Subject: Reading Durkehim, Weber and Marx

These are very general guidelines - I am sure that, in terms of your own interests each one of you has one or two special points of comparison.

1. Concept of human nature and society - relationship between man and society.
2. Underlying values
3. Modes of scientific analysis
4. The origins of capitalism/modern industrial society
5. The main sources of social change
6. The main characteristics of capitalist modern industrial society
7. The preconditions or presuppositions of capitalist behavior
8. The role of the economy and economic relations in social change
9. The role of ideas in society and in social change
10. The role of technology in social change
11. The significance of the social division of labor
12. The significance of the technical division of labor
13. The social consequences of the pursuit of self-interest
14. The basis of the social order
15. The determinants of class differences, cooperation and conflict.
16. The significance of status differences and class differences
17. Anomie, alienation, rationalization of the world, the iron cage. Do these concepts refer to similar or related phenomena? Which? What does each perspective contribute to our understanding of the problems inherent in contemporary capitalist industrial societies?
18. Bureaucracy and the state - relationship between economic power, social power and political power.
19. The social and political significance of religion and morality
20. What vision of sociology have you received from each author? What is sociology for?
21. Possible solutions to the problems inherent in modern capitalist societies.

Given our limited readings, some of these topics are more appropriate for comparing only two of the authors.