A systematic study of social groups ranging in size from small to social institutions to entire societies. Organized around the themes of social interaction, social inequality, and social change. Fulfills lower-division major requirement.
Introduces students to major types of date and data analysis used in sociology. Designed to give students a foundation in understanding social science research articles, reports, and media reports used in political and policy debates. Topics include: general principles of research design, measurement, inductive and deductive modes of reasoning, experimental design, field work and ethnographic design, and reading and understanding basic quantitative forms of data and analysis. (Formerly course 103B, The Logic and Methods of Social Inquiry.)
Introduces basic quantitative data analysis found in sociological research and policy reports. Topics include: inferential statistics, such as probability distributions, sampling, and testing; and descriptive statistics, such as measures of association, bivariate, and multivariate analysis. (Formerly course 103A.)
Exploration of nature, structure, and functionings of American society. Explores the following: social institutions and economic structure; the successes, failures, and intractabilities of institutions; general and distinctive features of American society; specific problems such as race, sex, and other inequalities; urban-rural differences. Fulfills lower-division major requirement.
Introduction to comparative and historical sociology. Focuses on the global integration of human society. Examines social changes such as industrialization, globalization, colonial rule, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Uses social theory (including ideas from Marx, Weber, and Adam Smith) to explore the making of institutions like the nation-state, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Fulfills lower-division major requirement.
The first class in a three-quarter sequence that prepares students for designing social justice and sustainability projects using social-enterprise methodologies to transfer information and communications technologies (ICT) to community and non-governmental organizations. Tuesday's class topics include globalization, info-exclusion, social justice, information revolution, global civil-society networks, social entrepreneurship, and organizational assessment. Thursday's technical laboratory teaches students to develop practical ICT skills for working solidarity with community organizations in areas such as web design, graphic design, and digital networking.
Directed reading and research. Petitions may be obtained from the Sociology Department Office. Ordinarily call numbers for this course will not be issued after the first week of instruction. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
This intensive survey course examines the intellectual origins of the sociological tradition, focusing on changing conceptions of social order, social change, and the trends observed in the development of Western civilization in the modern era. Readings are all taken from original texts and include many of the classical works in social theory with special emphasis on the ideas of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, which constitute the core of the discipline. Prerequisite(s): satisfaction of Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements.
Surveys major theoretical perspectives currently available in the discipline including functionalism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, conflict theory, critical theory, neo-Marxism, and feminist theory. Prerequisite(s): course 105A and satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements.
Covers designing doable ICT-based projects to support the goals of community and NGOs. Topics include: social entrepreneurship/enterprise case studies; step-by-step project design; integrating social and technical solutions; project management. Technical topics include: Internet resources; advanced web/database design; computer networks/maintenance. Prerequisite(s):
SOCY 30A and by permission of instructor. (Formerly SOCY 30B.)
Covers conversion of ICT project into a fundable grant proposal for social justice, integration of social activism, entrepreneurship and justice, and implementation of project. Topics include: funders, proposal design, field methods, project assessment, innovative ICT applications, action research methods. (Formerly course 30C.)
Focuses on the interaction between family and society by considering the historical and social influences on family life and by examining how the family unit affects the social world. Readings draw on theory, history, and ethnographic materials.
Explores the historical origins of contemporary civic polarization through the decades of political, cultural, technological. and legal changes that have resulted in our current combative political environment.
Explores the interconnections between sports and society using sociological theories and methods. Topics include class, race, and gender; mass media and popular culture; political economy; education and socialization; leisure patterns (participants and spectators); globalization and cross-national comparisons.
Working collaboratively in group interactive laboratories, students assess the effectiveness of various forms of public and private decision-making in the creation of a sustainable future. Electrical Engineering 80S or the Rachel Carson College core course recommended as prerequisites.
Examines media institutions, communication technologies, and their related cultural expressions. Focuses on specific ways the media—including media studies and criticism—operates as social and cultural factor. Contemporary theory or equivalent in related fields recommended. (Formerly Communication and Mass Media.)
Introduction to questions of immigration, nationalism, and racism in contemporary Europe. Addresses colonial roots of migration to Europe; patterns of immigration and responses to immigrants across different European regions; and political movements led by immigrants and other people of color.
The intensification of immigration enforcement in the United States and the associated rise of mass deportations have reached the lives of millions of immigrants and local communities. Course covers the context, determinants, and consequences of enforcement and deportation practices.
Considers the role of popular music as a site of contemporary social practices and cultural politics. Examines the institutional organization and production of popular music, its cultural meanings, and its social uses by different communities and social formations. Also examines popular music as a vehicle through which major cultural and political debates about identity, sexuality, community, and politics are staged and performed.
If people define things as real, they are real in their consequences, quipped W.I. Thomas. Surveys sociological theories about where and how knowledge comes from, and the politics of knowledge, with reference to contemporary debates surrounding issues, such as climate change, genetics, and inequality.
Focuses on the role feminist discourses play in cultural politics emphasizing sex, sexuality, and sex work as related to gender, race , and class. Examines the relationship between academic and popular feminisms. Interrogates post-feminism, third-wave feminism, and generational differences in feminisms. Formerly Gender, Sexuality, and Cultural Politics.)
Analysis of the current health care crises and exploration of the social relationships and formal organizations which constitute the medical institution. Study of the political, economic, and cultural factors which affect the recognition, distribution, and response to illness.
Teaches critical skills for analyzing the co-production of genomics and society. Examines issues at stake as societies across the world increasingly turn to genomic data to cure disease, solve crimes, regulate immigration, revitalize economies, and answer age-old questions about who we are.
Explores the social forces that shape legal outcomes and the ways law, in turn, influences social life. Traces the history and political economy of American law; the relation between law and social change; how this relation is shaped by capitalism and democracy; and how class, race, and gender are expressed in welfare and regulatory law.
Blends the latest research in criminology with that from social stratification, inequality, and social welfare policy with the objective of exploring the relationship between levels of general social justice and specific patterns of crime and punishment. The focus is primarily on the U.S. although many other industrialized democracies are compared. An introductory course in sociology is recommended as preparation.
Learn to critically consume documentary, ethnographic film, photojournalism, and the genre of realism as these methods are increasingly used to describe the social world. Addresses theoretical, methodological, practical, and ethical issues of creating visual media. Optional media lab teaches students how to create visual products as well. (Formerly Visual Ethnography)
A healthy society requires a stable and sustainable relationship between society and nature. Covering past, present, and future, the course covers environmental history of the U.S., the variety and extent of environmental problems today, and explores their likely development in our lifetimes.
Explores social and cultural aspects of human sexuality and reproduction, including how and why meanings and behaviors are contested. Analyzes sexuality and reproduction as forms of social and political control as well as cultural expression and self-determination. (Formerly Sociology of Sex)
Explores the history of the use and abuse of consciousness-altering substances like alcohol and other drugs. Social-psychological theories of addiction are reviewed in tandem with political-economic analyses to identify the social conditions under which the cultural practices involved in drug use come to be defined as public problems. An introductory sociology course is recommended prior to taking this course.
Engages the social, historical, and economic trajectories of the drugs, illicit and licit, botanical and pharmaceutical within U.S. society. Through an examination of case studies, and other texts of encounter, explores how international, state, and local actors mediate as interlocutors between globalized interests, local knowledges, and the molecules we have increasingly come to know, ingest, and incorporate. Enrollment restricted to junior and senior sociology, biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, community studies, Latin American/sociology combined, and global information and social enterprise majors, proposed majors, and minors.
Introduction to contemporary analysis of Japan's race relations, ethnic conflicts, and a government's failure to restore remedial justice for war victims in Japan, Asia, and the U.S. Specific issues include comfort women, national or state narratives on Hiroshima, forced labor during World War II, and Haydon legislation that allows war victims to sue the Japanese government and corporations in California.
Introduces survey research methods including problem formulation, research design, instrument construction, data collection, codification, data processing, computer analyses, and report writing. The greater emphasis is placed on statistical analyses and questionnaire constructions.
Provided an overview of socio-political theories and thoughts from Athenian Direct Democracy in 500 BC, to Classical Liberalism, Social Contract, Libertarian Socialism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Neo-Liberalism, Anarcho-Primitism, and lastly Indigenism in relation to the revival of indigenous knowledge, theMother Earth law, and the restoration of the nature's rights as espoused by many governments in the Third World today.
An introduction to comparative and historical analyses of the relation between race and law in the U.S. Emphasis on examinations of continuous colonial policies and structural mechanisms that help maintain and perpetuate racial inequality in law, criminal justice, and jury trials. (Formerly Race and Justice)
Adoption of the jury and its varied forms in different nations provides ideal opportunities to examine differences between systems of popular legal participation. Course considers reasons why the right to jury trial is currently established in Japan or Asian societies, but abandoned or severely curtailed in others. American jury contrasted with other forms of lay participation in the legal process.
Examines war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the evolution and role of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Examines the evolution of the concept of international law, the rationale for its birth and existence, roots of international conflicts and genocides, possible remedies available to victims, mechanisms for the creation and enforcement of international legal order, as well as the role of colonialism, migration, poverty, race/ethnic conflicts, gender, and international corporations in creating and maintaining conflicts and wars.
Examines the hidden politics of popular pleasure, studying the workings of domination and transgression in popular culture and everyday life. Explores not only media representations but cultural practices as well. Examines both cultural production and consumption. Considers how hegemonic discourses render the politics of resistance invisible. (Formerly Popular Culture.)
Following food from mouth to dirt, explores the politics, economy, and culture of eating, feeding, buying, selling, and growing food. Topics cover both the political economy of the food system as well as how body and nature are contested categories at either end of this system.
Explores relationship between modern forms of cultural production and the economy and society in which they emerge. Course reads, screens, and discusses variety of the cultural texts: from the historical and theoretical to the commercial, popular, and counter-cultural. (Formerly Culture, Economy, and Power.)
Reviews social and cultural perspectives on science and technology, including functionalist, Marxist, Kuhnian, social constructionist, ethnographic, interactionist, anthropological, historical, feminist, and cultural studies perspectives. Topics include sociology of knowledge, science as a social problem, lab studies, representations, practice, controversies, and biomedical knowledge and work.
Takes as its subject, the dialogues, debates, conceptions, and strategies of self representation produced by blacks in the U.S. and Atlantic world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These issues are examined through the insights of feminist theory, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, and African American studies.
The role of American network television in the production of the post-war American national imagination is our focus. Our approach will explore issues of media power, especially television's industrial apparatus, its network structure, its strategies of representation in relationship to the construction of the image of the nation, and the meaning of citizens, consumers, and audiences.
Major theories and concepts in sociological study of social psychology. Topics include identity and social interaction, deviance, sociology of emotions, social narratives, and the social construction of reality.
Why certain social acts are considered threatening and how individuals or groups become stigmatized. Sociological analysis of the institutions and processes of social control and the experience of becoming deviant and living with a stigmatized identity. Introductory course in sociology recommended.
Research practicum which examines methods and problems of qualitative field research both through examining literature published in this tradition and by carrying out directed field exercises. Students also design and carry out their own research project.
Introduces critical digital methods to examine ethical and epistemological concerns with Big Data, archives and digital collections, organizational records, mobile ethnographies, social media, and crowd-sourced data. Students use open-source text mining and data-visualization programs.
Introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) including methods to analyze geographic data and create maps. Students learn software, such as Google Map APIs and Bing Maps APIs, and focus on the ArcGIS mapping software. A course in statistics is recommended as preparation.
Covers the theories and methods associated with community-based and participatory action research. Students review relevant scholarship then engage in a collective field research project in collaboration with a community organization. Themes, collaborations, and research projects vary. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor.
This course uses historical, sociological, and social psychological materials to introduce students to issues concerning class and power, religion and power, minorities and power, women and power, the rise of the New Right, and the successes and failures of the Left.
Concerns the routine and taken-for-granted activities that make up our interactions with one another, consisting in large part—but not exclusively—of verbal exchanges. Emphasis on the socially situated character of communication, whether intimacy between two people or dominance of a group.
A working seminar, involving the analysis of actual conversations. Covers fundamental ethical, conceptual, and methodological issues that arise in the collection of conversational data, as well as the skills and techniques of conversation analysis. Given our operating assumption, that talk is a primary means of constructing social identities, there is a heavy thematic emphasis on gender, status, and power in conversation.
Analysis of the social significance and social production of gender. Some consideration of how sex differences have developed. Major emphasis on the impact of gender as a categorical imperative in the present social context. In this context, the course is also about sexual segregation, sexual inequality, and the dynamics of interpersonal power.
Examines conflicting views on the development and state of modern masculinity as adaptation, transitional phase, or pathology. Did men lose the gender war? Do boys need rescuing? What are common and divergent social experiences of men within race, class, gender, culture, era? An introductory sociology course recommended. (Formerly Sociology of Men.)
Examines educational inequality in the United States, focusing on contemporary debates and issues, especially in the California context. Covers schooling from preschool to higher education, and examines educational inequality from a system, setting, and individual-level perspective. (Formerly Sociology of Learning.)
Modern analyses of sexuality and gender show personal life closely linked to large-scale social structures: power relations, economic processes, structures of emotion. Explores these links, examining questions of bodily difference, femininity and masculinity, structures of inequality, the state in sexual politics, and the global re-making of gender in modern history. Recommended as background: any lower-division sociology course.
Explores contemporary, historical, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives on the social psychology of death and dying. Cultural norms and institutional contexts are studied, along with the individual experience, and the ways in which our perspectives on death and dying influence our experiences of life and living.
Critically examines the place of the human body in contemporary society. Focuses on the social and cultural construction of bodies, including how they are gendered, racialized, sexualized, politicized, represented, colonized, contained, controlled, and inscribed. Discusses relationship between embodiment, lived experiences, and social action. Focuses on body politics in Western society and culture, especially the United States.
Examines sociological approaches to the understanding of emotions and the application of these approaches to work, learning, interpersonal relationships, health and illness, sports, and other aspects of everyday life.
Explores the relationship between consciousness, ideology, and political behaviors from voting to rebellion. Special attention is given to the lived experience and the identity interests that complicate the nexus of class position and political ideology. An introductory sociology course is recommended as preparation.
Explores historical and contemporary constructions of Latinx identities and experiences in U.S. Particular emphasis placed on transcultural social contexts, racial formations, and intersections with other identities including sexuality and gender. (Formerly U.S. Latina/o Identities: Centers and Margins).
Explores controversies in the sociology of sexuality. Focuses on tensions and disagreements that characterize debates over sex and society, and attempts to identify political and theoretical issues at stake in these debates.
Examines sex work in an historical and cultural context, considering how it has changed over time. Considers the relationship of pornography, exotic dance, and selling sex on the Internet to racialization, queer politics, globalization, and tourism. Employs theories and methods of cultural studies in rethinking historical debates on sex work.
Examines the nature and development of the capitalist world system since 1945. Emphasis is on the power of multinational corporations as managers of the world system and the response of states: role of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations.
Through comparative analysis of texts by several social theorists, explores the rise and consequences of capitalism. How has capitalism affected how humans understand and act in the world? How do oppressions along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and nations intersect with capitalism? Is resistance desirable and/or possible?
Along with studying Marx's anatomy of capitalist society, this course also explores the work of Marxist theorists from the early 20th century through the contemporary moment. (Formerly Social Theory and the Marxian Tradition.)
Fosters economic literacy among students who are not economics majors but are interested in the political and social ramifications of economic change. Emphasizes economic institutions and policy and is taught by case-study method, which requires active student participation.
Examines contemporary debates about development in the Third World: alternative meanings of development, recent work on the impact of colonial rule, how some economies have industrialized, ideas about agrarian change, and recent research on paths out of poverty. Students work in pairs to examine a development in one country since World War II. Course 15 recommended.
What is social justice? People answer this question differently, depending upon their sociological perspective. Using a combination of political philosophy and sociological studies, explores five perspectives on social justice within the Western sociological tradition: utilitarianism, Marxism, liberal egalitarianism, communitarianism, and pluralism. Students pick a topic and learn to articulate different visions of socially just change based on these perspectives.
A survey of theories and systems of social stratification focusing on such phenomena as race, class, power, and prestige.
Examines the enduring and changing status of ethnic and racialized minority groups in the United States, such as Latina/os, African Americans, Asian Americans, indigenous peoples within the U.S., as intersecting, historically situated, and dynamically produced categories of social identity and organization. (Formerly Ethnic and Status Groups.)
Explores the enduring racial and economic legacies of slavery and colonialism in relation to contemporary social problems, with an emphasis on segregation, policing, the prison industrial complex, immigration, and borders.
Seminar focusing on readings of key texts and recent research papers on several dimensions of global inequality (material, health, gender, cultural, migration) to find innovative ways of understanding the connections among different dimensions of inequality and of visualizing inequality in digital media. Students prepare visual presentations on contemporary social inequalities suitable for an online (for example, http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/) or print atlas.
Through readings on social movements that span the 20th century, course examines the causes of popular mobilizations, their potential for rapid social change, and the theories developed to understand and explain their role in modern social life.
Analyzes access to clean water, both in the American West and global South. Reviews water quality, pivotal role of water in settlement and society, history and contemporary inequalities, water supplies, international conflict over water, climate change, and human use of water.
In the global North and South, inequalities in water and sanitation are issues of justice as much as income. One billion people worldwide lack safe water, 2.5 billion lack basic sanitation. Course explores: North-South comparison, water governance, human rights, poverty, climate justice, irrigation, and more.
A sociological overview of African American society in the 21st century. The changing patterns of social/cultural organization, class structure, and modes of political action are analyzed. This analysis is located within the framework of migration, urbanization, and social struggle among black Americans.
Examines the history of women and work; women's current conditions of work and political, economic, and social factors affecting these conditions; means by which women may shape working conditions including contributing leadership, developing policies, building unity, and creating alliances.
Addresses how work is organized and shapes life changes. Covers: the history of paid work; the impact of technology; race/class/gender at work; professional and service work; work and family; collective responses to work; and challenges of work in a globalizing economy. (Formerly Work and Society.)
Historical and contemporary examination of urban life including community, race, geography, urban and suburban cultures and lifestyles, stratification, housing, crime, economic and environmental issues, demographic changes, and global urbanization.
Examines roles of emerging Latino/a majorities in urban centers across the U.S. Explores the Latinization of U.S. cities and various factors affecting the life chances of Latinos/as including, but not limited to, immigration, segregation, social movements, and other forms of political participation.
Explores the intersection of cities and the environment through the emerging field of urban environmental studies. Focuses on varied and often contested efforts at urban sustainability in recent history. Draws on literatures in environmental history, environmental and urban sociology, geography, political ecology, and cultural studies.
Explores how global cities have facilitated increasing integration of the diverse cultures and economies of the world. Using historical, sociological, and comparative methods, analyzes how these spaces both enable and constrain transnational flows of capital, labor, information, and culture.
Views problems in society not as given but as social constructs. Examines the ways in which conditions in society become identified and defined as problems and consequences that follow from such a process.
Taught on a rolling basis by faculty members with each offering varying by instructor. Topics are announced by the department.
An in-depth exploration of Disability Studies, an interdisciplinary field of research that seeks to question and critique dominant Western understandings of disability and to advance discussions around issues of intersectionality, equality, inclusionary politics of access, and social justice.
Concerns about environmental change, including global warming, threats to the ozone layer, and industrial pollution, raise questions about Third World development. Simple views of the relation between society and nature, such as blaming population growth, industrialization, or poor people, seem to preclude higher living standards. Uses debates and case studies to explore more subtle and optimistic views of social-natural relations.
Examines the roots, development, and political outcomes of black civil rights organizations during the Sixties. Explores social and structural forces, mobilization of black communities, strategies and tactics used, nature of the relationships between various civil rights organizations, unity and disunity among organizations, leadership gains, and impact on race relations in the U.S.
Why do famines happen? Why are some hungry and some over-fed? Recent advances in the understanding of food crises and chronic undernutrition are the focus of this course.
Modern society not only assaults nature, it does so in ways that reproduce existing social inequalities. This course reviews three types of contemporary environmental inequality (environmental racism, displacement, and privilege), and the processes that produced them, with a focus on industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of capitalism in Europe and the United States. Students may not receive credit for this course and Environmental Studies 147.
Examination of shifts in 20th- and 21st-century feminist theory and epistemology. Considers various deconstructive challenges to second wave feminism based on the politics of race, ethnicity, nation, sexuality, and class. Focus changes regularly.
Explores local dimensions of globalization, focusing on experiencing more global divisions of labor in both industrialized and developing countries. Themes include: economic integration and dislocation; new forms of governance; globalizing consumption and culture; gender; and popular resistance.
Provides for (department-sponsored) individual field study in the vicinity of the campus under the direct supervision of a faculty sponsor (as opposed to course 198 where faculty supervision is by correspondence). Up to three such courses may be taken for credit in any one quarter. Ordinarily call numbers for this course will not be issued after the first week of instruction. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Provides for department-sponsored individual field study in the vicinity of campus under the direct supervision of a faculty sponsor. May not be counted toward major requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Small group study of a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Preparation of a senior thesis over one, two, or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. The senior thesis satisfies the comprehensive requirement. Course is for independent thesis research and writing. Courses may be taken consecutively or concurrently. Prerequisite(s): course 103B. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Preparation of a senior thesis over one, two, or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. The senior thesis satisfies the comprehensive requirement. Course is for independent thesis research and writing. Courses may be taken consecutively or concurrently. Prerequisite(s): course 103B. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Preparation of a senior thesis over one, two, or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. The senior thesis satisfies the comprehensive requirement. Course is for independent thesis research and writing. Courses may be taken consecutively or concurrently. Completion of course 195C (completion of the thesis) satisfies the W general education requirement. Prerequisite(s): course 103B and satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Students hear a selected group of faculty discuss their current research and how that research furtherspublic understanding and discussion of some vital contemporary social issue.
Students hear a selected group of faculty discuss their current research and how that research furthers public understanding and discussion of some vital contemporary social issue. This version of the capstone is only available to students who have consulted with the department and were determined to need the alternate Disciplinary Communications (DC) requirement. Students must consult with the department to determine if they cannot satisfy the DC requirement through the regular pathways, course 103B or courses 105A and 105B. Prerequisite(s): Consultation with department undergraduate adviser. Enrollment restricted to junior and senior sociology majors.
Project practicum and evaluation are required for completion of major or minor in global information and social enterprise studies (GISES). Projects require approval in advance by the director of GISES. Completed projects must be uploaded electronically on the website or archive of the Everett Program.
Provides for (department-sponsored) individual study program off campus for which faculty supervision is not in person (e.g., supervision is by correspondence). Up to three such courses may be taken for credit in any one quarter. Ordinarily call numbers for this course will not be issued after the first week of instruction. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Advanced directed reading and research. Petitions may be obtained from the Sociology Department Office. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Advanced directed readingsand research. Petitions may be obtained from the Sociology Department Office. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Examines the establishment of theory in the discipline of sociology. Introduces students to close readings and analysis of a core selection of social theory. Problematizes the construction, maintenance, and reproduction of a theoretical canon in sociology.
Intensive survey of major tendencies in modern social thought, including functionalism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, critical theory, structuralism, phenomenology, neo-Marxism, and feminist theory.
Approaches methods as a series of conscious and strategic choices for doing various kinds of research. Introduces students to the epistemological questions of method in social sciences; to key issues in technique, particularly control, reliability, and validity; and to good examples of social research.
Students are provided with intuitive explanation of fundamental concepts in statistics and learn how to use statistics to answer sociological questions. Experience and guidance in using computers to efficiently analyze data are provided.
Gives students first-hand experience doing fieldwork with an emphasis on participant observation and some interviewing. Students submit weekly field notes and a final project analysis. At seminar meetings, field experiences and relevant literature are examined.
Overview of research strategies and methods used in historical and social sciences. Students read works exemplifying a variety of analytical approaches. Written assignments cultivate critical skills, weighing of tradeoffs inherent in all methodological choices, and elaboration of hypothetical research designs.
Writing intensive course designed to facilitate the completion of the master's thesis, orals field statement, or the dissertation in sociology. The seminar is convened by a faculty member in conjunction with students and their adviser or appropriate committee chair. Students are expected to produce and present drafts of work completed in the seminar.
Examines material and symbolic forms such as media products, cultural artifacts, language, nonverbal communication and social practices using discourse, textual, content, interpretive, and conversation analyses as well as ethnography and different channels of communication. Theoretically, relies on cultural studies, communication studies, cultural sociology, film studies, and ethnomethodology.
Classical concepts and contemporary approaches in macrosociology, the study of large-scale, long term social change. Readings drawn primarily from the Marxian and Weberian traditions (new institutionalism, varieties of neo-Marxism, environmental history, state centrism) as they focus on agrarian and industrial structures and commodity chains; household, village, and neighborhood organization; social movements and revolutions; culture, ideology, and consciousness; policy analysis; comparative urban, national, and civilizational development.
A survey of major works and themes in the relationship of politics and society, with primary emphasis on the compatibilities and contradictions of pluralist, elite, and class perspectives on the state.
Advanced treatment of the dominant ideas of nature and the environment in the West and their relationship to the development of Western capitalism. Leading Western theories of environmental crisis and their relation with ideologies of environmentalism and environmental movements.
Examines the structures, processes, and movements associated with globalization processes. Reviews political economy theories, cultural theories systems, state industrial policies, and popular responses to globalization. Also assesses contribution of resistance movements informed by class, ethno-nationalism, religion, or gender.
Examines rudiments of historical materialism in light of advances in cultural and ecological Marxism. Basic categories of Marxist political economy. Thematic focus on the first and second contradictions of capitalism in world economy today.
Looks at several major themes in the sociology of the environment and asks how the works of environmental history address those themes. Includes reflections on how history as a method interrogates social questions. Possible themes include: sustainability; social justice; universalism vs. particularity; city and country; and social movements.
Focuses on the interaction of work restructuring and existing race/class/gender inequalities. Themes include: the labor process and theories of consent; labor market segmentation; job and occupational segregation; information technologies, flexible work, and post-industrialism; flexible employment relations; and low-wage service and labor markets.
Examines theoretical and methodological implications of Marxist theory for empirical social research. Analyzes how historians and social scientists apply Marxist method in explaining society, social change, globalization, culture, and late capitalism. Goal is to assist students to employ Marxist theory and method creatively in their research projects.
Explores recent theoretical and empirical studies of race, class, gender, and sexuality with an emphasis on the production of identities and their relationship to processes and structures of power in a postcolonial context.
Seminar examining theoretical and methodological issues in doing cross-national and cross-cultural research. In addition to a consideration of different research paradigms and approaches, representative works from each comparative tradition are examined.
Provides scholarly support to students doing feminist research. Examines issues concerning conceptualization of feminism and feminist research. Explores relation of feminist research to intersections of gender, class, and race; to the self; to power; and to transformative social praxis. Students present and are given assistance with their work, as well as listen to, read, and assist with the work of others.
A critical survey of the theoretical issues of persistence and change, public policy, and recent empirical studies in the field of race and ethnic relations. Readings introduce comparative race relations and a historical background of major theoretical paradigms in the field which purport to explain race and ethnic relations in general and race relations in America specifically.
Examination of shifts in 20th- and 21st-century feminist theory and epistemology. Explores the decentering of universalist feminist theories and asks what constitutes feminist theory after gender has been decentered. Considers various deconstructive challenges to second-wave feminist theory based on the politics of race, ethnicity, nation, sexuality, and class. Focus changes regularly.
Analyzes impact of ethnicity, gender, and religion on the class situation of laboring people in a globalized economy by intensive reading and critique of classic studies, explaining how social movements reflect combinations of social relations and cultural practices.
Introduces the student to the recent literature on race and class. Covers several different theoretical perspectives including internal colonialism, labor market segmentation theories, racial formation, and neo-gramscian cultural analyses. In addition to study of theory, also compares theoretical perspectives to the historical experience of minority groups, in particular, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.
Focuses on the role feminist discourses play in contemporary cultural politics with the main focus on the politics of sex, sexuality, and sex work. Begins with considerations of (mis)representations of feminisms in popular cultures; considers the relationship between academic and popular feminisms; and interrogates the meaning of terms post-feminism and third-wave feminism.
A professional training seminar devoted to the philosophical, conceptual, and practical issues of course design, pedagogy, and grant writing. Topics covered: institutional contexts; curriculum (including syllabi, course content, assignments, evaluation); pedagogy; teaching as work/labor process; grant writing; budgets.
Examines classic and contemporary theories and concepts that play a major role in sociological studies of identity, symbolic and social interaction, and the sociology of emotions. Examines how cultural forms, rules, and rituals define, structure, and mediate emotions and how identities are situated within social institutions.
An introduction to comparative and historical analyses of relations between race and the criminal justice system. Specific topics include defining race/ethnicity, sentencing disparities, jury nullification, jury selection and decisions, prosecutorial misconduct, government's charging and investigative discretions, and other racially biased law enforcement practices and criminal court processes. Also covers a number of highly publicized trials that involved unmistakable elements of race and racism such as Chin, King, Simpson, and Unabomber cases. Students are also exposed to World Wide Web (Internet) to learn how to do research in the field of criminal justice.
Examines feminist and ethnic studies production, appropriation, and transformation of cultural studies theories and methodologies. Considers the utility of various theoretical apparatuses and methodological strategies employed in the interdisciplinary site that combines feminist, ethnic, and cultural studies.
Introduction to core writings and key theoretical pardigms in urban sociology. Examines the history and contemporary conditions of cities in the U.S. and the urban experience. Urbanization, suburbanization, community, social inequality, urban politics, relationship between the built environment and human behavior.
Examines colonialism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and legal remedies, and the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC); traces the history of colonial expansionism, starting from the Roman Empire to the present American imperial dominance in global politics.
Introduces historical analysis of lay justice participation. Examines global exploration of the use of lay judge institutions in citizen's movements and the assumption that juries are a derivative institution of democratic ideals. Focuses on corporate media creation of anti-jury sentiment.
Brings together the fields of sociology and geography to explore the complex and multiple ways of thinking together space and social difference. Course texts examine the co-constitution of space with bodies, subjectivities, and social formations.
An introduction to theoretical approaches and exemplary studies of culture, knowledge, and power which critically interrogate the relationship between cultural formations and the production, circulation, and meaning of knowledges, materials, artifacts, and symbolic forms. Explores the concrete ways that power is organized and operates through different forms and sites, how it interpolates with other forms of power, and examines knowledges and culture as specific forms of power and sites of political struggle.
Explores three main issues: the social determination of knowledge, including natural science; the character of intellectual labor and intellectuals as a social group; the role of organized knowledge and knowledge industries in contemporary social change. Texts examined include class-based theories (Lukacs, Mannheim, Gramsci), feminist standpoint analysis (Smith, Harding, etc.), and theories of postmodern culture (Lyotard, Harvey, etc.).
Examines contemporary debates about the role of mass produced expressive symbols in modern industrial societies, and the circumstances of cultural production for its impact on the creation, organization, and use of cultural artifacts. Concern with the use and experience of popular symbols for the ways that their use involves the creation of meanings and the role of such meanings in the social organization of society.
Considers the cultural turn and the turn to difference in understanding relations of power and struggles over representation in studies of race, media, and culture. Examines national identity, difference, subjectivity, and authenticity, especially as they bear on quests to create new identifications, alignments, and efforts to protect existing identities.
Explores social and cultural perspectives on science, technology, and medicine. Analyzes theoretical approaches that open up black boxes of scientific and biomedical knowledge, including the politics of bodies, objects, and health/illness. Links are made to medical sociology.
Considers the practical and epistemological necessity of collaborative research in the development of new sciences and technologies that are attentive to questions of ethics and justice. Enrollment is by permission of instructor. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Provides in-depth instruction in conducting collaborative interdisciplinary research. Students produce a final research project that explores how this training might generate research that is more responsive to the links between questions of knowledge and questions of justice. Prerequisite(s): Sociology 268A, Biomolecular Engineering 268A, Feminist Studies 268A, or Anthropology 267A. Enrollment is by permission of instructor. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Policy research. Covers a variety of theoretical perspectives found in policy studies. Surveys various methodological approaches used in policy research. Theories and methods linked to research agendas on the various phases of the policy life cycle. Students are required to design a research proposal.
The topics to be analyzed each year vary with the instructor but focus upon a specific research area. Enrollment restricted to graduate students by consent of the instructor.
A seminar devoted to the practical problems of securing a job as a professional sociologist. Topics covered: researching colleges, universities, and public and private organizations that employ sociologists; designing a curriculum vitae; writing an application letter; preparing a job talk; handling questions during the interview process; the etiquette of visiting (and its aftermath); finding out about them; and the terms of employment: what is negotiable and what is not.
Seminar on the genres of social science writing, and the problems of starting and finishing a publishable thesis, book, or article. For advanced graduate students working on the composition of their dissertations and journal articles.
Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.