Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon
Examples of Honors College Social Science Colloquia
HC 431H
Professor John Orbell
HC SOCIAL SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
"Evolution, Cooperation and Ethics"
What is the relevance of modern evolutionary psychology for the roots of human political and social behavior in particular, cooperative and ethically-bound behaviors? Classic and modern political and ethical theories (e.g., Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, as well as Modern Political Economy and much Feminist theory) are, characteristically, founded on assumptions about human behavior. Evolutionary psychology lets us evaluate those assumptions and, therefore, provides a basis from which such theories can be reassessed---at the same time providing a bridge between the life sciences and the social sciences. There are major but often isolated literatures relevant to this issue in Decision Theory, Biology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Ethics and Political Science. We will look at some literature from all of those fields.
HC 431H
Professor Caleb Southworth
HC SOCIAL SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
"Economic Sociology"
Economic sociology attempts to explain the social context in which economic laws function. The economy itself - particularly the historical origins of markets and capitalism - are a classical area of inquiry within sociology. To oversimplify the differences between economic sociology and economics, we could say that economics is particularly interested in the development and testing of economic laws within markets, whereas economic sociology explores the conditions under which markets or economic institutions come into existence. Of course, many economists and sociologists study similar problems. And economic sociology is related to the psychology of individual choice, political economy, and economic history. In short, economic sociology is the sociological perspective applied to economic phenomena.
What do economic sociologists study? You will develop a sophisticated answer to this question by the end of the course, but let's consider three well-known studies. One investigator examined the importance of social networks (web of acquaintances) were involved in finding a job. His surprising conclusion was that weak ties (people other than friends and family) were more important than strong ties. Another study examined how a market for life insurance was developed in the 1900s despite such a commodity being termed "ghoulish" and "immoral." The author concludes that economic necessity and demand were not central in creating this market, rather ideological and cultural factors were causal. A third study of "informal work" in both Latin America and cities in the United States found that people often engaged in off-the-books, unregulated employment that does not appear in official statistics. While some economists theorized that such marginal work, such as scavenging, petty reselling, and home agriculture, should disappeared as the labor market and economy expanded during industrialization, economic sociologists found that some large manufacturing firms in industrial economies employed informal workers.
HC 431H
Professor Joseph Fracchia
HC SOCIAL SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
"Bodies and Artifacts"
We tend to think of artifacts as remnants or shards, as archaeological finds that provide some clue to a culture that has disappeared. But the term "artifact" means quite literally "made objects". Understood as made objects, artifacts are everywhere; the made worlds that we inhabit are worlds of artifacts. Perhaps because of the association of artifacts with archaeology, we also tend to think of artifacts as material objects. But languages, ideas, symbols, and metaphors are also made objects; they do not simply exist in nature, but are produced, made by human beings living in particular socio-cultural contexts. But why do human beings produce artifacts? It is certainly true that the human species produces artifacts because it can (and is essentially the only species that can). But this is also a trivial observation. More to the point is Elaine Scarry's observation that the human being is "the interior structure of artifacts". By this Scarry means both that all artifacts are produced because they pertain to some aspect of (a need, want, or desire deriving from) human corporeal form, and that all artifacts can be produced because of the capacities and dexterities, as well as the needs, limits, and constraints embedded in human corporeal form. And she concludes that through the production of artifacts, human beings remake the world in their own corporeal image. These are the themes that will be addressed in this course which will be divided into two parts: one focusing on semiotic artifacts (language, symbolic forms), and one focusing on material artifacts. In both parts we will be concerned with understanding the body as "the interior structure of the artifact." Readings will drawn from a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics, philosophy, and literary studies to anthropology and history. The major written assignments are a paper and final exam.
This course is built around the topic of an essential part of my current book project. What I have in mind for the course is not only to focus on my work in progress, but also to integrate student papers into my book project. This part of the book will consist first of a theoretical framework which I shall present in the class and then of a series of vignettes that exemplify how that framework might be used in individual analyses. The paper assignment is to write such a vignette which will be a study of the relation of the human body (or what I will call corporeality) to a specific artifact or set of artifacts produced within a given socio-cultural form. I am hoping to include some or all of the student papers in this part of the book. The authors of those papers included will be fully acknowledged and get a publication on their curriculum vitae. For this reason, the course will require a serious commitment to doing a great deal of thought about, discussion of, and reflection on a new way of looking at the artifacts we produce and the made worlds we inhabit.
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