DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and Social Work
Academic Year 2018/2019 - 3° Year - Single / L-40 Curriculum

STORIA DEL PENSIERO SOCIOLOGICO

Teaching Staff

Course Structure

• Sociological thinking up to Parsons
  

  The course is structured into one single module of 6 CFU. It will be led through lectures, during which the topics included in the program will be presented and analyzed.

• Sociological thinking after Parsons
  

  The course is structured into one single module of 6 CFU. It will be led through lectures, during which the topics included in the program will be presented and analyzed.

Detailed Course Content

• Sociological thinking up to Parsons
  

  Having assumed the fundamental categories of sociological analysis through the Course of Institutions of Sociology, the program of History of Sociological Thinking will lead students along an analytical path devoted to the conceptual and substantive articulations in which the contribution of classics to the profiling of the discipline has unfolded. Particular attention will be given to those authors, Talcott Parsons in the first place, who in classicism have looked to build the premise of contemporary sociological theory. More in detail, the contents of the first module of the course will be:
  
  The questions of the classics about their present, the questions of contemporaries on their present: why we have to look at the history of sociological reflection;
  
  Classicism and historicism: the contribution of the French tradition;
  
  Anglo-Saxon organicism and its organic metaphors;
  
  Olism and methodological individualism. Macro and micro sociological perspectives;
  
  Sociology and Dialectal Materialism: Marx's Historicism;
  
  Durkheimian sociology: theoretical and methodological implications;
  
  Max Weber: the disenchantment of the modern world and sociology. The methodological essays and the comparative analysis of cultural civilizations;

• Sociological thinking after Parsons
  

  Having assumed the fundamental categories of sociological analysis through the Course of Institutions of Sociology, the program of History of Sociological Thinking will lead students along an analytical path devoted to the conceptual and substantive articulations in which the contribution of classics to the profiling of the discipline has unfolded. Particular attention will be given to those authors, Talcott Parsons in the first place, who in classicism have looked to build the premise of contemporary sociological theory. More in detail, the contents of the second module of the course will be:

   

  The formal sociology of Simmel: beyond the contents of a discipline. How is society possible?
  
  The criticism of historicism. Historicism and Utopianism;
  
  Classicism and conceptual formalization.
  
  The reinterpretation of classicism: the great theory. Parsons and the search for a unified theoretical paradigm;
  
  Epigones and critics of classicity.

Textbook Information

• Sociological thinking up to Parsons
  

  Text 1) - L. Coser, I classici del pensiero sociologico, Il Mulino, 2006;

  Text 4) (optional) - F. Battistelli F. Farruggia, I sentieri della Sociologia. Compendio di Storia del pensiero sociologico, UTET, 2018.

• Sociological thinking after Parsons
  

  Text 1) - L. Coser, I classici del pensiero sociologico, Il Mulino, 2006;

  Text 2) - R. Vignera, Teoria e formalizzazione matematica nella tradizione sociologica classica: note di un bilancio controverso, SRS, 113, 2017;

  Text 3) - G. Rocher, Talcott Parsons e la sociologia americana, Sansoni, (handouts provided by the teacher);

  Text 4) - F. Battistelli F. Farruggia, I sentieri della Sociologia. Compendio di Storia del pensiero sociologico, UTET, 2018.