Politikum - Sozialwissenschaften

Hello and welcome to the eleventh episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week. Last time, we looked at how labour markets in developed economies can trap people in a secondary tier of precarious, low-paid work — not because of a lack of effort or ability, but because of structural conditions that are self-reinforcing. This we...

Hello and welcome to the tenth episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week. This and next week I want to talk about structural factors that keep people in poverty. Not poverty in the sense of not trying hard enough, but poverty in the sense of circumstances that make it nearly impossible to think beyond tomorrow, regardless o...

Hello and welcome to the ninth episode of Theory of the Week a weekly show from A student’s note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week. This week I would like to introduce a macro-sociological approach to explaining voting behaviour. This means that we are discussion a theory which looks at the society, claiming that knowing about the social circumstances of different groups can help u...

Hello and welcome to the eighth episode of Theory of the Week , a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory‑esque concept each week. This week I would like to introduce another important contractualist—besides Locke and Hobbes, who we covered in the fifth episode. Today I would like to talk about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential but also controversial figures in...

Hello and welcome to the seventh episode of Theory of the Week , a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory‑esque concept each week. We are once again back from a break. My January and February were full of exams and papers, so we were missing a speaker for a while. But enough of that. Today we are talking about a classic figure of modern political philosophy: John Rawls. He is...

Hello and welcome to the sixth episode of Theory of the Week . A weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week. For Christmas we took a little break, and hope you were able to do the same. In any case, we hope you had a fantastic Christmas. This time I would like to explore social contract theory, but there are a lot of theorists who used this heuristic of nat...

Welcome to the fifth episode of Theory of a Week , a weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a theory-esque concept each week. This week we are entering the arena of international relations theories by exploring the social-constructivist approach. Social constructivism gives us tools to explain changes in the nature of international politics and offers a powerful critique of neorealist...

Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of Theory of a Week , a weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a theory-esque concept each week. This week is somewhat of a continuation of last week’s episode, because we will cover a second path‑defining economist: John Maynard Keynes . He was active in early 20th‑century Europe, a period marked by war, social unrest, and the Great Depression....

Hello and welcome to the third episode of  Theory of a Week , the new weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a new  theory-esque  concept each week. This third episode explores the surprisingly modern thoughts of Adam Smith. In this episode, we travel to 18th‑century Scotland to unpack Adam Smith’s core ideas from The Wealth of Nations : division of labour, the market mechanism, and t...

Hello and welcome to the second episode of Theory of a Week , the new weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a new theory-esque concept each week. For this second episode I have chosen Esping-Andersen’s contribution of defining three welfare state clusters, because notwithstanding criticism the typology it is still widely used in welfare state research. Esping-Andersen revolutionalise...

Hello and welcome to the first episode of Theory of a Week , the new weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a new theory-esque concept each week. For this first episode I have chosen Plato’s theory of the ideal state, which rests on a deterministic view of human capabilities and is based on a radical meritocracy. Plato was and is an influential figure in political thought and is often...