SOC 361 - Power, Hegemony, Resistance

This course invites its participants to treat politics as grounded in everyday life, as arising from power and agency, and as a medium of domination and change. It introduces key sociological debates on relations of power in which, as Karl Marx famously suggests, individuals generate their thinking and acting not as they please but under the restrictions of structural contexts and social inequalities. Those social forces, however, do not divest individuals from becoming agents. People almost always have potentials for resisting and changing. When, why, and how people realize these possibilities are undoubtedly central concerns of this class. But why people are resigned to and how they participate in their own domination are equally crucial. This course thus calls as much attention to those individualistic and collective forms of resistance as it does to their absence.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): SOC 211
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.