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Social change and transition is frequently the outcome of crises. But crises don’t just happen. They are caused by complex social forces whose effects are multi-faceted and not always entirely predictable. The sociological perspective was in many ways a product of Enlightenment thinking in the eighteenth century and came into its own during the industrial revolution and social upheavals of the nineteenth century. Sociologists have long sought to understand the dynamics of social change and have also provided trenchant critiques of various ideologies of social change. In this module we will examine Five Big Ideas put forward by a range of social theorists and political philosophers in their attempts to account for social change. Each of these Big Ideas - Liberalism, Marxism, Democracy, Feminism and Post-modernism- will be approached through a sociological lens that will focus on ideology and subjectivity; the constitution of knowledge; the exercise of power and its resistance, and the possibility/impossibility of social change.
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FIVE BIG IDEAS FOR PHD STUDENTS
