| Unit name | Contemporary Sociological Theory |
|---|---|
| Unit code | SOCIM3101 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Brad West |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies |
| Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
This unit provides a broad grounding in contemporary sociological theory by combining three different but related foci: a range of prominent perspectives within social theory, the contribution of particular theorists, and the central concepts that any aspiring theory must develop in its own distinctive way. Thus, important approaches or schools of thought within social/sociological theory such as symbolic interactionism, rational choice theory, structuralism, critical theory, and feminism are engaged with, and the ideas of individual thinkers such as Foucault, Giddens, Habermas and Bourdieu are explored. The various paradigms and authors are then evaluated in terms of their contribution to the resolution of some long-standing conceptual dualisms and problems in social thought, such as structure/agency, economy/culture, system/lifeworld, power/resistance, and scientific/normative understanding.
