Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

A study of the sources, development and effects of social movements in transitional and modernized societies. Specific types of movements will be analysed.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course has three main objectives. First, students will get an overview of the main sociological perspectives on social movements, including major examples from Canada and the United States. These movements have had a diverse degree of impact on social change in their respective societies.            

Second, we will plunge into historical and analytical readings by sociologists to understand the background of Donald Trump’s election in the United States, which is likely to have world-changing impacts. This historical event has shaken the U.S. political system to its foundations, and activated all its “moving parts.”

Central among these are, of course, social movements, both from conservative and progressive social actors. Under less tumultuous circumstances than those present in the United States (and therefore in the world) in 2017, social movements arise primarily when there is a representation gap between a significant group of citizens and the political system. Hence the Civil Rights and feminist movements emerged with force in the 1960s.

Social theory expressed the rise of these movements by, among other things, developing the conceptual apparatus to understand the intersections of various roots of oppression, such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc. But there was a conservative backlash during the 1970s, which resulted in Ronald Reagan’s elections as U.S. president in 1980.

A new momentum for progressive forces seemed to have arrived in 2008, during the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930: the election of Barack Obama in 2008. But, again, this seeming recovery of liberal and progressive forces was short lived. The Tea Party movement emerged with force soon after his inauguration, capturing a conservative and mostly White constituency that transformed the Republican Party. This party recovered its full dominance of the U.S. Congress by 2010, making it virtually impossible for the Obama administration to advance its progressive agenda.

By 2017, of the 50 U.S. states, 33 had Republican governors and 25 also dominated the state legislatures: one-party states. The theoretical and historical readings in this course will offer students a way of understanding the ominous 2017 political conjuncture in the United States and beyond.              

Our third main goal is to get students engaged in the practice of sociology through bibliographic research. The chief purpose of this research, which should result in a final term paper, is to integrate some of the required course readings with the analysis of a specific social movement in Canada or the United States (other countries may be addressed with the instructor’s consent). Highly recommended movements to address term papers are: Idle No More and the anti-Kinder Morgan pipeline in Canada, and Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock (water defenders) movements in the United States. Comparative papers on any two of these movements are also welcome.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

The course will be run as a combination of lectures, films and seminar discussions. The seminar portion of the class will address readings, films and/or sometimes current-news articles related to the week’s topic. Here is how it will function:

The professor will lecture during the first 50-60 minutes of the class, sometimes supplementing with a film on social movements under consideration. Lecture themes will supplement those of the readings, provide a broader theoretical or historical context, and make sure that the key concepts and historical issues addressed in the readings are well understood.

The seminar part of our class requires your preparation and involvement to further disentangle class materials. Webster's Dictionary defines a seminar as a "group of advanced students studying under a professor with each doing original research and all exchanging results through reports or discussions." Reports, in our case, will be the weekly discussion papers or responses—five of each through the term.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: