SOCIOLOGY 715

Historical and Economic Sociology

This course combines what are often thought of separate lines of inquiry: historical and economic sociology. The rationale for looking at them together is that each topic informs the other—as indeed was clearly seen by Marx and Weber.  It is for this reason, to be sure, that many writers in the recent past and present have drawn on the seminal writings of Marx and Weber: e.g., Karl Polanyi,  Barrington Moore, Perry Anderson, E.P Thompson, Eric Wolfe, Wallerstein, Harvey, Mann, Tilly.

In this course, we pay particular attention to explanation in the social sciences, beginning with a critical look  at the recent methodological disputes regarding historical sociology raised by Charles Tilly,  and more recently between Kiser and Hechter, Calhoun, and Somers (AJS, vol. 104), and the issues, stimulated by Polyani and the “institutionalists” on the sociology of capitalist markets (e.g., Granoveter, Cose, and Hodgson), including an effort to systematically assess the relevance (or irrelevance) of neo-classical economic theory. (While the student with some knowledge of this theory will have some advantage, we hope to offer sufficient detail so that everyone can have a basis grasp of the theory and its problems.) In addition to a number of shorter texts to be made available on the Internet, we will read Charles Tilly’s Big Structures, Large Processes, Hugh Comparisons, and two exemplary works:  Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, and David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.

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