Partial notes

I have a couple of sides of notes I took at the first two meetings, purely for my own use. I would not claim they are accurate summaries -- but if anyone would like to see them they are welcome. Add to them and post them back?

meeting 1 -- Marx
meeting 2 -- Durkheim

Incidentally, talking about Durkheim stirred some old memories and I went back and had a look at his Moral Education. It is good stuff on two grounds: (1) it summarise all the main themes in his work in the form of really clear, non-scholastic and useful lectures; (2) it has some strong arguments for the connections between individualism and social morality, discipline and constraint that should serve as an excellent antidote to students who only know dreamers like Rousseau (who is rebuked on p. 2).

Future Reading

The group has kicked off with some foundational readings in social theory - we've had a look at Marx and Durkheim. At the next meeting we're discussing Weber, and then we'll move onto some work by Simmel. Where do we go from here?

I've had requests that we investigate the work of the following social/political theorists:

• John Dewey
• Talcott Parsons
• Norbert Elias
• Antonio Gramsci
  
• Mary Douglas
• Anthony Giddens
• Ulrich Beck
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Hannah Arendt
  
• Karl Mannheim
• Michel Foucault
• Margaret Archer
  

And there's also been some requests for philosophers:

• Jacques Derrida
• Roland Barthes
• Alain Badiou
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty

If you have an opinion on the order in which we work through this list, suggestions for additions/deletions or strong views about whether we remain strictly social theory, please comment below.

Durkheim

The second session featured Durkheim, and we discussed two pieces of work:

A section of The Division of Labour.., (a fairly early piece considering some of the key sociological themes in analysing modernity , and introducing the idea of two kinds of social solidarity. Available online

A section of Suicide, (mostly on anomy and anomic suicide but with hints of the other types). Email Ruth for details.

We also discussed the considerable influence of Durkheim on the sociology of education through the work of Bernstein, and some of the developments in American functionalism in Merton or Hopper (on 'social strain/social disorganisation, and the 'regulation of ambition' respectively)

Marx

The first discussion was about Marx and we focused on two pieces

The 1859 Preface (a classic piece on Marx's political economy, containing all the famous phrases about base and superstructure, determinism in the last instance, the critique of philosophy etc)

The 18th Brumaire... (a much more detailed analysis of the bizarre turn of events in France in 1851 when, after a promising revolution overthrowing the monarchy of Louis Philippe, Louis Napoleon, or Napoleon the 3rd, came to power). Marx's style is superbly demonstrated here too.

You can find both of these pieces, and just about everything else, on the excellent online Marx-Engels Internet Archive. It has a very useful search engine too.

Starting off

Hi everyone and welcome to this cheap'n'cheerful blog.

I hope I have arranged it so that any member can post and edit (they have to sign in), and, of course, anyone can comment. You can add RSS feeds or whatever as you wish

I don't think I need to play any further part in the proceedings as an editor or anything, but if I do, please email me: dharris@marjon.ac.uk