Politics, State and Society – theoretical reflections in a historical context (6-10 December 2010)

Faculty
Lars Bo Kaspersen og Jeppe Strandsbjerg

Course Coordinator
Lars Bo Kapsersen

There are no prerequisites as such but it will help with a social science background.

This is a new and innovative course and it aims at introducing and analyzing key concepts within political theory and political sociology in order to think imaginatively about contemporary political and societal issues. The course provides knowledge about the political and social context of the markets, the state-market relationship, the distinction between the public and the private. Moreover, the provides insights to the rise and development of the most important organization and how this organization has enabled the emergence of other private and public organizations.

This is a new and innovative course and it aims at introducing and analyzing key concepts within political theory and political sociology in order to think imaginatively about contemporary political and societal issues. The course is highly relevant for PhD-students from many disciplines such as politics, sociology, anthropology, humanities, law, economics, and political economy.

The course adopts a theoretical and historical approach. It traces the development of key issues in political sociology and political theory in order to discuss their relevance to contemporary political discourse. We begin with a discussion of conceptual issues that are generic to political theory and political sociology in that they underlie many of the problems and debates in the field. We will examine classical and more recent theoretical attempts to found politics and the concept of the state within society. The course will then proceed to a discussion of conceptions of political modernity in social theory, ranging over a number of approaches and issues. The course also examines selected social theories on the nature of politics and political institutions in relation to the modern state and its society. Certain key issues and concepts, such as, power, state, society, politics, economy, space (in the form of territory), market, citizenship and the relation between state, society and political agency are introduced. These concepts will be discussed by focusing on Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, C. Schmitt, the British Pluralists, different International Relations traditions, Foucault, Habermas, Latour, and others.

The course is "modern" in the sense that it starts of from the sixteenth century where the main forms of – and attitudes to – politics, that have prevailed until today, first emerged. In this period the state became the primary political community, claiming an exclusive sovereignty over a given territory, and politics became recognized as a distinct sphere of activity with its own conditions and practices. We begin with Machiavelli, who gives coherent expression to the specificity and autonomy of politics, that is a specific field of action and is not to be confused with the pursuit of the "good life" as it was in the Greek concept of the polis or with being the necessary outward form of a Christian community pursuing salvation as it was with St. Augustine or St Thomas Aquinas. We move forward in time ending with contemporary political theory and political sociology as it is presented by Foucault, IR-theorists, Habermas and others.

The course is very explicitly focusing on political theory and political sociology and not the history of political thought. It thus excludes many writers who do not match the conditions of objectivity and conceptual rigour necessary to count as theorists. It also excludes theorists, however skilful and subtle, whose problems are no longer of central importance in politics. The first criterion excludes a brilliant publicist like Benito Mussolini and the latter a subtle reasoner like Francisco de Vittoria. The test of an enduring political theory is that it emerges in a definite political context, that is, it deals with specific problems created by the politics of its time, but that it uses concepts and a method of reasoning to deal with those problems that make it of wider relevance and more than mere opinion or ideology. Political theory is not a science, but it is a relatively rigorous form of knowledge. Political theorists survive their own context because they created concepts that we can use either to think problems that are enduring or to reason about very different circumstances in a constructive way.

Phd-students completing this course will have been instructed in close reading of the ‘classic’ texts of social and political theory, dealing with the state, politics and social processes, and will have acquired clear perspectives on these issues. They will also have developed a sense of the continuities with and departures from political theory and political sociological thought. They will have acquired the skills of reading texts critically and analytically, and the ‘arts’ of constructing and de-constructing conceptions and arguments.

Lecture plan

Time/period	Faculty	Title
Monday
10.00 - 11.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen og Jeppe Strandsbjerg	Welcome and Introduction: What are political theory and political sociology
11.00 - 12.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	The Greek and Medieval heritage
12.00 - 13.00		Lunch
13.00 - 16.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Machiavelli & Hobbes: Stato, Leviathan, the Covenant and Politics
16.00 - 17.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	The relevance of classical theoretical heritage
Tuesday
9.00 - 11.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Montesquieu: The Corp intermediare
11.00 - 13.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Hegel: the Modern State
13.00 - 14.00		Lunch
14.00 - 15.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Marx’ critique of Hegel
15.00 - 17.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Marx’ alternative to Hegel
Wednesday
9.00 - 10.30	Jeppe Strandsbjerg	The Marxist heritage (Althusser, Lefevre, Harvey)
10.30 - 12.30	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Durkheim on Politics and the State
12.30 - 13.00		Lunch
13.00 - 15.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Weber on Politics and the State
15.00 - 17.00	Jeppe Strandsbjerg	Space, territory and politics
Thursday
09.00 - 11.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	The British Pluralists, Associationalism, Civil Society and Voluntary Associations
11.00 - 12.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen	Associative Democracy
12.00 - 13.00		Lunch
13.00 - 14.30	Guest Lecturer	Carl Schmitt and the critique of liberal democracy
14.30 - 17.00	Jeppe Strandsbjerg	The Inside and the Outside’: State, territory and the international order (IR-perspectives)
Friday
9.00 - 11.00	Jeppe Strandsbjerg	Foucault, Politics, and the Social Order
11.00 - 12.00	Jeppe Strandsbjerg	Latour on Politics
12.00 - 13.00		Lunch
13.00 - 15.00	Guest Lecturer	Habermas: Constitutionalism, State, Law and Politics
15.00 - 17.00	Lars Bo Kaspersen og Jeppe Strandsbjerg	The future of politics, state, and society

Lectures and seminars

The participants will receive a compendium with selected readings of the thinkers and theories to be discussed. The participants are expected to read selections of Aristotle, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Laski, Schmitt, Foucault, Latour, Harvey and others.

As supplementary reading or to prepare for the course we recommend to read one of the two books below.

David Boucher, Paul Kelly (eds) (2003), Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McClelland, J.S. (1996 or later), A History of Western Political Thought, London: Routledge.