896863

Course

Rethinking Classical and Modern Theory and Methodology: theorizing and method sensitivity in Social Science (Beijing, China)

Faculty

Professor Lars Bo Kaspersen; Assistant Professor Christoph Houman Ellersgaard; Associate Professor Liv Egholm, all from the Department of Business and Politics, CBS.

Professor Yu Zheng and Dr Shiping Tang, both from the School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA), Fudan University.

Dr Norman Gabriel, Plymouth University

Course Coordinator

Lars Bo Kaspersen

Prerequisites

The participants must hold a degree in social science. They must be familiar with theories and methods within social sciences.

It is expected that the participants have read the pre-scribed reading and take part in class discussions. They need to attend the whole course in order to receive the diploma. In particular this course targets doctoral students who work within organizational studies, economic sociology, political economy, international political economy, business history, business studies, and innovation studies. However, everybody who fulfills the requirements is welcome!

Travel stipends
The course is open to all Ph.D. students on the terms listed above. The Principal Coordinator of the SDC Social Sciences offers 6 travel stipends of 6.000 DKK each. The stipends can be applied by non-SDC financed Ph.D. students enrolled at the course. SDC financed Ph.D. students must cover their cost of travel and accommodation within their overall budgets.

Applications for travel stipends should be sent to Bo Bøgeskov – bb.dbp@cbs.dk – no later than the 15th of May 2017. The Principal Coordinator Stine Haakonsson will shortly after decide on the distribution of the stipends.

Aim

This PhD-course aims at providing the PhD-students with appropriate skills, knowledge, and capacity to choose and develop the best possible theoretical and methodological framework for their projects. Furthermore, the course will teach the students how to theorize. Very few students know the art of theorizing. The course will stress the importance of the classical tradition within social science theory and methods but the project is to rethink and modernize the classical legacy in order to conceptualize problems and challenges in the 21st century. We need a new mode of theorizing combined with more coherent methodologies. Finally, the course will present some fairly new middle-range theories, and some methods. Throughout the whole course the PhD-students will work on their projects in relation to the theories and methods discussed in class.

Course content

The course is structured around five issues:

- What is theory, what is theorizing and how do we increase the ability to theorizing?

- We read and discuss classical texts within organization studies and comparative political economy – how is theorizing understood here?

- We discuss problems and challenges when we want to do comparative studies
(unit of analysis, comparing what?, diachronic comparison, synchronic comparison)

- We read and discuss two types of more recent theory development: 1) substantialist theories (institutional theory and rational choice) 2) relational theory (Bourdieu, Elias, Abbott). How do they theorize? What is theory? Are they all empirical sensitive?

- We are introduced to social network analysis. We discuss problems and prospects of this method.

Teaching style

The teaching style of the course is a mixture of lectures and student presentations. A large part of the course consists of dialogues in which students are expected to be active.

Lecture plan

Monday, August 28
9.00 - 12.00	Introduction to the course - Welcome - Presentation - The PhD-projects – a short presentation - Theory/theorizing: What is it?	Lars Bo Kaspersen
13.00 - 15.00	Capitalist Political Economies: The Classics - The Marxist theory tradition – (Marx, Miliband, Jessop) - The world system perspective (Arrighi) - The industrialization paradigm – the Durkheimian legacy (LBK) - The Weberian tradition: capitalism, rationalization, ideal-types, and 'real-types' - Polanyi and the Great Transformation	Lars Bo Kaspersen
15.00 - 17.00	Current issues in Political Economy: The Development State	Yu Cheng
Tuesday, August 29
9.00 - 10.00	Capitalist Political Economies: The Classics - continued	Lars Bo Kaspersen
10.00 - 12.00	Current issues in Political Economy: The Globalization Debate	Yu Cheng
13.00 - 16.00	Methods to study comparative political economies (firms, groups, governmental institutions, states) - derived from the classical tradition - Synchronic comparisons - Diachronic comparisons - Retrospective analysis - Prospective analysis	Lars Bo Kaspersen
16.00 -17.00	phd-projects	Liv Egholm
Wednesday, August 30
9.00 - 11.00	Comparative methods - revisited - How do we compare across time and space at the same time? - Recent developments in historical sociological methods - From Skocpol, Sewell, White, Tilly, Abbott to Elias and Bourdieu	Lars Bo Kaspersen
11.00 - 12.00	phd-projects	Liv Egholm/Norman Gabriel
13.00 - 16.00	New methods - Social network analysis	Christoph Houman Ellersgaard
16.00 - 17.00	phd-projects
Thursday, August 31
9.00 - 12.00	Relational theory - Introduction to relational theory - Mapping relational theory - Pierre Bourdieu	Norman Gabriel
13.00 - 16.00	Relational theory - continued - Norbert Elias - Andrew Abbott - Methodological relationalism - How do we move from studying static entities to processes and practices?	Norman Gabriel/Lars Bo Kaspersen
16.00 - 17.00	phd-projects
Friday, September 1
9.00 - 12.00	Game Theory Revisited Regionalism in the Shadow of Unipolarity: Intra-/inter Regional Bargaining and the Shape of Regionalism	Shiping Tang
13.00 - 16.00	Where does this course takes us? - Summing up - Final discussions	Lars Bo Kaspersen

Learning objectives

By confronting different (classical and modern) theories students will achieve knowledge and experience which will help them in their future academic careers in terms of theorizing and developing more coherent theoretical frameworks.

Following from this the students will learn that any theoretical framework facilitates and constrains the character of methods. They will learn when a theory is empirical sensitive and how theory and method is tied together.

The students will learn about the 'new paradigm' – relational social theory and methodological relationalism.

Moreover, the students will become familiar with social network analysis.

Exam

N/A

Other

Start date

28/08/2017

End date

01/09/2017

Level

PhD

ECTS

Language

English

Course Literature

Abbott, A. 2016. Processual Sociology. University of Chicago Press.L. Althusser/E. Balibar. 1970 .Reading Capital. VersoArrighi, G. 2004. The Long Twentieth Century. Verso.Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. The Logic of Practice. Polity.Pierre Bourdieu Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. PolityCassirer, E. 1953 Substance and Function, New York: Dover.Coleman, J. 1992. The Foundation of Social Theory. Harvard University Press.Dewey, J. and Bentley, A. F. 1949 Knowing and the Known, Boston: Beacon Press.Durkheim, E. 1992. The Division of Labour.D. Easley & J. Kleinberg. 2010. Networks, Crowds, and Markets.Elias, N. 1974 ‘Towards a Theory of Communities’ in Colin Bell and Howard Newby (eds.), The Sociology of Community. A Selection of Readings, London: Frank Cass & Co. Elias, N. 1978 What is sociology? New York: Columbia University Press.Elias, N. 1987a Involvement and Detachment, Oxford: Blackwell.Elias, N. 1987b ‘The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present’, Theory, Culture & Society 4(2-3): 223-248.Elias, N. 1987c ‘The Changing Balance of Power between the Sexes – A Process-Sociological Study: The Example of the Ancient Roman State’, Theory, Culture & Society 4(2-3): 287-316.Elias, N. 2000 The Civilization Process. Oxford: Blackwell.Elias, N. 2001 The Society of Individuals. London: Continuum.Emirbayer, M. 1997 ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’, The American Journal of Sociology 103 (2):281-317.R. Hanneman & M. Riddle Introduction to Social Networks Methods (2005) Hall, P. & Soskice, D. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism.Jessop, B. 1990. State Theory: Putting States in Their Place. Cambridge: Polity Press.Marx, K. & Engels, F. 1848. The Communist Manifesto. Penguin.Marx, K. 1852. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In K. Marx, Early Writings. London: Penguin.Miliband, R. 1969. The State in the Capitalist Society.Polany, K. 1944. The Great Transformation.Schumpeter, J. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.Scott, John P. (2000). Social Network Analysis: A Handbook (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Richard Swedberg. 2016. Before theory comes theorizing or how to make social science more interesting (plus response to commentators), The British Journal of Sociology 2016 Volume 67 Issue 1, pp. 5–22, 57–70. Richard Swedberg. 2015. The Art of Social Theory. Cornell University Press.Richard Swedberg. 2014. Theorizing in Social Science: The Context of Discovery.Richard Swedberg. 2011. Theorizing in Sociology and Social Science: Turning to the Context of Discovery. Theory and Society, 41(2012):1–40.Richard Swedberg. 2010. Thinking and Sociology. Journal of Classical Sociology 11,1:1–19. Wallerstein, I. 1974. The Modern World-System I. New York: Academic Press, Inc.Weber, M. 1968. Economy and Society. University of California Press.Suggested readings:Skocpol, Theda, ed. 1984. Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press.Abrams, Philip. 1983. Historical Sociology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Initial Conditions, General Laws, Path Dependence, and Explanation in Historical Sociology, by Jack A. Goldstone. American Journal of Sociology Vol. 104, No. 3 (1998), pp. 829-845. Revisiting General Theory in Historical Sociology, by James Mahoney. Social Forces 83(2):459-489, 2004. The Role of General Theory in Comparative-Historical Sociology, by Edgar Kiser; Michael Hechter. American Journal of Sociology Vol. 97, No. 1 (1991), pp. 1-30. Odious Comparisons: Incommensurability, the Case Study, and "Small N's" in Sociology, by George Steinmetz. Sociological Theory Vol. 22, No. 3 (2004), pp. 371-400. The Uses of Theory, Concepts and Comparison in Historical Sociology, by Victoria E. Bonnell. Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 22, No. 2 (1980), pp. 156-173. Path Dependence in Historical Sociology, by James Mahoney. Theory and Society Vol. 29, No. 4 (2000), pp. 507-548. Richard Swedberg. 2016. Can You Visualize Theory? On the Use of Visual Thinking in Theory Pictures, Theorizing Diagrams, and Visual Sketches, Sociological Theory. 2016, Vol. 34,3:250–275.Bhaskar, R. 1989 [1979]. The Possibility of Naturalism. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Burger, T. 1987. Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation. Durham: Duke University Press. Hindess, B. 1977. Philosophy and Methodology in the Social Sciences. Hassocks: Harvester Press.Hindess, B. 1986. “Actors and Social Relations.” In M.L. Wardell & S.P. Turner (eds.), Sociological Theory in Transition. London: Allen & UnwinRichard Swedberg. 2015. "Orientation to Others": A Central but Forgotten Concept in Max Weber's Sociology, from: Gianluca Manzo (ed.) Theories and Social Mechanisms. Oxford: Bardwell Press, 2015.

Fee

No tuition fee

Minimum number of participants

Maximum number of participants

Location

Beijing, China

Contact information

For course related enquiries, please contact Course Coordinator Lars Bo Kaspersen lbk.dbp@cbs.dk

For SDC related enquiries, please contact the Principal Coordinator Stine Haakonsson sh.dbp@cbs.dk

Registration deadline

31/05/2017

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