HSY3870

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

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