The Life Course and Social

My Research Interests
Individualization, relationships, intimacy
Values
Family sociology
Economic Sociology
Social change and modernization
Urbanization
Socio-biology
Critical theory

Outline
Review
Determinism and Free will
Example from Popular Culture
Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Critical Theory
Structure and Agency, Structuration, Life course policy
Seminar-tutorial: Settersten text, Agency and Structure

Review
Mannheim's generation: social location, generation as an actuality, generational units
Other “generations“: of a family, popular „Pepsi Generation“
Cohorts (same time interval, when a particular event occurs: birth, first marriage, business start-up etc.)

Determinism vs. Free Will
Free will: the ability to act, make choices, free from external constraints
Determinism: events are caused, predictable (by culture, biology, laws of nature, physics, pychology, god)
Moral consequences
Compatibilism
Illusion of will

Popular culture

Two issues
Accurate perception of reality
Freedom to act within this reality

Critical Theory
Rationality, science, and the holocaust
Perception of reality vs illusion: role of consumer culture, ideology in masking reality
Freedom to act: limited due to rational, scientific control amid “dumbing down” of society

Structure and Agency
Agency vs structure perspectives
Life course policy
Structuration; anchored in „social practices ordered across time and space“