Vorlesungsverzeichnis

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Veranstaltungen von Prof. Dr. Christian Welzel

Lehrveranstaltungen

Introduction to Political Sociology and Political Culture (Vorlesung)

Inhalt: The course aims to introduce students to the basic concepts of political sociology and political culture. It describes origins of state and power, the nature of political process and action, what factors shape and influence them. In contrast to the general political science and political theory the course mainly focuses on the individual political attitudes and behavior, group actions, the way how individuals and groups manifest political behavior and affect politics at different levels. The course address peculiarities of totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic political systems by comparing the social and cultural principles that underlie them. We will examine the historical background to the development of democracy, the drivers of emancipatory values and democratic principles. An important component of the course is a discussion of the principles of political culture formation, the factors that maintain its stability, change it or destroy it. We will link the discussion of the functioning of political culture at the macro level to an understanding of how it manifests itself at the micro level. To do so, we will look at specific empirical studies that allow us to come close to understanding how people understand politics, what determines people's political attitudes, and what people base their political action on. The lecture course consists of three core units. The first unit of the course focuses on the origins and status quo of existing forms of social and political relations. In particular, this unit examines the principles of state formation and power relations, the principles of political culture underlying totalitarian, dictatorial and democratic regimes. The second module looks at particular types of social change and conflict. Dividing the types of social change according to the scale of involvement of different social groups, we consider the variation of different social movements from small-scale to macro-social processes such as wars and revolutions. A structural approach to the issue of social change and conflict is important in this module. Directly related to social conflict is the issue of stratification and inequality, which is the essence of the third module. This module illustrates the issue through an analysis of economic, racial, ethnic and gender inequalities. The final lectures of the course draw attention to mechanisms for resolving social tensions and managing social inequalities.