ASOK15101U Advanced Knowledge, Organization and Politics

This is the core mandatory course for the MA specialization in Knowledge, Organization and Politics. The course reviews a range of central theoretical-analytical perspectives and empirical studies, each contributing to the sociological analysis of the ways in which society is organized and governed as well as the role(s) played by the production and use of knowledge in different organizational and political fields. For this purpose, analytical tools from three branches of sociology will be introduced and discussed: organizational sociology, sociology of knowledge, and political sociology. The mutual relations, overlaps, and tensions between  these subject areas and fields serve as the object of both theoretical and empirical analysis, as well as being put to use by students in their independent project work, i.e. inquiries into a chosen topic or problematic within the thematic field.

The course is structured along two main analytical axes. First, we read and analyze core sociological texts dealing with politically central forms of societal organization, at and across micro-, meso- and macro-sociological levels of analysis (municipalities, state bureaucracies, social movements, professional elites, multinational companies, international organizations etc.). Second, we introduce and discuss a range of theoretical-analytical perspectives relevant for the thematic field (neo-institutional organizational theory, neo-Weberian sociology of professions, Bourdieu-inspired field analyses, pragmatic-sociological convention theory etc.).

In this context, one central question running throughout the course is how knowledge and power come to relate in specific organizational contexts, and how we might understand and analyze such contexts in terms of concepts such as validity, legitimacy, conflict, and democracy. Here, we link our analyses to contemporary and central sociological discussions on such themes as the knowledge- and risk society, neo-liberalism, and globalization. These and related theoretical-analytical concepts will be used as tools for contextualizing the project-based inquiries within the thematic field which students will carry out and discuss in-between themselves throughout the entirety of the course.