Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY AND ITS ECOLOGIES

Department: Anthropology

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This seminar explores classical texts, problems, and arguments in western social theory from the mid 18th century until the 1920s. The course approaches social theory from the perspective of the anthropology of knowledge, investigating both key documents (drawn from Vico, Herder, Montesquieu and Smith to Marx, Durkheim, Freud, and Peirce, among others) as well as the historical, social, and institutional conditions that enabled, shaped, and specialized the intellectual project of social theory during this period. We will also pay attention to how the analytics and problems of classical social theory continue to inform contemporary research in semiotic, praxiological, phenomenological and psychoanalytic anthropology.