Aims

- The ability to analyse the processes of structuring societies.
- A knowledge of the basic logic of social morphology.

Main themes

To analyse the origins and effects of social stratifications by linking them to the notion of exchange, negotiation and transaction. To provide an understanding of the phenomena of power in its various social spaces and circumstances. The course will target the logics that traverse these phenomena, taking account of the social structures that condition them and the nature of the issues of the actors and events concerned.

Content and teaching methods

Content
- The first part analyses the formation of unequal positions on the basis of the diversity of the sections and large number of fields of activity. This will lead to a characterisation of power as a property of the social structure, and to an examination of society and of the phenomena of domination and mass, the state and "social formation".
- The second part will gather together the elements referred to above and situate them in a perspective of social exchange. This social exchange will itself be the starting point for a temporal sequence of short- and long-term evolution. The shift from individual action to collective action in particular will be addressed here, and will lead on to an examination of the notion of social class, the institution and collective identity, institutional transcendence, and orthodoxy and the legitimation of power.
- This analytical scheme will be complexified in the third part by the incorporation of the psychic dynamic and the relationship with materiality. This materiality will be both a technical and a symbolic resource.
- This will be followed by a study of the general setting in which social life unfolds. This will lead to an analysis of forms of regulation and their links with the social structure, and to a typology of societies (e.g. clan, caste, class and mass). In this context, there will be an examination of the source of the dynamic games of power, the collective actor and the individual as a "state-project", identifications to referential bodies, and masks of power.
Methodology
The course will provide reading back in addition to professorial talks.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment: Group work.
Support: A bibliography.
Supervision: Individual and group supervision.

Programmes in which this activity is taught

Other credits in programs