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Exploring Sociological Theory

English, Sciences, 2 seasons, 35 episodes, 19 hours, 39 minutes
About
I read some classics in sociological theory, trying to release them from the dusty shelves. For more, see my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/AlecMcGail/ If you want to see me live, follow me @ https://www.twitch.tv/bergeront I recommend listening at 1.5x speed Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/alec-mcgail/support
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(Fromm) The Illusion of Individuality

The last chapter of Fromm's analysis of individuality of modern man. Fromm addresses the repressive nature of modern culture and socialization, pointing to helplessless, a lack of automony and freedom, to be fertile ground for authoritarianism, fascism. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
10/13/202229 minutes, 29 seconds
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(Tarde) Laws of Sociology

This is epic. Love his trichotomy, and the discussion he concludes with. I.e. the emergence of the seemingly infinite from the infinitesimal, across all the natural and social sciences. Sounds like a call to the study of the heterogeneous and differentiated, outside the coordinated reduction of similarities (science). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
12/5/202120 minutes, 46 seconds
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(Simmel) Fashion

at times thought-provoking, contradictory, and offensive wish I could've read the rest of the article, but was getting tired of it o.o  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
11/12/202129 minutes, 26 seconds
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(Bhaskar) Emergent Properties of Social Systems

His sentences are long, his words true. Seems I need to read more Roy Bhaskar. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
11/4/202125 minutes, 3 seconds
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(Comte) The three stages of knowing

Printed in 1842, Comte's universal law of mental development, and why it provides such a strong impetus for his new idea, "sociology" (translated as social physics in this reading). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
10/13/202129 minutes, 41 seconds
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(Giddens) The Adequacy of Explanatory Accounts

From New Rules of Sociological Method, this section addresses the connection between art and the social sciences, in that they both attempt cross-cultural communication for self-expansion. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
10/7/202118 minutes, 26 seconds
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(Luhmann) Implications of Systems Theory for Epistemology

Can you predict this will lead to sociology in particular? I didn't... Super dense, packed with insight, and justifies sociology of sociology (my focus). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/20/202129 minutes, 58 seconds
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(Douglas) Institutions Remember and Forget

Great analysis, moving from the mnemonic structures which keep ancestry in the Nuer and the dynamics of remembering and forgetting in scientific discovery. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/19/202131 minutes, 7 seconds
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(Simmel) The Negative Character of Collective Behavior

An interesting little essay, directly adjacent in The Sociology of Georg Simmel to his famous essay The Stranger. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/4/202111 minutes, 43 seconds
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(Garfinkel) What is ethnomethodology?

Garfinkel has a wordy, rather technical-sounding description of the study of the taken-for-granted, the made-practical, the reasonable, etc. It's those unseen practices for making actions, events, etc. normal-ish, that he wants to study. And because it is so normal, and so intentionally ignored, by the 60s it still had not been a subject of rigorous sociological work. It's a classic, but also a headache. Good luck! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/3/202127 minutes, 14 seconds
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(Knorr Cetina) Epistemic Cultures

The introductory chapter to the book, published in 1999. It's great, a reassuring & pleasant vision for science studies! The cases sound interesting as well. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
6/1/202131 minutes, 59 seconds
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(Friedrichs) The Calling of Sociology

The last chapter of an epic & forgotten book in sociology. It's a bit wordy, but also a bit epic & deep. Curious if anyone (including me) will ever make it to the end. Enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
5/31/20211 hour, 44 minutes, 11 seconds
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(Simmel) Sociability

Sociability refers to  different forms of social interaction and human association. The  concept, in both descriptive and normative senses, can be found in many  branches of study. In sociology the concept occupied a central place in  the work of Georg Simmel, who developed and presented it as a sociological ideal type. This was published in AJS in 1949 "The Sociology of Sociability," original from 1910 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
5/13/202139 minutes, 52 seconds
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(Bernal) The Social Function of Science

Published in 1939, when this guy was just 38 years old, the book as a whole gives a sweeping defense of science in light of popular critiques at the time. But the last chapter I read here gives a beautiful and comprehensive vision of science as a scaffolding for all future human action, and a program for its merging with culture, history, etc. and its morphing and supporting humanity's quest towards the future. Great read. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
3/23/202122 minutes, 50 seconds
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(Goffman) The Interaction Order

Erving Goffman’s posthumously published essay, ‘The interaction order’,  which was to have been presented as a presidential address at an annual  meeting of the American Sociological Association, is usually taken to be  an attempt at a systematic summary by Goffman of his key ideas. (This) address can also be understood as a profoundly  personal and deeply scornful critique by Goffman of the varieties of  mainstream sociology and the pretensions of its practitioners.  Incorporated into that critique is a simulacrum in which Goffman  demonstrated what a systematic treatment of his work might look like had  he actually been inclined to generate one. In that respect, ‘The  interaction order’ transcends the boundaries of what we ordinarily  expect to find in an academic address: it is simultaneously an artful  display of Goffman’s real vocational commitment to sociology, a  contribution to the rhetorical debate in which he engaged with the  practitioners of orthodox versions of sociology and a brief but  significant demonstration of some aspects he considered distinctive  about his own form of sociology. - Michael Rosenberg (2019) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
1/9/20211 hour, 31 minutes, 6 seconds
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(Mills) The Sociological Imagination

One publisher's description The excerpt that follows is from Mills' acclaimed book, The Sociological Imagination. Since its original publication in 1959, this text has been a required reading for most introductory sociology students around the world. Mills' sociological imagination perspective not only cornpels Lhe besl sociological analyses but also enables the sociologist and the individual to distinguish between "personal troubles" and "public issues." By separating these phenomena, we can better comprehend the sources of and solutions to social problems. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
12/9/202013 minutes, 52 seconds
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(Sacks) Rules of conversational exchange

The first of his famous lectures --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
11/13/202019 minutes, 18 seconds
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(Goffman) Primary Frameworks

from Frame Analysis --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
11/6/202028 minutes, 55 seconds
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(Goffman) Intro to frame analysis

(Goffman) Intro to frame analysis -- Chapter 1. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
11/5/202025 minutes, 29 seconds
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(Tumin) Critique of Davis & Moore

Tumin challenged the Davis–Moore hypothesis of social stratification  with his paper "Some principles of stratification: a critical  analysis".[5][6] Tumin took Davis–Moore to imply that social  stratification was mostly inevitable and provided a positive function  for society. He analyzed the arguments of Davis and Moore and found them  wanting in a number of respects.[6] In a reply to Tumin's paper, Davis  stated that his ideas seek to explain inequality, rather than justify  it. Davis also accused Tumin of a number of errors.[7]  Tumin's 1967 book Social Stratification: The Forms and Functions of  Inequality was widely used as a textbook and was re-issued in 1985.[1] --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
9/24/202034 minutes, 36 seconds
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(Davis and Moore) Some Principles of Stratification

The Davis–Moore hypothesis, sometimes referred to as the Davis–Moore  theory, is a central claim within the structural functionalist paradigm  of sociological theory, and was advanced by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert  E. Moore in a paper published in 1945.[1] The hypothesis is an attempt  to explain social stratification. As a structural functionalist theory,  it is also associated with Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. [from  Wiki, Davis-Moore hypothesis] --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
9/23/202031 minutes, 17 seconds
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(Marx) Manifesto - Selection

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is an 1848 political document by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
9/23/202019 minutes, 14 seconds
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(Calhoun) Cultural Difference and Historical Specificity

Ch. 3 of Critical Social Theory --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
9/21/20201 hour, 10 minutes, 11 seconds
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(Durkheim) On Cohesion and Suicide

From Durkheim's seminal work Suicide, which explores suicide rates in the context of Durkheim's theory of social cohesion is an integral feature of the structure of human society, and as an individual necessity which protects us from self-harm. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
9/21/202030 minutes, 15 seconds
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(Vygotsky) The Role of Play in Development

from Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. 1978 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/22/202035 minutes, 31 seconds
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(Holzner) The Social Organization of Ideological Knowledge

Reality Construction in Society -- Holzner, Ch 10 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/21/202051 minutes, 52 seconds
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(Holzner) Networks of Cognitive Acts and Epistemic Communities

Reality Construction and Society Ch 4 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/18/202032 minutes, 16 seconds
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(Bauman) Utopia and Reality

Bauman delivers on a more useful definition of Utopia. A focus on the creative abilities of humans to choose from among multiple threads from now into the future. That we are not determined by our circumstance, at least not if we (humans) are thinking critically about it! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/8/202022 minutes, 28 seconds
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(Simmel) The Stranger

A classic. Short and sweet. I aspire to be the benevolent stranger, but in Simmel's sense. You would call us friends :) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/1/202017 minutes, 11 seconds
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(Scheff) Human Nature and the Social Bond

Scheff _ Microsociology _ Ch 1 Emotions as central to understanding social interaction, on a micro level. And implicitly an argument that this micro-interaction is crucial in understanding the macro. There's a lot of repeats in this chapter. Wasn't the most well-put-together reading, but there are some really beautiful ideas here. I hope you enjoy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/1/20201 hour, 11 minutes, 11 seconds
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(Mannheim) The Attitude, Subject Matter and Method of Sociology -- a Reopening

Mannheim _ Sociology as Political Ideology _ Lec 10 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alec-mcgail/support
7/1/202022 minutes, 35 seconds