Comprehensive Exams: Social Scientific Resources

IV. Social Scientific Resources

(Indented items recommended)

• Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition (Doubleday, 1958).
• Bellah, Robert. “Religious Evolution” and “Civil Religion in America” in Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World(University Of California Press, 1991 [1971]).
• Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Anchor Books of Doubleday, 1967).
• Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in Society (The Free Press of Macmillan, 1964 [1933]).
  • – read Introduction (pp. 39-46), Book One (pp. 49-229), ch. 5 of Book Two (pp. 329-50), and Conclusion (pp. 396-409).
• Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Free Press of Macmillan, 1965).
  • – read Introduction (pp. 13-33), Book One, ch. 1 (pp. 37-63), Book Two, chs. 5-7 (pp. 194-272), Conclusion (pp. 462-96).
  • Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1981).
• Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).
  • Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism (1938).
• Geertz, Clifford. Three essays in The Interpretation of Cultures (HarperCollins, 1973):
  • 1) “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” (pp. 3-30)
  • 2) “Religion as a Cultural System” (pp. 87-125)
  • 3) “Ethos, World View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols” (pp. 126-141)
  • Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice (1979).
  • Habermas, Jurgen, The Theory of Communicative Action, Trans. T. McCarthy (2 vols., Beacon Press, 1989).
  • Hamilton, Alexander; Madison, James; Jay, John, The Federalist (1788).
  • Harrington, Michael. Socialism (Bantam, 1973).
  • Heilbroner, Robert. The Making of Modern Economic Society (9 th ed., Prentiss-Hall, 1993).
  • Lindblom, Charles E. Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems (Basic Books, 1977).
  • MacPherson, C.B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford University Press, 1962).
  • Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia, Trans. L. Wirth, E. Shils (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1936).
• Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, Part I; The Communist Manifesto; and “On Wage Labor and Capital” in Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (W.W. Norton, 1972).
• Parsons, Talcott, “Christianity and Modern Industrial Society,” Sociological Theory and Modern Society (Free Press, 1967), pp. 385-421.
  • Piaget, Jean. The Moral Judgment of the Child. Trans. M. Gabain (Free Press, 1965).
  • Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations (1776).
• de Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, 2 vols. Trans. H. Reeve (Schocken Press, 1961).
  • Toennies, Ferdinand. Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. C.P. Loomis (Harper and Row, 1957).
• Troeltsch, Ernst. The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, 2 vols. Trans. Olive Wyon (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992 [1931]). Read pp. 39-64, 89-100, 201-5, 280-302, 477-94, 652-61, 991-1013.
• Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. T. Parsons (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958).
• Weber, Max. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (Oxford University Press, 1948). Read the following selections:
  • 1) “Politics as a Vocation” (pp. 77-128)
  • 2) “Bureaucracy” (pp. 196-244)
  • 3) “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority” (pp. 245-52)
  • 4) “The Social Psychology of the World Religions” (pp. 267-301)