SOCI 458 - The Specter of Sovereignty: the Perplexities of Rule and Rights

FC SSCI

4 credits
To adapt the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto for the present, a specter is haunting the globalized world the specter of sovereignty. We live in puzzling times, as citizens and politicians simultaneously lament the loss of national sovereignty and criticize the surfeit of governmental powers. This course aims to make sense of such perplexities by exploring sovereignty as concept and social reality. By examining film and literary representations of sovereign control in relation to how theorists like Hobbes, Weber and Arendt have understood the relationship between sovereign and subject, we will develop the outlines of the sociology of sovereignty.