Advanced Sociological Theory: Modelling Social Interaction

Course goals

At the end of the course, the student has built up elementary expertise in:

• Understanding the rationale and logic of "analytical" approaches to sociological theory;
• Understanding key examples of game-theoretical models based on this logic as applied to the problem of cooperation;
• Using formal theoretical tools for generating tentative answers to explanatory problems in the form of explanatory theories and models;
• Deriving testable hypotheses from explanatory theories and models;
• Critically comparing and evaluating sociological theories;
• Communicating effectively in an academic context in English, both verbally and in writing.

Content

This is an intermediate undergraduate level course on theory formation and model building in Sociology. Thus the course focuses on the `Theory' , in the `Problems-Theory-Empirical research-Policy implications'-sequence that characterizes the various steps in analytical social science.
The focus is on the common `logic' underlying different, sometimes competing but also often complementary sociological approaches.

We discuss the core steps involved in theory formation and model building: the formulation of problems (societal problems as well as sociological problems), (re)construction of theories, derivation of testable hypotheses from general theories, and generating policy recommendations using sociological theories as well as results of empirical research. A focus on carefully designed arguments is a characteristic feature of the course: what assumptions do we need in order to derive certain implications? What implications follow from a certain set of assumptions? This includes making assumptions explicit which often remain implicit in theoretical reasoning.

Another feature of the course is that we carefully reconstruct the links between propositions on the micro-level of individual behavior and propositions on the macro-level of social phenomena and processes. For this purpose, we introduce students to theoretical tools such as game theory and agent-based modeling. The course proceeds from examples of sociological analyses, primarily focusing on problems of order and cooperation (sometimes referred to as the problem of cohesion).

NB: the course is taught in English.


Assumed knowledge

• The course builds upon the earlier BA1-course 'Introduction to Sociology (course language Dutch)'. Expertise on the level of this BA-1 course or an equivalent introduction to sociological theory is required
• Sound knowledge of the English language.

Knowledge can be gained

Students who did not follow 'Introduction to Sociology' are expected to have knowledge of sociological theory on the level of a textbook such as: Van Tubergen, Frank. (2020). Introduction to sociology. London: Routledge.