SOC 3312 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Talcott Parsons, Post-Structuralism, Contemporary Sociology

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3312
• Professor: Abdoulaye Gueye

Document Summary

Germans and americans have dominated the discussion: one of the founding fathers is french: durkheim, french theory has been marginalized from the 40s to 60s, represented by foucault and lyotard. The questions that will guide today: what are post-structuralism and post-modernism, what are the main components of each, what social transformation has made possible the rise (emergence) the rise of these two theories. Two notions and their meanings: the first thing you notice is that both of them share the prefix of post . It means after: what this prefix is meant to highlight is the effort of these theorists to distance themselves from two dominant theories in the 40s up until the 60s, these two dominant theories are structuralism and modernism. It is trying to convey the fact that we have moved beyond structuralism or beyond modernism to bring something new theoretically speaking to understand are current social life.