Syllabus
Weekly schedule: 1. - 2. Introduction: From critical sociology to a sociology of critique 3. - 4..
Confirmation and critique: the concept of test (épreuve) 5. - 6. Judgement, qualification and evaluation as routine practices 7. - 8.
Perception and intuition 9. - 10. Orders of worth as specifications of the common good 11. - 12.
Existential tests and familiar regimes of engagement: the role of emotion and passion in critique
Annotation
The course introduces students to the sociology of critique and the sociology of justification, developed in France by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot and their followers around the world. It explores the main concepts of the approach - justification, orders of worth, regimes of engagement, institutions, truth, reality and existential tests, perception and intuition. The sociology of critique will be situated in the context of sociology and social theory and its analytical power will be illustrated using case studies taken from recent empirical research about topics such as journalism, knowledge translation and health communication.
The course is particularly suited to those with an interest in discourse studies and socio-linguistics.