Power: Interpersonal, Organizational, and Institutional Dimensions

This course offers students an in-depth analysis of what might be considered the most central concept in all of social science. It uses literature from anthropology, sociology, social psychology, political science, economics and philosophy to develop the tools for analyzing the forms and distribution of power in social relations. The course serves as an introduction to some of the classics in western social thought, reviewing work from Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx and Weber through Foucault, Bourdieu, Giddens and Habermas, but importantly joins those more theoretical works with empirical research on power dynamics in interpersonal, organizational, and global transactions.