Sociology 1137: Political Sociology

Semester: Spring

Offered: 2021

This course is about political power: who has it, how it is used, and how it can change over time.  The course begins by outlining key concepts and theories along with an examination of political power in the neoliberal state.  What does democracy, public policy, and political participation look like in this neoliberal context?  We will then move on to explore how power operates through state institutions with an analysis of both the welfare state and the carceral state.  Should the welfare state be understood as a method of redistribution or of social control?  How can we think about the relationship between the carceral state and power in civil society?  What can we learn from a comparison of the welfare state and the carceral state?  We will compare policies and practices in different contexts while focusing on surveillance of civil society via state institutions.  Our final unit is about contesting state policies, institutions, and structures.  We will take up the cases of welfare rights organizing and the Black Lives Matter movement, along with the contemporary emergence of both ‘right’ and ‘left’ populist movements.  We will end with attention to the particularities and possibilities of local-level politics in terms contestation, civil society, and grassroots political power.  The focus of the course is on the United States while at the same time using a comparative sociological perspective to examine political power in a variety of national, historical, and cultural contexts.  Underlying our analyses will be comparisons with “real utopias” (Wright 2010)—alternative, prefigurative models of state institutions and political power.