure
  • Crime: Meaning; as normal; as a consequence of…
• Division of Labor
  • As a new basis for social order
• Suicide
  • Durkheim’s methods
  • Purpose of investigation
  • Egoistic/altruistic/anomic
• Anomie
• Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
  • Know definition of each; how this transition occurs
  • Bases of social order
  • Individual autonomy and increasing interdependence
  • Common consciousness

Karl Marx:

• Ideology
• Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat
• Commodification of labor
• False consciousness
• Fettishism of commodities
• On religion
• Surplus value
• Alienation (from…)
• In the Boondocks, how and why does Jazmine experience alienation?
• Communist Manifesto
  • Materialist history
  • HOW MUCH FROM HANDOUT?

Georg Simmel

• Early vs. Later work
• How is society possible?
• Web of group affiliations
• Study of society analogous to…
• Social differentiation
• Simmel vs. Marx

Max Weber:

• Contradictions in his life
• Similarities and differences from Marx
• The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic
  • Role of Martin Luther
  • The “Calling”
  • Calvinism
  • How can individuals achieve salvation?
  • Evaluation of money, profit, and leisure
  • What was the connection between religion and the economic system
  • What was needed for the transition to capitalism
  • Example of another cultural basis that aided the transition to capitalism
  • New vs. traditional sense of work
  • Capitalism and its modern moral basis
• Rationalization
• Bureaucracy
  • Characteristics of a bureaucracy
    • Examples from Office Space
  • The McDonaldization of Society