300161 Basics of Sociology (V) (WiSe 2024/2025)

This set of lectures will introduce you to the main strands of contemporary social thought. We will start from what are usually taken to be the basic elements constitutive of social affairs or the basic stuff that the social world is supposed to be made of, i.e. behavior, action, decision, praxis, and communication. Next, we will focus on their respective social embeddings and articulation in terms of systems of mutual expectations, role-arrangements, institutions or social fields giving orientation, shape and meaning to our doings. In the second half of this course we will be concerned with the long term evolution and differentiation of society at large, take a closer look at some of its modern subsystems, figure out what makes them tick and finally attempt brief excursions to get a better theoretical grip on questions of exclusion, the repeated failure of protest movements since the beginning of the century, the place of fairness norms and justice in contemporary society, and the ecological disaster we seem to get closer to.