Postmodernism - Syllabus

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Cultural Studies and Postmodernism - Syllabus - College of Liberal Arts - Texas A&M

Georgetown University - Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Modernity and Modernism from the Maghreb to the Middle East - Professor Ossman
Although some see modernity as distinctly European or Western, others argue that multiple modernities have been developed throughout the world. This course focuses on this debate as it has developed from the Maghreb to the Middle East since the end of the nineteenth century. The class starts with a perusal of various definitions of modernism and modernity and an examination of their interpretation in European contexts. It then goes on to consider how modern art, social ideals and political programs associated with modernity played a role in colonial projects and the post-colonial ideologies that have shaped the distinctive experiences of modernity one encounters in the Middle East and throughout the Arab World. Through a series of readings focusing on the relationship of aesthetic modernism to forms of subjectivity and political organization students will explore how discourses of authenticity and tradition can themselves be seen as reflecting a specifically modern understanding of history and culture. Modern manners of conceiving of landscape, language and time are related to the way that political entities like states are conceived and how we delimit and define regions like the "Arab World" or the " Middle East". These also influence how aesthetic production's are conceived, financed and received by local, national and international audiences. The class will give students a chance to develop their skills in analyzing the press, television, music and the cinema, architecture and other aesthetic forms. Each student will develop a research project on a particular genre, culture industry or cultural practice in order to explore the relationship between modernism and specific ideologies, religious doctrines or social practices. We will then investigate how aesthetic form is or is not related to the development of modern lifestyles as well as religious and political movements and doctrines.

SOCI-334 The Sociology of Postmodernism = The King's University College - This course will examine the seemingly uneasy relationship between Christian worldviews and Postmodern culture. In addition to outlining the principal contours of Postmodernism (e.g., the fragmentation of "grand narratives", the relativity of truth claims, and the celebration of "difference"), we will consider the various ways in which Christianity is able to respond to the challenges posed by contemporary Western culture.

Cultural Studies and Postmodernism - Syllabus - Dr. S.G. Mestrovic - College of Liberal Arts - Texas A&M - clla.tamu.edu/lbarplan/l20400a.htm

In this course, we shall attempt to gain an overview of the salient theories and issues in cultural studies as these pertain to sociology as well as some of the other social sciences broadly defined. Postmodernism is arguably the most influential intellectual movement in the social sciences today, and is frequently invoked in studies of culture. We shall examine what this concept means, the controversies that surround it, some of its critics as well as defenders. We shall also seek alternatives to postmodernism or at least ways to move beyond some of its perceived limitations. Additionally, under the rubric of postmodernism, we shall tackle media studies, morality, and nationalism.

The course is structured so as to offer an eclectic blend of critical theory, psychoanalysis, Chicago School ethnography, postmodern social theory, and the use of sociological "classics," including Alexis Tocqueville as the first ethnographer and Veblen as the forerunner of leisure studies. Thus, in attempting to grasp the meanings of culture and postmodernism, we shall be tracing the development of the social sciences from their modernist origins in the 19th century to the present.

REQUIRED BOOKS
We will cover many books in this course. You are expected to purchase and read in full the books specified below. The other books in the course outline will be placed in the library on reserve. You may refer to them for discussion, use them as resources for your final paper, or otherwise use portions of them for this course, but you will not be required to read and digest them entirely.
Pauline Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences
David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd
Jean Baudrillard, America
Stjepan Mestrovic, The Coming Fin de Siecle
Akbar Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam

COURSE OUTLINE
Weeks 1 and 2: THE ORIGINS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Why did the social sciences begin in Europe in the nineteenth century? How did they begin? Is sociological theory fundamentally anti-cultural? What is culture? Who are the social theorists of culture? Are the "founding fathers" of the social sciences (Durkheim, Freud, Marx, Simmel, Freud, etc.) still relevant? Georg Simmel as one neglected founder of cultural studies. Can postmodernism sustain cultural studies even though it purports to study culture? What comes after postmodernism? Emile Durkheim's sociology located in his cultural context: Charles Baudelaire and "the dandy," T.S. Eliot's, "The Wasteland," the influences of Friedrich Nietzsche versus Arthur Schopenhauer.

Assisgned Text: Mestrovic, The Coming Fin de Siecle

Supplementary Texts from Reserve:
Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Stjepan Mestrovic, Durkheim and Postmodern Culture
Keith Tester, The Life and Times of Postmodernity
Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Its Social Forms
Anthony Giddens, The New Rules of Sociological Method

Week 3 and 4: THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL CHARACTER

National character: Does it exist? What is American about America (Russian about Russia, Norwegian about Norway, etc.) Collective identity to parallel the notion of individual identity. The role of the media, education, and history. If there is a national character, how does it affect relations among various cultures? If there is no national character, what are the impediments to the Enlightenment ideal of a world society based solely on individualism? Can social traditions be created synthetically?

Assigned Text: David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd

Supplementary Texts from Reserve:
Seymour Martin Lipset, The Continental Divide
Thomas Cushman, Notes From Underground: Russian Musical Counterculture and the Dilemmas of Capitalist Modernity

Week 5: AMERICA AS A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EXPERIMENT

Is America the dawning of the "inauthentic universe" for the rest of the world to follow, as the postmodernist, Jean Baudrillard, charges? Jean Baudrillard as tourist, and the new sociology of tourism that involves "expeditions" into sites of deviance. Contrast with Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Tocqueville's ambivalence toward America as key to the future; the impact of industrialization, urbanization, immigration:What remains of Tocqueville's America. What Tocqueville missed: The poor and the misfits. What Tocqueville emphasized: Native and African Americans. Was Tocqueville an optimist or a pessimist concerning America? And what about America's leadership in the world? Against both Baudrillard and Tocqueville, is all this Americacentrism misplaced?

Assigned Text: Jean Baudrillard, America
Supplementary Texts from Reserve:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Chris Rojek, Forget Baudrillard?

Week 6: THE METROPOLIS VERSUS THE COMMUNITY

Many in the social sciences today are discussing "communitarianism" as an alternative to what is perceived to be the harsh, alienating, and competitive social world unleashed by modernity. How is today's "communitarianism" different from 19th century concerns with "community?" Is all community an unqualified good? Should community be fostered, and how? Are there dark sides to community? How does postmodernism affect our ideas of community? Is a community possible in the electronic/media/internet age? Why or why not?

Assigned Text:
Akbar S. Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam
Supplementary Texts on Reserve:
Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life"
Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society
Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart
Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right
Amitai Etzioni, The Active Society

Week 7: DIFFERENTIATIONS WITHIN THE NATION-STATE: GENDER, ETHNICITY, RELIGION, SOCIAL CLASS, POLITICAL STYLES AND PARTIES AND IDEOLOGIES--TOWARD THE BALKANIZATION OF THE WEST

Freedom to choose: The dilemmas of pluralism. What differences within America matter most: ethnicity, class, region, religion, rural-urban, gender, age, race? What are the gains and losses, pushes and pulls? Is the world moving towards the "fusion" model envisioned by many modernists of a world community or cosmopolitan global village? Or is it moving, instead, toward the "fusion" model envisioned by many critics of modernity such as Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, even Baudrillard and the postmodernists?

Assigned Reading (from Reserve):S. Mestrovic, The Balkanization of the West
Supplementary Readings from Reserve:
Daniel P. Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics
Douglas Massey, American Apartheid
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics

Week 8: WHAT COMES AFTER POSTMODERNISM?

The growing discontent with the concept of postmodernism. Is postmodernism just an extension of modernity? Or is postmodernism a rebellion against modernity? Is it a viable concept? Does it mask another, underlying phenomenon, and if so, what might it be called? The role of emotions in the modernity project. Postmodernism as an overemphasis on the world as script/text/cerebral image. Introducing the concept of postemotionalism.

Assigned Text: Pauline Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences
Supplementary Texts (from Reserve):
Mestrovic, Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War
Keith Tester, Media, Morality and Society
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity

Week 9: MEDIA AND CULTURE

Is the modern information medium just another aspect of culture, to be studied routinely as culture, or is it something unique? Case study: The Persian Gulf TV war. Was the Gulf War just a tv war? Was the Western media "objective," and what could that mean? Ditto the media coverage of the current Balkan War. Are the populations in modern democracies truly informed, or objects of propaganda, as warned by critical theorists?

Assigned Text (from Reserve): Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War

Supplementary Texts:
Jean Baudrillard, Essays on the current Balkan War from Liberation (to be photocopied and distributed in class)
Thomas Cushman & Mestrovic, This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia

Week 10: LEISURE AND CULTURE

Veblen as the founder of leisure studies. Riesman on Veblen as two social critics. Conspicuous consumption and leisure. Is tourism the paradigm for social policy and other institutional approaches to reality? (The West as the "hotel" to which we retreat after we "tour" poverty and crime in ghettos and developing countries). What does leisure tell us about postmodernist societies?

Assigned Text (from reserve): Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape
Chris Rojek, Decentering Leisure
Umberto Eco, Travels Through Hyper-Reality