In surveying major perspectives in social theory, this seminar puts particular emphasis on the value of social theory for empirical, social science researches. The seminar is predicated on the premise that we are bound to confront the social interactions, practices, and institutions not as empirically given, but as something to be reconstructed in our mind. Our conceptual reconstruction is dictated by a gestalt of factors: an imaginary vision of society, key concepts and metaphors, preferred data base, a methodological prejudice, founding figures and subsequent lineage, and discursive contexts surrounding the subsequent criticisms. Together, they form a coherent "perspective." The goal is to teach students to recognize the deployment of various theoretical perspectives, often implicitly and partially, in current social science research. Each week, we will examine a major social theory and then see how it operates in empirical research; the first reading of the week will be drawn from the theoretical texts, and the second from a contemporary example of empirical research informed by those theories. The first half of the seminar surveys classic perspectives based on empiricism and positivism, while the second half examines their critiques, including hermeneutics and phenomenology. Theoretical texts are likely to include those by Ranke, Hintze, Bentham, Smith, Marx, and Durkehim for the first half; Weber and Freud as signaling paradigmatic transitions; and Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, Levi-Strauss, Geertz, and Foucault for the second half. Format: seminar. Requirements: class participation, presentation and three 6- to 7-page papers. Prerequisites: consent of the instructor. Enrollment limit: 24. Political Theory Subfield

Hour: KIM