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WiSe 20/21: Theories of Integration

Harald Wenzel

Information for students

Online Asynchronous

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Notions of social integration and social order have long been considered to be constitutive for social theory. More recently, though, this focus has been fading and has given way to both, more basic and more complex conceptualizations of the social. ----- This lecture course presents a sketch of this long trajectory – starting with the most basic forms of social order that already characterize the beginning of human evolution. It offers an overview of the different paradigms and theoretical perspectives that historically have made social order their focus – with an emphasis on normative solutions for the problem of social order. Alternative conceptualizations of the social are explored in contrast to these classical approaches of sociological theory. Their spectrum reaches from Pragmatism to Performative Studies, Ethnomethodology and the work of Bruno Latour. What is driving these alternative conceptualizations? The lecture attempts to provide an answer to this question in pointing to the constitutive dimension of reality. In a time of fake news, alternative facts, filter bubbles and echo chambers a common, socially constructed reality has become increasingly precarious. ----- Recommeded as introductory text: Michele Dillon, Introduction to Sociological Theory: Theorists, Concepts, and their Applicability to the Twenty-First Century, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 2014. close