World Of Literature

Michel Foucault is one the most influential thinkers of the 20th century who studied extensively the relations of power and knowledge structures. In this episode we will take a look at his classic work Discipline and punish to start our inquiry to postmodernism.

We take a look at Bruno Latour to end our inquiry to modern sociology.   

Actor-network theory is best known for its claim that objects should be viewed as having the capacity of being actors. We will dive into this claim and much more. We will take a look at Latours criticism of critical sociology and introduce ourselves to the alternative approach and view of society and social suggested by Latour in this work.

In this episode we will take a look at Viviana Zelizers work regarding the social meaning of money. What kind of differentiations do people make between monies and how do people use money to sustain, form, negotiate and redefine social relations.  

Viviana Zelizer has done a extensive career in the field of economical sociology focusing on the connection of markets and morality. In this work she examines the different ways monies are involved in our interpersonal lives and their social and  symbolic attachments beyond the arithmetic.  

In this episode we will take a look at Castells most influential work: The rise of the network society.   

Castells has been very influential in many fields including sociology. In this work he argues that industrial society has changed into a network society changing society in fundamental ways.  Throughout the episode we will examine the characteristics of network society and talk about its consequences.   

''Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies"

Dan P. McAdams is a psychologist known for his contribution to the field of narrative psychology, a field of psychology which concerns itself with the psychological value of stories in constructing our existence.  

In this work, McAdams examines how we construct our identity through a personal story, a narrative, to create a sense of self. We will examine how this story is created and how it might be constructed to close our inquiry to self.

In the second episode to our inquiry to the concept of self, we will be taking a look at Erving Goffmans classic work, The presentation of self in everyday life. We will examine how Goffman saw that people express and manage their presentations of their self in social interactions, which he examined using dramaturgical analysis. By making an analogy between theater and real life, Goffman opens a window to just how much we resemble actors and performers in our daily interactions with each other.

George Herbert Mead was a social psychologists, who's seen as one of the founders of an approach called symbolic interactionism. Mead didn't (unfortunately) publish any books during he's lifetime. However, he's ideas are represented in Mind, Self & Society, which is constructed through various sources, such as notes taken by his students attending he's lectures.    

Mind, Self & Society has established itself as a essential work of social science. In the work he sketches out his theory of the self, which Mead saw as a product of socialization. Even thought the work has faced its criticism, it is still a great intellectual achievement, which guarantees to wake up some hibernating  braincells.

Émile Durkheim was a french sociologist who's works have left a tremendous mark on how we interpret, approach and analyze society. In this episode, we will take a look at his work, On Suicide, one of the greatest works of sociology.    

In this episode we will stumble on concepts such as social facts and anomie as we take a look at how Durkheim approached the issue of suicide. Is suicide a produce of the individual, something to be explained as a consequence of internal forces, or is the individual affected by something outside of him, by something external, that encourages self-destructive behavior? 

Max Weber belongs to the names that create the foundation of sociology. In this classic work, Weber examines the relation between reformation and the creation of the spirit of capitalism. He sets out an idealistic perspective to examine historical progression of society and broadens the sociological perspective by introducing a way to connect two seemingly distinct societal phenomenons to each other. 

Arthur Schopenhauer belongs to the list of great thinkers that roamed the world in the 19th century.  Schopenhauer can be described as the main figure of philosophical pessimism. Why? Well, existence seems to be a glass half-empty, if the glass ever had anything.

In this work, Arthur Schopenhauer builds on Immanuel Kants transcendental idealism, as he argues that the noumenal world, which by Kant was deemed impossible to know, is reacheable. What Kant described as thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer recognizes as will. Well, what exactly is this will that Schopenhauer talks about and how does it affect us?

"At bottom it is one being that perceives itself and is perceived by itself, but whose being-in-itself cannot consist either in perceiving or in being perceived"