Modernity and Globalisation
Code
711081021
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Sociologia
Credits
6
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
1. Knowledge and understanding of the transformations in social structures, mind-sets and ways of life triggered by modernity, as well as of the historical, economic and social processes that originated them;
2. Knowledge and understanding of the origins and the concept of globalization, the differend modes of globalizations and their impacts on societies;
3. Knowledge and understanding of the long-term process of globalization, and of the inseparable relationship between the building of modernity and the ongoing implementation of globalization;
4. Ability to problematize and analize the origins, features and impacts of modernity and globalization using available literature and empirical materials;
5. Development of advanced skills in the critical reading of texts and questioning in relation to social contexts under analysis.
6. Ability to communicate knowledge on the above subjects in a meaningful and accurate way.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
1.Modernity: fundamental problems, the theoretical contributions
2.Modernity as a Western project
2.1. Rationality and Westernization
2.2. Secularization, progress and science as ideology
3. Critique of Modernity: Romanticism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism
4. Construction of the modern state
4.1. War and territorially
4.2. Coercion and capital
4.3. Despotic power and infrastructural power
5. The end of modernity or a different modernity?
6. Multiple modernities: Modernities vs. Westernization
7. Globalization: contributions to a definition. One or several globalizations?
8. Nation states, transnational corporations and global networks: Decline of the nation-state?
9. Values, models of society and lifestyles: Homogenization, differentiation and glocalization. The thesis of Macdonaldization and global capitalism
10. Globalization and social inequalities: Integration and exclusion in globalized society.
Bibliography
Berger, P.L. & Huntington, S.P. (eds) (2002). Many globalizations: Cultural diversity in the contemporary world.
Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Eisenstadt S.N. (2007). Múltiplas modernidades. Lisboa: Livros Horizonte.
Wagner, P. (2008). Modernity as experience and interpretation. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Huntington, S.P. (2006). O choque das civilizações e a mudança na ordem mundial. Lisboa: Gradiva.
Ritzer, G. & Atalay, Z. (2010). Readings in globalization: Key concepts and major debates. Londres: Wiley-Blackwell.
Teaching method
1. Lectures (50%).
2. Practical classes (50%): analysis and discussion by the students of sociologically relevant issues; presentation and discussion of texts by teh students, in order to create skills enabling a critical reading of texts.
Evaluation method
Continuous evaluation of students´ participation in classroom exercises and debates (15%). One written essay (30%). Oral presentation of the essay (5%). One written test in class on the whole syllabus (50%).