Classical Sociological Theories

Course content

The course traces different conceptualizations of society by reading various texts that have been influential in the formation of sociology as a scientific discipline. The readings cover an extensive period from the 16th to the first part of the 20th century. In the first part of the course, the topics such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, rationalism and empiricism, the theory of natural law, the Enlightenment and the conservative critique of the Enlightenment, and the emergence of early positivism and evolutionary thought will be examined. In the second part, there will be a detailed analysis of the main concepts of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel, whose texts have laid out the main lines of the debates in sociological theory. In the last part, structural functionalist school and symbolic interaction theory will be analyzed as the two polar points of methodological debates in sociology.