Spring Semester 2003 Thomas Burger
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00-3:40pm 3432 Faner Hall
Faner 2204 453-7629
Office Hours:
Tu, Th 9:00-11:00am
Wed 12:00-2:00 pm

The Senior Seminar is intended to provide students close to completion of a major in sociology with an opportunity to comprehensively put to use and test the information and skills they have acquired over the course of the program. To this end I have organized the seminar essentially as a reading and discussion group; I hope to hold formal lecturing to a minimum so that sessions can be devoted above all to class discussion of, and reflection about, various issues raised in assigned readings. In an effort to open up a broad set of topics I selected two somewhat demanding books — to be read almost in their entirety – which between them cover a vast territory. One - Putnam’s Bowling Alone - offers a wide-ranging diagnosis of what ails American civil society; the other - Wilson’s The Declining Significance of Race - provides a perspective on race relations in the U.S. Both books are interesting not merely as technical treatises as they speak directly to central issues confronting anyone who chooses not to be completely oblivious to the collective dynamics within which his or her life is embedded.

A student’s grade will be determined by the quality of a 15-page paper (50% of the overall grade) and by the quality of his/her classroom participation (50% of the overall grade). The paper topic is of the student’s choosing, but should be based on, or related to assigned readings. Participation will involve the following: (a) brief summaries of two (2) assigned readings, to be presented in class; (b) sets of written questions/problems for class discussion, relating to four (4) different reading assignments; (c) all sorts of oral contributions in class aimed at clarifying issues relevant to the topic(s) under consideration.

Texts: Robert D. Putnam: Bowling Alone. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

William Julius Wilson: The Declining Significance of Race. 2nd ed. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, l980.

Schedule

Jan 14 Organizational Matters
Jan. 16 Democracy: Citizen Involvement and Mass Society
(Putnam, chapter 1)
Jan. 21 Political Participation (Putnam, chapter 2)
Jan. 23 Civic Participation (Putnam, chapter 3)
Jan. 28 Religious Participation (Putnam, chapter 4)
Jan. 30 Workplace Connections (Putnam, chapter 5)
Feb. 4 Informal Involvements (Putnam, chapter 6)
Feb. 6 Altruism (Putnam, chapter 7)
Feb. 11 Reciprocity and Trust (Putnam, chapter 8)
Feb. 13 Social Movements (Putnam, chapter 9)
Feb. 18 Issues of Explanation (Putnam, chapter 10)
Feb. 20 Too Much Work (Putnam, chapter 11)
Feb. 25 Too Much Dispersion (Putnam, chapter 12)
Feb. 27 Too Much TV (Putnam, chapter 13)
Mar. 4 Exit of the Civic Generation (Putnam, chapter 14 & 15)
Mar. 6 Children’s Welfare (Putnam, chapters 16 & 17)
Mar. 18 Neighborliness (Putnam, chapter 18)
Mar. 20 Prosperity (Putnam, chapter 19)
Mar. 25 Happiness (Putnam, chapter 20)
Mar. 27 Democracy (Putnam, chapter 21)
Apr. 1 Tolerance (Putnam, chapter 22)
Apr. 3 Concluding Reflections
Apr. 8 Race, Class, Political Domination (Wilson, chapter 1)
Apr. 10 Planter Dominance and Paternalism (Wilson, chapter 2)
Apr. l5 Southern Workers and Segregation (Wilson, chapter 3)
Apr. 17 Black Migration and Northern Industrialism
(Wilson, chapter 4)
Apr. 22 The Black Ghetto (Wilson, chapter 5)
Apr. 24 The Black Middle Class (Wilson, chapter 6)
Apr. 29 Race and Economic Opportunity (Wilson, chapter 7)
May 1 Concluding Discussion