Sylabus
This version of the syllabus is preliminary, the final version will be circulated during the kickoff class and updated here afterwards
Seminars schedule:
Week 1 – kickoff class
· Introduction
· Organization
· Assignments
Week 2 – Eurocentrism, US-centrism and Androcentrism, an Epistemological Critique
· Sayed Farid Alatas and Vioneeta Sinha, “Introduction: Eurocentrism, Androcentrism And Sociological Theory”, in Sociological Theory Beyond The Canon, (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017), 1 - 16.
· Sandra Harding, “Gender, Modernity, Knowledge: Postcolonial Standpoints”, in Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, And Epistemologies, (Indiana University Press, 1998), 105 - 123.
Week 3 – Classist, Sexist and Racist History of Contemporary Thought
· Angela Davis, “Chapters 1 - 3”, in Women, Race, & Class, (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011), 3 - 69.
Week 4 – Gender as a class
· Kate Bornstein – On Men, Women and the Rest of Us
Week 5 – Global Inequality and World Economy
· Raquel Sosa Elizaga, “Chapter 1: Introduction”, in Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for Global Sociology, Raquel Sosa Elizaga, 1st ed., (SAGE Publications, 2018), 1 - 14.
· Ari Sitas, “Chapter 3: Resilience, Resistance and Rewiring the World Economy: A View From The South”, in Facing An Unequal World: Challenges For Global Sociology, Raquel Sosa Elizaga, 1st ed., (SAGE Publications, 2018), 27 - 41.
Week 6 – Poverty Capitalism
· Anayana Roy, “Global Order: Circuits of Capital and Truth”, in Poverty Capital: Microfinance and The Making of Development, (Routledge, 2010), 41 - 88.
· Anayana Roy, “Subprime Markets: Making Poverty Capital”, in Poverty Capital: Microfinance and The Making of Development, (Routledge, 2010), 187 - 221.
Week 7 – reading week
Week 8 – Gender in post-soviet world
· Zdravomyslova, Elena, and Anna Temkina. “Gendered Citizenship in Soviet and Post-Soviet Societies.” In Nation and Gender in Contemporary Europe, (Manchester University Press, 2005), 96–113.
· Zdravomyslova, Elena. “Overview of the Feminist Movement in Contemporary Russia.” Diogenes 49, no. 194 (June 2002): 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219210204919406.
Week 9 – Chinese Capitalism
· Ching Kwan Lee, “The Unmaking Of The Chinese Working Class In The Northeastern Rustbelt”, in Working In China: Ethnographies Of Labor And Workplace Transformation, Ching Kwan Lee, (Routledge, 2006), 15 - 36.
· Ching Kwan Lee, “Unnatural Capital: Chinese State Investment And Its Travails In Africa”, in The Specter Of Global China: Politics, Labor, And Foreign Investment In Africa, (University of Chicago Press, 2018), 1 - 30.
Week 10 – Muslim feminism and concepts of womanhood
· Mernissi, Fatima, “A Tradition Of Misogyny; The Hijab, The Veil”, in The Veil And The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation Of Women's Rights In Islam, Mernissi, Fatima, (Basic Books, 1992), 49 - 101.
· Maybe another scholar with a really short article?
Week 11 – South America’s regimes
Week 13 – the war on terror
Anotace
The aim of this class is to present students with other than ‘canonical’ (however vague this term is in sociology) authors and thoughts. The texts are selected to represent specifically female, trans and non-binary and non-western voices who are being disproportionately less often presented to students through required reading in sociology and social theory classes and to introduce students to often critical perspectives on historical and contemporary events. With reference to Harding’s Standpoint Theory, this class is designed with “strong objectivity” in mind and aims at introducing the student to perspectives on key issues of sociology formulated by authors from marginalized groups or countries with colonial heritage.
The week 2 class focuses on a critique of contemporary’s social theory selectiveness from an epistemological perspective, following classes are drawing on this knowledge and each focuses on vibrant topics within the social sciences from other than Eurocentric and US-centric perspectives. Students are expected to use this epistemological perspective throughout the semester and learn its applicability through the texts. The key issues discussed over the semester are global inequalities, racism, sexism, classism, their intersections and capitalism, which are all prevailing in the sociological discourse. Students are expected to write a short position paper on required reading for each class as a preparation for the class discussion. Each week two or three position papers will be selected as a central point of the class discussion. At the end of term, students will be required to write an essay, touching upon concepts discussed. Apart from this, students will be graded based on their active participation in the class.
In week 2 we will focus on the basic epistemological idea of strong objectivity proposed by Sandra Harding and we are going to focus on its broader employment in the postcolonial critique of science. We are going to read Harding’s paper discussing this perspective and then see a practical application in the introduction of a sociological textbook that is contextualizing the founding fathers of sociology with marginalized scholars from the same time periods.
In week 3 we will broaden our perspective from the last class, and we will see the employment of the classist perspective in practice. We will read Angela Davis’s historical analysis of the simultaneous development of abolishment and the feminist movement in America. This largely controversial yet admired and influential scholar will introduce to us another intersection of inequality as well as bring a critical perspective on a crucial chapter of world history, that can serve as an example for analyzing contemporary events as well.
In week 4 we will challenge the cisgender lens on gender binary using the standpoint of a transgender scholar. For challenging gender regimes, Judith Butler’s or Raewyn Connell’s scholarship is usually presented. However, I find the works of both of these authors to be incredibly insightful, I consider the trans perspective on gender to be very important and usually neglected. Kate Bornstein’s writing is also incredibly light and therefore introduces these complex ideas in a perhaps more approachable manner than theory heavy writing of Butler.
After the four weeks, we will be prepared to use Harding’s epistemological lens and read contemporary texts that are in alliance with this perspective. In the upcoming classes, we will read texts researching and contextualizing places in the world that are often excluded from the main syllabus due to eurocentrism and US-centrism, yet are bringing important perspectives to the table and are crucial for understanding the global scope of social powers of the contemporary globalized social systems.