Course Details

1. Explain and critically discuss the descriptions, orientations and developments of social reality, experience, and speculation.
2. Develop the fundamental, consequential and conceptual relations of interpretational mechanisms of social theories to a level that enables the construction of basic social theoretical schemata and examples.
3. Reproduction of social theories in practical situations.

Introduction to social theory: the necessity of social theory.

The pioneers and classics of social theory.

Dogmatic and critical minds. Socio- Theoretical,  typical stances (dogmatic, reflective, eclectic, critical, dialectic).

Pluralism of sociological methods: analytic, insightful, sociological, cultural-historical, structuralist, psychoanalytical. Fundamental questions on sociological methods.

Theories of Action: Talcot Parsons and contemporary social theory, Structural  functionalism.  New functionalism and the conflict theory. Phenomenological interaction. Phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology. The theory of structuralism.

Theories of Structure: structuralism. Marxist structuralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism.

Critical theory: the School of Frankfurt.

• Reader with a collection of articles.
• Ι.Craib, Σύγχρονη Κοινωνική Θεωρία, Αθήνα, Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 1998.
• Σύγχρονη Κοινωνική Θεωρία, Τόμοι 1,2, Επιμέλεια Μαρία Πετμεζίδου, Πανεπιστημιακές εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 1998.

• Mouzelis N. (2008), Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing. Bridging the Divide, Oxford: Cambrdige University Press.
• Timasheff N.S & Theodrson G.A. (1983), Ιστορία των κοινωνιολογικών θεωριών, Αθήνα: Gutenberg.