Politics, State, and, Society - theoretical reflections in a historical context

Short description:

This is a new and innovative course and it aims at introducing and analyzing key concepts within political theory and political sociology in order to think imaginatively about contemporary political and societal issues. The course is highly relevant for PhD-students from many disciplines such as politics, sociology, anthropology, humanities, law, economics, and political economy.

Course organizer:  lbk@ifs.ku.dk

Fee:100 euro for polforsk-members including compendium, lunch, coffee/tea

1,000 euro for non-polforsk members including compendium, lunch, coffee/tea

The course adopts a theoretical and historical approach. It traces the development of key issues in political sociology and political theory in order to discuss their relevance to contemporary political discourse. We begin with a discussion of conceptual issues that are generic to political theory and political sociology in that they underlie many of the problems and debates in the field. We will examine classical and more recent theoretical attempts to found politics and the concept of the state within society. The course will then proceed to a discussion of conceptions of political modernity in social theory, ranging over a number of approaches and issues. The course also examines selected social theories on the nature of politics and political institutions in relation to the modern state and its society. Certain key issues and concepts, such as, power, state, society, politics, economy, space (in the form of territory), market, citizenship and the relation between state, society and political agency are introduced. These concepts will be discussed by focusing on Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, C. Schmitt, the British Pluralists, different International Relations traditions, Foucault, Habermas, Latour, and others.

The course is "modern" in the sense that it starts of from the sixteenth century where the main forms of – and attitudes to – politics, that have prevailed until today, first emerged. In this period the state became the primary political community, claiming an exclusive sovereignty over a given territory, and politics became recognized as a distinct sphere of activity with its own conditions and practices. We begin with Machiavelli, who gives coherent expression to the specificity and autonomy of politics, that is a specific field of action and is not to be confused with the pursuit of the "good life" as it was in the Greek concept of the polis or with being the necessary outward form of a Christian community pursuing salvation as it was with St. Augustine or St Thomas Aquinas. We move forward in time ending with contemporary political theory and political sociology as it is presented by Foucault, IR-theorists, Habermas and others.

The course is very explicitly focusing on political theory and political sociology and not the history of political thought. It thus excludes many writers who do not match the conditions of objectivity and conceptual rigour necessary to count as theorists. It also excludes theorists, however skilful and subtle, whose problems are no longer of central importance in politics. The first criterion excludes a brilliant publicist like Benito Mussolini and the latter a subtle reasoner like Francisco de Vittoria. The test of an enduring political theory is that it emerges in a definite political context, that is, it deals with specific problems created by the politics of its time, but that it uses concepts and a method of reasoning to deal with those problems that make it of wider relevance and more than mere opinion or ideology. Political theory is not a science, but it is a relatively rigorous form of knowledge. Political theorists survive their own context because they created concepts that we can use either to think problems that are enduring or to reason about very different circumstances in a constructive way.

Objectives

Phd-students completing this course will have been instructed in close reading of the ‘classic’ texts of social and political theory, dealing with the state, politics and social processes, and will have acquired clear perspectives on these issues. They will also have developed a sense of the continuities with and departures from political theory and political sociological thought. They will have acquired the skills of reading texts critically and analytically, and the ‘arts’ of constructing and de-constructing conceptions and arguments.

This course aims:

• to provide a high-level and reasonably comprehensive overview of selected issues within modern political theory and political sociology by concentrating on some of the major political and sociological thinkers

• to introduce PhD-students to the widest possible range of arguments and to cover the full complexity of the traditions in modern political theory and political sociology

• to inspire the PhD-students to think imaginatively about the future of society, economy, state, politics, and governance.

Program:

Monday December 10:

10:00-11:00 – Welcome and introduction: what are political theory and political sociology?

11:00-12:00 – The Greek and Medieval heritage

12:00-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-16:00 – Machiavelli & Hobbes: Stato, Leviathan, the Covenant and Politics

16:00-17:00 – The relevance of classical theoretical heritage

Tuesday December 11:

09:00-11:00 – Montesquieu: The Corp intermediare

11:00-13:00 – Hegel: the Modern State

13:00-14:00 – Lunch

14:00-15:00 – Marx’ critique of Hegel

15:00-17:00 – Marx’ alternative to Hegel

Wednesday December 12:

09:00-10:30 – The Marxist heritage (Althusser, Lefevre, Harvey)

10:30-12:30 – Durkheim on Politics and the State

12:30-13:15 – Lunch

13:15-15:00 – Weber on Politics and the State

15:00-17:00 – Space, territory and politics.

Thursday December 13:

09:00-11:00 – The British Pluralists, Associationalism, Civil Society and Voluntary Associations.

11:00-12:00 – Associative Democracy

12:00-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-14:30 – Carl Schmitt and the critique of liberal democracy

14:30-17:00 – ‘The Inside and the Outside’: State, territory and the international order (IR-

perspectives)

Friday December 14:

09:00-11:00 – Foucault, Politics, and the Social Order

11:00-12:00 – Latour on Politics

12:00-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-15:00 – Habermas: Constitutionalism, State, Law and Politics.

15:00-17:00 – The future of politics, state, and society

Enrollment: October 15 2012 to Jette Due, Depart of Political Science, CU – 

- Questions concerning enrollment or payment, please contact Jette Due, tel.: 35 32 34 25. Payment must be made no later than November 5^th 2012.

Minimum participants: 14