FLS5624 - Agência(s) e Sociabilidade(s): Duas Categorias-Chave da Teoria Sociológica Contemporânea (2025)

This course explores contemporary sociological theory —but what makes theory “contemporary” is far from self-evident. For some, it begins where classical theory (Durkheim, Weber, Simmel) ends, or with later syntheses like Parsons’. For others, it denotes work that remains urgent for today’s scholarship, whether written decades ago or last week. Still others reserve the term for theories emerging in the present moment. Just as there is no consensus on the “contemporary,” definitions of “sociological” or even “theory” remain contested. Neither temporally bounded nor canonically settled, the “contemporary” constitutes an ongoing problematic for sociological theory - its delimitations persistently debated as part of sociology\'s reflexive practice. Recognizing the impossibility of a comprehensive survey of contemporary theory, this seminar adopts a focused approach through both temporal and thematic lenses. Following the ambitious syntheses of late 20th-century sociology, the discipline has radically reconfigured classical understandings of agency and structure. Agency—once taken as a universal stable property of human actors—has become sociology’s most contested metaconcept: the notion of autonomous reflexive agency has been challenged as a Eurocentric ideal, unmasked as power’s effect, extended beyond minds to bodies and objects, and reconceived as emergent from hybrid networks. Concurrently, static and national notions of \"society\" have given way to fluid, processual sociabilities —where agencies form and interact. These transformations owe much to interdisciplinary dialogues with philosophy, science studies, and postcolonial thought, now central to sociology’s theoretical debates. This seminar traces how contemporary sociology theorizes agency and sociability beyond classical paradigms. This seminar examines forefront controversies in sociological theory while training participants to: (1) mobilize theoretical frameworks for empirical analysis; (2) refashion conceptual tools; and (3) advance critical contributions to ongoing theoretical dialogues.