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Reading Course on Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (SPS-RESCH-REA-23)

SPS-RESCH-REA-23

Purpose

The title of this reading course is taken from a slim book of the same title, written by Charles Tilly (1986). It clearly formulated what researchers in the beginning of the social sciences were interested in. Today, this comes across as a provocation of trying the impossible. This course encourages researchers to think big without abandoning their rigorous contemporary training. Participants may take it because they are interested in general education as social scientists. It contains classic readings, underestimated classics and future classics. It is actually of direct interest for those whose research touches on the evolution of modern polities, from the nation-state to the democratic welfare state and the EU as a supranational political system. Whatever the motivation, the course tries to demonstrate that engaging with grand debates, empirical research on well-specified research questions becomes more interesting and relevant. 
The seminars offer participants to read important books thoroughly. This means to reconstruct the original research problem that made the author take on such a Herculean task and how they solved or transformed it into a more researchable question. We study the research design with which they tackled it and whether we can learn anything from it still. And we learn how one could make such a classic relevant for research today by drawing the lineage to one’s own research, in support of it or as a challenge. By taking this course, researchers will not only get to know some of the important books in this field of research but also learn how to situate one’s own research in the debate of fundamental questions in political science.
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