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GOVT-499 Department Seminar: Politics, Markets and Cultures
Offered academic year 2010-2011
The past few decades have been a time of rapid technological change, and they have also brought unprecedented triumphs for market economies. But in recent months the nations most affected by that triumph have fallen into economic crisis—a crisis that has raised fundamental issues about the way economic life should be conducted. This course is designed to explore some of those issues, focusing in particular on what has happened to people’s attitudes about such matters as work, consumption, debt, and savings in the period since the rise of the new, post-industrial capitalism. It does so against the background of the claims made by a German scholar named Max Weber in one of most famous sociological treatises ever published: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The course moves from an examination of Weber’s thought to the treatment of similar themes in the writings of such recent students of the sociology of economic life as Richard Sennett (The Culture of the New Capitalism), Gilles Lipovetsky (The Empire of Fashion), Ulrich Beck (The Brave New World of Labor), Robert Wuthnow (Poor Richard’s Principle), and Zygmunt Bauman (Work, Consumption and the New Poor). Course requirements include two short papers and a final research paper. [Political Theory]
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: None
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