Bibliographic Resources
From Studyplace
Readings in communication theory and social thought
Robbie McClintock and Frank Moretti, Instructors
- Office hours:
- McClintock (322 Thompson Hall): Wednesdays, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. and Thursdays, 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Schedule slot with Neemisha Martin @ 212 678 3344 or nmartin@tc.edu)
- Moretti (603 Lewisohn Hall): By appointment (Schedule time with Teresa Gonzales @ 212 854 1692 or teresa@columbia.edu)
MSTU5606-MSTU5607 Fall 2006 and Spring 2007
As a strategy of study in Readings in Communication Theory and Social Thought, we are respecting the intellectual integrity of individual theorists, introducing the work of each as a reflective effort worthy of our trying to understand it "from the inside," so to speak. Many scholars study the same assemblage of inquiries and ideas "from the outside," however, in a more synthetic effort to describe movements of thought and to assess their effects. Such work, forever churned by changing initial interests, can expand and inform our sense of the context relevant to understanding the work of each theorist, for unique and significant circumstances surround each effort to live an examined life. In Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Social Theory (2nd edition, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Geoffrey Hawthorn gives an intelligent survey of the role of social theory in the effort, which has taken place since the Enlightenment, to cope adequately with historical contingency. Whereas Hawthorn wrote from the vantage point of an intellectual in a Europe recovering from World War II in the midst of Cold War uncertainties, Alex Callinicos addresses the same developments from a more recent, post-Cold War perspective, in Social Theory: A Historical Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1999), unfortunately writing with less confidence in a more expository voice.
Two well-established interpretations deal with classical sociological thought, essentially from Comte through Weber, in contrasting styles of analysis. Thus Raymond Aron, a social thinker of importance in his own right, reflected on the work of separate thinkers in Main Currents in Sociological Thought (Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, trans., 2 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1967, 1998) – Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Pareto, and Weber. In contrast, through The Sociological Tradition (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1966, 1993), Robert A. Nisbet concentrated on the development of certain key themes in the work of these and related thinkers – community, authority, status, the sacred, and alienation. Two other studies are worthy of note, defining a somewhat narrower locus of classical social thought, one well-established – Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim, and Max Weber by Anthony Giddens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971) – and the other relatively more recent – Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1870-1923 by Harry Liebersohn (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1972) is still the most effective introduction to the sociology of knowledge.
Changes in the European concern and sensibility from 1890 to 1930 or so have received interesting scholarly interpretation. H. Stuart Hughes' study, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930 (1958), wonderful for the clarity with which it synthesized a great diversity of developments, is the best starting point and it has recently been reissued (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) by Stephen Kern is another valuable synthesis about turn of the century changes in the textures of life, which have not yet fully run their course and deeply affect communication and reflection on it. Three very useful books for insight into the enterprise of 20th-century communication theory and social thought center on Vienna, although it was not itself the home of any of the thinkers we are studying. In complementary ways, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl Schorske (New York: Knopf, 1980), Wittgenstein's Vienna by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin (New York, Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 1976, 1996), and The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography by the Stefan Zweig (Harry Zorn, trans., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1943, 1964) are full of insight into the changing conditions that have deeply affected thinking about communication and society.
There is a tendency to reify theory, exacerbated by the academic institutionalization of the social sciences, distorting intellectual incentives, with the result that theory becomes a self-subsisting actor with professional acolytes vying for status and repute as the mouthpiece of one or another variant: isms and ologies pullulate. Social Theory Today (more precisely 20 years ago) edited by Anthony Giddens and Jonathan H. Turner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) provides an authoritative survey of leading varieties, up to the point after which theory sat back in its many forms of being post this or that.. A representative instance of reification, showing how scholars become persuaded to treat social theory as if it has a life of its own, is at once explicitly described and implicitly exemplified by Nigel Dodd through his study, Social Theory and Modernity (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1999), which traces the movement of social theory from its classical through modern to postmodern variants and concludes by advising theory that it "should set itself more feasible goals, bring itself more closely into the practical remit of sociology, and move unequivocally into the compass of social reality" (p. 218). Theory has no tasks; theorists have questions – let us attend to our own and to those of our predecessors. Agnes Heller provides an inspiring example of how to do so in A Theory of Modernity (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999).
Useful Internet Resources:
Members of the Columbia University Internet domain have an immense library of on-line resources at their finger tips. These resources are a significant part of an excellent academic library system, well organized and subject to systems of academic peer review. It behooves you to explore them and learn to use them well. Many of the links included within the course materials execute basic searches within the Columbia on-line resources, as well as some on the full WorldWideWeb. These are only a few of the most obvious and productive ones. It is worthwhile to study the explanations for advanced and expert searching given by many of the sources listed below.
Except where