Welcome to Sociology 401!

Introduction

• Syllabus
• About the Professor
• Professor's homepage
• On-line sociology resources for Iowa State students

Jan. 12

• Theory starting points

Jan. 19

• Emile Durkheim/Social Facts

Jan. 21

• Summary of “Egoistic Suicide and Anomic Suicide”
• Durkheim on suicide

Jan. 24

• Durkheim on religion
• Ann Hornsby's "Surfing the Net for Community"

Jan. 26

• Structural-functionalism and Robert Merton

Jan. 28

• Summary of Davis and Moore's "Some Principles of Stratification"
• Melvin Tuman's critique of Davis and Moore

Jan. 31

• Colomy and Greiner's "Criminalizing Transgressing Youth"

Feb. 2

• Marx and the Communist Manifesto

Feb. 4

• Labor Theory of Value/Human Potential
• Summary of Marx's "Estranged Labor"

Feb. 7

• Links to articles discussed in class
  • Forced to Work Off the Clock, Some Fight Back (New York Times, Nov. 19, 2004)
  • Iowa morality meter: Sioux County is highest (Des Moines Register, Feb. 6. 2005)

Feb. 9

• Conflict thoery/C. Wright Mills/ Zweigenhaft & Domhoff

Feb. 11 & 14

• Summary of "Truth as Opiate"
• Historical Capitalism overview
• Balance sheet, etc.

Feb. 16

• Review sheet for the first exam

Feb. 21

• Introduction to Max Weber/Protestant ethic key points
• Summary of "Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" excerpt

Feb. 23

• Weber on bureaucracy/class, status & party/social science and social policy

Feb. 28

• Introduction to McDonaldization

March 2

• Summary of Ritzer's "The Irrationality of Rationality"
• More on Ritzer's McDonaldization

March 4

• Introduction to George Herbert Mead

March 7

• Summary of excerpt from Blumer's "Society as Symbolic Interaction"
• Introduction to Symbolic Interactionism

March 9

• Introduction to Erving Goffman
• The engagement proposal as performance

March 21

• Lowney's dramaturgical elements of talk shows

March 23

• Summary of Lowney's "Recovery Rules"
• Review sheet for the second exam

March 30

• Overview of sociology of knowledge
• Schutz and phenomenology

April 4

• Berger & Luckmann
• Summary of excerpt from The Social Construction of Reality
• Ethnomethodology

April 6

• Joel Best on social problems

April 11

• More Joel Best on social problems
• Summary of Joel Best's "Declaring War on Social Problems"

April 18

• Feminist Sociology/Dorothy Smith

April 20

• Lorber and Martin on "The Socially Constructed Body"

April 22

• Critical theory/Marcuse
• Habermas

April 25

• Summary of Habermas' "Three Normative Models of Democracy"
• Dandaneau on critical theory and Flint, Michigan

April 27

• Postmodernism/Foucault/Lyotard

April 29

• Ritzer's "The New Means of Consumption"
• Final exam review sheet