Index # 08773
Will Count Towards Sociology MAJOR
Will Count Towards Sociology MINOR
The exuberant confidence we felt 25-30 years ago that democracy would triumph globally in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union is evaporating. Right-wing authoritarian and stridently nationalist governments and political parties are ascendant all over the world—from China, to India, to Turkey, to Hungary, to Brazil, to the United States. While capitalist markets—supposedly the historical companion of democracy—have proven capable of generating considerable wealth, that wealth is dramatically unevenly distributed, as much or more than it was in the time of Renaissance princes and prelates. Democracy and equality are more and more detached from each other. Destitution remains a way of life for literally billions of human beings. A global super-rich class and ruling classes within nation-states wield awesome power, often achieved by dubious means, and secured by increasingly potent weapons of surveillance and information control. Politics more and more traffics in emotions, activated through subliminally delivered messages and campaigns of disinformation. Alternative facts challenge actual facts. The mildly disadvantaged are urged to think of the truly disadvantaged as a threat to their well-being. Meanwhile the planet deteriorates at an alarming rate.
Can we escape the dystopian future that seems in store for us? Is liberal democracy all it is cracked up to be, or is it fundamentally flawed? What do the terms liberal democracy, populism, and capitalism even mean? How might we achieve a more balanced form of economic growth and an expanding commitment to human rights? What is the psychological basis of 21st century mass politics? This course will discuss these enormously big topics, drawing on a few classic readings in political economy and political sociology (Gramsci, Schumpeter, Polanyi, Domhoff), some 21st century classics on the global order (e.g., Hardt and Negri), and a number of contemporary scholarly and public intellectual accounts of the brewing crises.
About Professor McLean
Paul McLean's research has focused on exploring the connections between multiple kinds of social networks—marriage networks, economic networks, and political patronage networks chiefly—and describing the cultural practices and identities that actors adopt to move within and across these networks. He has examined the development of elaborate strategies of self-presentation and the emergence of a quasi-modern conception of the self in Renaissance Florence in articles (AJS 104: 51-91 [1998], CSSH 47: 638-64 [2005]) and in his book, The Art of the Network (Duke UP, 2007). His recent book, Culture in Networks (Polity, 2017) provides an overview of research on the culture-networks link across a variety of interfaces, both historical and contemporary—including research on diffusion, social movement mobilization, clientage structures, topic modelling, the formation of tastes, organizational cultures, and social media usage. Some of his work on Florence has been collaboratively produced, including studies of Florentine market structure and organizational emergence with John Padgett of the University of Chicago (T&S 26: 209-44 [1997], AJS 111: 1463-1568 [2006], Journal of Modern History 83: 1-47 [2011]), and work on the structure and 'logics' of interpersonal credit exchange with Neha Gondal of Boston University (Social Networks 35: 499-513 [2013], Poetics 41: 122-50 [2013], EJS/AES 55: 135-76 [2014]). He is currently pursuing an interest in consumer credit in the Renaissance. In addition, McLean has examined the political organization of Polish elites in the early modern period (T&S 33: 167-212 [2004], Annals 636: 88-110 [2011]), looking at that organization and its evolution as the product of multiple-network dynamics. More recent interests include the idea of chance in the Renaissance, the social theory of Adam Smith, networking dynamics and career trajectories in academia, divisiveness in contemporary American political culture, and the organization of videogame play (Soc Forum 27: 961-85 [2012]).