Social Theory

Review for Exam Two

The exam is multiple choice, maybe some matching.

The exam is worth 50 points.

Who is Johann Jakob Bachofen and what did he argue? What is gynaecocracy? Who is Lewis Henry Morgan? What was his discovery? What is Engels’ theory concerning the state, class, and patriarchy?  Be able to explain it.

What is Weber’s method of the ideal type? What are the three different kinds? What is the difference between causality and probability? What are Weber’s three types of authority?

Why, according to Weber, is capitalism different from previous societal systems? Why did it develop in only certain parts of Europe and not elsewhere? What is the Protestant Ethic? What is its logic? What is the capitalist spirit?

According to Weber's rationalization thesis, what is distinctive to Western society and increasingly dominating the world? What is the name Weber gives to his claim that people in Western societies have become imprisoned by rational systems of their own creation? What did Weber mean when he describe modern bureaucratic society as an “iron cage”? How is disenchantment related to rationalization? What role does the Protestant ethic play in this paradox? What is the irrationality of the rational?

What is empathy? How did Sam Richard’s demonstrate it? What did Adam Smith say about sympathy (what we today call empathy)?

What is pragmatism? What are the four core assumptions of pragmatism identified by Hans Joas?

What is William James’ perspective on the self? What are the different selves? What is Charles Horton Cooley’s metaphor for the social process? What are the three points in his understanding of self? Who is John Dewey and how did he conceptualize pragmatism? What is “deliberation”? What is Dewey most known for?

What is social psychology from Mead’s perspective? How does it differ from other types of psychology dominant in Mead’s day? Does Mead put individual self prior to social process? What does Mead mean when he says that the self “is an object to itself”? What is self-consciousness? How central is interaction to this process? What are the stages in the development of the self and what are their characteristics. What is the “I”? What is the “Me”? What is “society”?

Is communication exclusively a human thing? If not, what is the basic difference between human communication and most non-human communication? How do we understand the mind? What is the distinction between conversation of gestures and conversation of significant gestures? What is thinking?

Several short videos were shown in class. What was Stephen Pinker’s argument? What about Jeremy Rifkin’s? What did Frans de Wall demonstrate?

In the final weeks of class, I lectured on the critical theory and the Frankfurt School (Institute for Social Research). What are the fundamental ideas operating in the Frankfurt School program?

Who is György Lukács and what is the idea of “commodity fetishism.” He expands this concept beyond Marx. In what way? What is “reification”? 

According to Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno, what is the true purpose of art and music? How does capitalism destroy this purpose? I discussed Adorno and Horkheimer’s work, The Dialectic of Enlightenment. According to them, how has reason become irrational? 

What is the three-fold pattern of blind domination? What does fascism indicate about the system we live in?  What does Walter Benjamin argue is fascism’s goal? 

I closed the semester talking about Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man. What are “false” needs and how are they useful to capitalism? What is the irrationality of rationality or irrationality with a rational character?