Part 1: Social Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Text Analysis 1. Introduction 2. Texts, Social Events, and Social Practices 3. Intertextuality and Assumptions Part 2: Genres and Action 4. Genres 5. Meaning Relations between Sentences and Clauses 6. Types of Exchange, Speech Functions, and Grammatical Mood Part 3: Discourses and Representations 7. Discourses 8. Representations of Social Events Part 4: Styles and Identities 9. Styles 10. Modality and Evaluation 11. Conclusion

http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/270695/mod_folder/content/0/ii.%20Norman_Fairclough_Analysing_discourse.pdf?forcedownload=1

Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research

This course will deal with the foundations of social theory, starting with the French and Scottish Enlightenments and the beginnings of a specifically sociological worldview. We will then move on to Durkheim’s organic view of society, to Marx’s dialectical materialism, finishing with Weber’s Verstehen sociology and ideal types of authority. We’ll try to understand their theories not just as historical relics, but as living sets of ideas relevant to contemporary social issues. Class attendance and participation will be strongly encouraged, as will a critical engagement with the ideas presented in the class.

The Foundations of Social Theory

Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a pro cess are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to significantly advance, develops a model of institutionalization as a structuration process, and proposes methodological guidelines for investigating the process empirically.

Institutionalization and Structuration: Studying the Links between Action and Institution:

From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

The New Imperialism

While neorealism and world-system theory both claim to be “structural” theories of international relations, they embody very different understandings of system structure and structural explanation. Neorealists conceptualize system structures in individualist terms as constraining the choices of preexisting state agents, whereas world-system theorists conceptualize system structures in structuralist terms as generating state agents themselves. These differences stem from what are, in some respects, fundamentally opposed solutions to the “agent-structure” or “micromacro” problem. This opposition, however, itself reflects a deeper failure of each theory to recognize the mutually constitutive nature of human agents and system structures—a failure which leads to deep-seated inadequacies in their respective explanations of state action. An alternative solution to the agent-structure problem, adapted from “structuration theory” in sociology, can overcome these inadequacies by avoiding both the reduction of system structures to state actors in neorealism and their reification in world-system theory. Structuration theory requires a philosophical basis in scientific realism, arguably the “new orthodoxy” in the philosophy of natural science, but as yet largely unrecognized by political scientists. The scientific realist/structuration approach generates an agenda for “structural-historical” research into the properties and dispositions of both state actors and the system structures in which they are embedded.

/pdf/the-agent-structure-problem-in-international-relations-xrm8vlqru1.pdf

The agent-structure problem in international relations theory

Introduction. 1. The Jargon of Postmodernity. 2. Modernism and Capitalism. 3. The Aporias of Poststructuralism. 4. The Limits of Communicative Reason. 5. So What Else is New?. Afterword. Notes.

Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique

Epigraph Introduction: Empire of Theory, Theories of Empire Part I: Theory 1. The Classical Legacy 1.1 Continuing Marx's Capital 1.2 Luxemburg's fertile diversion 1.3 The Lenin-Bukharin synthesis 1.4 Organized capitalism and economic crises 1.5 Spectres of ultra-imperialism 2. Capitalism and the State System 2.1 Rethinking the theory of imperialism 2.2 Conceptualizing the state system 2.3 Interests and ideologies Part II: History 3. Capitalism and La Longue Duree 3.1 What is capitalism? 3.2 Markets and empires 3.3 The sinews of capitalist power 4. Ages of Imperialism 4.1 Periodizing imperialism 4.2 Classical imperialism (1870-1945) (i) A liberal world economy (ii) An economically and politically multipolar world (iii) Territorial expansion (iv) Military competition and state capitalism (v) Race and empire 4.3 Superpower imperialism (1945-1991) (i) Open Door imperialism (ii) The partial dissociation of economic and geopolitical competition (iii) The Third World - malign neglect and partial industrialization 5. Imperialism and Global Political Economy Today 5.1 The specificity of American imperialism 5.2 Global capitalism at the Pillars of Hercules? (i) Entrenched uneven development (ii) A persisting crisis of profitability (iii) A redistribution of global economic power (iv) Continuing geopolitical competition

Imperialism and Global Political Economy

Anthony Giddens: A contemporary critique

Race and class

Introduction. An unscheduled event. The revival of social critique. Naming the movement. Another unscheduled event. Chapter 1 Capitalism Against the Planet. So What's the Problem?. Financial Follies. The Perpetual Motion Machine. Accumulation and Catastrophe. The Sword of Leviathan. Chapter 2 Varieties and Strategies. Varieties of Anti--Capitalism. Reform or Revolution?. Chapter 3 Imagining Other Worlds. Anti--Capitalist Values. A Note on Diversity. What's Wrong with the Market?. Why We Need Planning. A Transitional Programme. Afterword. Notes. Index

Alex Callinicos

Papers

Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique

Imperialism and Global Political Economy

Anthony Giddens: A contemporary critique

Race and class

An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto