London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Modules

Historical sociology [144]

Prerequisite (if taken as part of a BSc degree):
21 Principles of sociology

Sociology and history. A critical introduction to theories and ideas about the nature and meaning of historical change and development in Enlightenment, Hegelian, Marxist, neo-Marxist, liberal and post-structuralist and postcolonial thought; an introduction to historical sociology as a sub-discipline and the relationship between history and sociology as disciplines; a consideration of the centrality of the state and its development to historical sociological traditions; the emergence and development of the state form in different historical/sociological perspectives.

The emergence of the early modern state. A survey of historical state forms through ancient empires, the feudal state to the early modern state; a comparison of ancient ‘imperial’, feudal and early modern state forms; consideration of theoretical models that describe the transition from feudal to early modern states.

The development of the modern state. Key concerns in the formation of liberal democratic, welfare and ‘totalitarian’ states; examination of continuities and discontinuities between absolutist, liberal democratic/welfare, constitutional and ‘totalitarian’ state forms; consideration of questions of revolution and social change, governmentality, ‘population’ and the emergence of ‘bio-political’ concerns.

Nationalism and imperialism. An examination of the centrality of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a consideration of European colonial and imperial expansionism in the same period.

Globalisation, the postcolonial situation and neo-imperialism. A consideration of the emergence of ‘globalisation’; theoretical models of ‘globalisation’ and their historical context; an examination of contemporary geo-political formations in a historical context.

Historical sociology and histories of everyday life. Preceding chapters have adopted a macro-sociological approach to central issues in the development of the modern world; here we look at historical sociological work that has taken issues such as labour and class identity, gender, madness and ‘deviance’etc as its themes and ask what these issues can tell us about historical forms of power and domination.