Science Fiction and Society

Soc. 49, Fall 2016

Some useful terms and concepts
  • Analyzing Fiction: suspension of disbelief, plot, narration, character, point of view, omniscient narrator, focal character, style
  • Epistemology: Science, utilitarianism, romanticism, mechanism
  • Social Theory: structure, conflict theory, functionalism, agency, class, caste, ethnicity, social reproduction,
  • What is the Self?: microsociology, sex, gender, patriarchy, modernization, development,
  • Gender: sex vs. gender, patriarchy, essentialism vs. constructivism
  • Modernity: stage theories and the idea of progress, industrial revolution, division of labor, impersonality of social relations, individualism, for or against modernization?, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, social engineering