Life after Death: An Empirical Project in the Classical Theory Course

Abstract

One of the challenges of teaching the undergraduate classical theory course, which focuses on Marx, Durkheim, and Weber as well as on their contemporaries and predecessors, is to motivate students to care about the work of these early giants as more than esthetically pleasing systems of thought that reflect fateful intersections of history and biography. Often we teach that these thinkers are important because their ideas are in use even today among professional sociologists and other social scientists. Typically, however, we provide little evidence supporting that contention and little illustration of how these ideas are still being used. The project outlined here shows students how to uncover such evidence and requires them to analyze contemporary use of the ideas of one of these thinkers.