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HSY3870/4870

Social theory and social history

Graeme Davison and Ian Mylchreest

8 points
* One 2-hour seminar per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this subject should have gained a critical understanding of the main social theories incluencing historical writing in the twentieth century and reflected on the application of these ideas to current historical work, including their own.

Synopsis An examination of recent debates about the relationship between social theory and social history focusing on selected writers and texts including Marx, Weber, Freud, Bloch, Braudel, E P Thompson, Michel Foucault and representative feminist and ethnographic historians.

Assessment third year Essay (1500 words): 30%
* Long essay (2500 words): 40%
* Take-home examination (2 hours): 30%

Assessment fourth year Written (4000 words): 60%
* Take-home examination (2 hours): 40%

Prescribed texts

Burke P History and social theory Polity, 1992

Recommended texts

Bloch M Feudal society RKP, 1961

Braudel F Capitalism and material life 1400-1800 Harper, 1973

de Tocqueville A Democracy in America

Isaac R The transformation of Virginia 1740-1790 U North Carolina P, 1982

Marx K The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Moscow Publishing House

Rabinow P (ed.) The Foucault reader Penguin, 1984

Smith-Rosenberg C Disorderly conduct: Visions of gender in Victorian America OUP, 1985

Thompson E P The making of the English working class Penguin, 1963

Weber M The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism Allen and Unwin, 1958


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Published by Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3168
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Authorised by the Academic Registrar December 1996