Rise Of The Avatar

Simmel offered many different social types that individuals become through their interactions with others, including the poor, the renegade, and the “man in the middle.” Each of these social types reflects elements of the wider social structure, or the networks and contexts in which the individual lives and operates. His most famous social type is the stranger, which comes about through distance from others. Read the short essay carefully and then answer the following questions about this issue of distance.

Mead suggested that the self emerges through social interaction, particularly when we are able to take on the roles and perspectives of others. More generally, his pragmatist approach centers on practical ways we build and acquire knowledge, and his interest in everyday experience is evident in his writings and lectures. In this selection, Mead illustrates how the self is generated through the role-taking process. Answer the following questions as you move through the reading.

The United Nations estimates that, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. More than a century earlier, Georg Simmel reflected on the effects city living had on the minds of city dwellers in his essay, “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” As you read the essay, answer the following questions, but also think about how living in cities today resembles or perhaps runs counter to Simmel’s observations.

In the History of Sexuality, Foucault tackles how power operates through discourses on sex. Much like Discipline and Punish, Foucault illustrates how power did not repress sexual desires and behaviors, as many have suggested, but instead produced a ton of discourse and knowledge about it, making sexuality part of our identity. It is a difficult reading but is well worth the effort. Answer the following questions after completing it.

Zygmunt Bauman describes the fluidity and instability of contemporary society as “liquid modernity.” Living in a “liquid” society means that our identities are no longer grounded in long-standing social norms and meanings but are instead transforming at a rapid pace, making us “tourists” in search of many fly-by-night social experiences. Answer the following questions after completing the reading.

The beginning of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish is grim. Its vivid portrait of the torture and execution of Robert François-Damiens illustrates just how much the modern penal system has come. However, Discipline and Punish is not just a book about prisons—it is also about how bodies are disciplined and controlled. Answer the following questions after completing the reading.

Frantz Fanon’s two most important works—Black Skin, White Masks and Wretched of the Earth—contain some of the most powerful prose you may ever come across in a social theory class. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon looks at the insidious role language plays in the subjugation of the colonized. Answer the following questions after completing the reading.

Collins’s powerful work challenges us to rethink what we think we know not just about race and gender, but also about knowledge itself. As you read this selection from Black Feminist Thought, reflect on how Collins is using the lived experience of Black women to challenge the dominant epistemologies of many classical theorists you’ve read, and then answer the following questions.

A fascinating look into the social and cultural origins of human consciousness from the perspective of evolutionary theory.

Simmel’s groundbreaking study of how the advent of money shapes individuality and the social order.