The Concept of Society from Marx to Zuckerberg

What is society and what does it mean to be a member of one? This course examines these questions by looking at three different periods within the history of modern political thought in which the concept of society was debated and transformed. In the first section of the course, we will explore the emergence of "civil society" within bourgeois political thought, and the relationship of this concept to notions of property, the state, commerce, and colonial encounter. In the second section of the course, we will turn to twentieth-century debates concerning mass society and issues such ascommunication, identity, democracy, and global governance. In the final section of the course, we will focus on contemporary reconfigurations of the idea of society within technological, digital, and ecological spaces and communities.