Sociology

SOCI UN1000 The Social World. 3 points.

Identification of the distinctive elements of sociological perspectives on society. Readings confront classical and contemporary approaches with key social issues that include power and authority, culture and communication, poverty and discrimination, social change, and popular uses of sociological concepts.

SOCI UN3000 Social Theory. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Ethics and Values.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.

Required for all sociology majors.  Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission.  Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries.  Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels.  Selected topics:  individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action.

SOCI UN3010 Methods for Social Research. 4 points.

Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission

Required for all Sociology majors.  Introductory course in social scientific research methods. Provides a general overview of the ways sociologists collect information about social phenomena, focusing on how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to our research questions.

SOCI UN3011 METHODS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH - DISC. 0 points.

Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000

Section Discussion for SOCI UN3010, METHODS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

SOCI UN3324 Global Urbanism. 3 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Using classical texts about cities (do they still work for us?) and on the diverse new literatures on cities and larger subjects with direct urban implications, we ill use a variety of data sets to get a detailed empirical information, and draw on two large ongoing research projects involving major and minor global cities around the world (a total of over 60 cities are covered in detail as of 2008).  Students will need to register for a discussion section as well; details to be announced.

SOCI UN3914 Seminar in Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility. 4 points.

This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S., to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text.

SOCI UN3936 Sociology and the Public. 4 points.

Prerequisites: Sociological Imagination (SOCI UN1202) or The Social World (SOCI UN1000) (not required).

This seminar will examine the practice of and-for those interested-allow for some engagement in "public sociology." Public sociology is defined, accurately, on Wikipedia as "a subfield of the wider sociological discipline that emphasizes expanding the disciplinary boundaries of sociology in order to engage with non-academic audiences"; and as a sometimes controversial "movement" that "aims  to revitalize the discipline ... by leveraging its empirical methods and theoretical insights to contribute to debates not just about what is or what has been in society, but about what society might yet be."

SOCI UN3982 Social and Political Development in Contemporary China. 4 points.

Not offered during 2018-19 academic year.

This course provides an introduction to the major social issues in contemporary China. It does not intend to survey a general Chinese history but rather to discuss important thematic issues since 1949. The focus is on the post-Mao era. A number of important subjects are discussed, including the state politics in pre-reform China since the 1949 revolution, China’s shift to market reforms since 1978, the current state of rural China, the impact of economic development on social life, various forms of inequalities, the massive rural to urban migration, rising social protests, social relations, family organization, and various population issues.

After taking this course, students are expected to gain not only factual knowledge of the Chinese society but also a general understanding of social transition and inequalities, based on which some students may develop their own research interests.

SOCI UN1000 The Social World. 3 points.

Identification of the distinctive elements of sociological perspectives on society. Readings confront classical and contemporary approaches with key social issues that include power and authority, culture and communication, poverty and discrimination, social change, and popular uses of sociological concepts.

SOCI UN2240 Economy and Society. 3 points.

An introduction to economic sociology.  Economic sociology is built around the claim that something fundamental is lost when markets are analyzed separately from other social processes.  We will look especially at how an analysis of the interplay of economy and society can help us to understand questions of efficiency, questions of fairness, and questions of democracy.

SOCI UN3000 Social Theory. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Ethics and Values.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.

Required for all sociology majors.  Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission.  Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries.  Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels.  Selected topics:  individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action.

SOCI UN3009 Contemporary Social Theory. 3 points.

This is a survey class that will familiarize students with the most important theoretical developments in post-war sociology.

SOCI UN3010 Methods for Social Research. 4 points.

Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission

Required for all Sociology majors.  Introductory course in social scientific research methods. Provides a general overview of the ways sociologists collect information about social phenomena, focusing on how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to our research questions.

SOCI UN3011 METHODS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH - DISC. 0 points.

Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000

Section Discussion for SOCI UN3010, METHODS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

SOCI UN3020 Social Statistics. 3 points.

This course introduces methods of empirical social research for describing and drawing inferences from quantitative data. Emphasis is on basic but very serviceable methods of statistical analysis for information drawn from surveys or archives. The course includes several exercises in analysis of sample survey data.

SOCI UN3265 Sociology of Work and Gender. 3 points.

This course examines gender as a flexible but persistent boundary that continues to organize our work lives and our home lives, as well as the relationship between the two spheres. We will explore the ways in which gender affects how work is structured; the relationship between work and home; the household as a place of paid (and unpaid) labor; and how changes in the global economy affect gender and work identities.

SOCI UN3490 Mistake, Misconduct, Disaster. 3 points.

How Organizations Fail - the fundamental principles of organizations, examining how and why organizations fail, producing harmful outcomes.  Studying failures opens up parts of organizations for public view that are seldom seen; studying the dark side is especially revealing. Students will examine cases to identify the causes of failures and think about what kind of strategies can be developed that prevent failure.

SOCI UN3915 Stigma and Discrimination. 4 points.

This course considers stigma and discrimination as general processes that apply to a broad range of phenomena, from mental illness to obesity to HIV/AIDS to racial groups. We will use a conceptual framework that considers power and social stratification to be central to stigma and discrimination. We will focus on both macro- and micro-level social processes and their interconnections, and we will draw on literature from both sociology and psychology.

SOCI UN3921 HIGHER EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY. 4 points.

Not offered during 2018-19 academic year.

Prerequisites: (1000)

Higher education in the U.S. is going through a period of rapid change.  State support is shrinking, student debt is increasing, full-time faculty are being replaced by adjuncts, and learning outcomes are difficult to measure, at best. This class will try to makes sense of these changes. Among other questions, it will ask whether higher education is a source of social mobility or a means of class reproduction; how the college experience differs by race, class, and type of college attended; how the economics of higher education have led to more expensive college and more student loans; and how we might make college better. We will consider several different points of view on the current state of U.S. higher education: that of students who apply to and attend college, that of colleges and universities, and that of society at large.  As part of this course, students will conduct research on their own universities: Columbia College or Barnard College.

SOCI UN3929 Collaboration, Resistance, Retribution: Western and Eastern Europe Between Nazism and Comm. 3 points.

The Nazi occupation of Western and East-Central Europe during World War II elicited a variety of national and local responses ranging from accommodation to collaboration to outright resistance. How did variations in practices of political, social, and economic domination exercised by the Nazis shape patterns of collaboration and resistance? How did this vary between Western and Eastern Europe? What individual factors/aspects of personal biography shaped decisions about whether or not to collaborate? In the immediate postwar period, how did efforts to identify and punish collaborators reflect prerogatives of national regeneration and state-building? Forty-five years later, the collapse of the socialist dictatorships of East-Central Europe unleashed calls for retribution against “communist collaborators.” How did practices of collaboration and resistance with socialist regimes differ from earlier patterns of collaboration with the Nazis? Have efforts to punish communist collaborators been more successful in righting the wrongs of the past than previous efforts to punish Nazi collaborators? If so, what might account for this? Do „legacies” from earlier efforts to punish Nazi collaborators inform these more recent projects of justice-seeking? How do unresolved justice issues from the immediate postwar period continue to haunt both Western and East-Central Europe?

SOCI UN3960 Law, Science, and Society. 4 points.

This course addresses basic contemporary social issues from several angles of vision: from the perspective of scientists, social scientists, legal scholars, and judges. Through the use of case studies, students will examine the nature of theories, evidence, "facts," proof, and argument as found in the work of scientists and scholars who have engaged the substantive issues presented in the course.

SOCI UN3974 Sociology of Schools, Teaching and Learning. 4 points.

In this class we will examine the school as a central institution in modern society, and we will grapple with an important question in the sociology of education: what role to schools play in reinforcing or challenging broader patters of social inequality? We will pay special attention to the ways in which students' class, race/ethnicity and gender shape their educational experiences. We will also look at how schools are organized, how schools construct differences among students, and how schools sort kids into different (and unequal) groups. Finally we will explore the types of interventions - at both the individual and organizational levels - that can mitigate inequality in educational achievement and help low-income students to succeed.

One such intervention that has shown promise is tutoring in academic and social and behavioral skills, and interventions that strengthen self-affirmation. A major component of this class is your experience as a tutor. You will be trained as tutors to work with students from local high schools both through in-person tutoring and through tutoring using social networking technologies. Throughout the semester we will combine our academic learning with critical reflection on our experience sin the field. Because you will be working with NYC high school students, we will pay special attention to how NYC high schools are organized and how current issues in education play out in the context of NYC schools.

SOCI UN3985 Queer Practice. 4 points.

Is there a particularly “queer” way to live? Does a queer perspective mitigate for certain forms of social, interpersonal or political action? Are there sets of vocations, engagements or relationship formations that are, in and of themselves, distinctly queer? Or is queerness something that can infuse or transform pre-existing modes of personal or relational action? How does any of this relate to the version of “queer” one learns in college? Is a university education necessary, or even useful, for living a queer life? Does academic queer theory have any relevance to “real-world” politics, affects or activisms? Do classroom projects within Gender & Sexuality Studies prepare us to engage in projects of social change, political efforts, or in any meaningful way, to work more closely with others on shared goals related to social justice? Does a liberal arts education prepare us to navigate ideological, intellectual and interpersonal differences? To move from a critical gaze at social institutions into institutional change? To become more robust citizens of a world that includes a multiplicity of viewpoints, perspectives and values? Finally, at its best, what should the university classroom do to prepare students to forge their own social and political perspectives, and to move from gaze and consideration into movement and action?

SOCI UN3996 Senior Seminar. 4 points.

Prerequisites: required methods and theory courses for the major, and the instructor's permission.

Students wishing to qualify for departmental honors must take W3996y. Students carry out individual research projects and write a senior thesis under the supervision of the instructor and with class discussion. Written and oral progress reports.