Sociology

This course provides students with an introduction to central themes and concepts in Sociology, and applies them to particular cases. Students learn what is distinctive about a sociological imagination of contemporary and historical concerns and helps them see how our individual lives are connected to global developments such as climate change, migration, and the advancement of digital technology. Students are also introduced to how class, gender, race, identity, and religion organize relations in an era of globalization. 

This course develops tools for analyzing the effect of social networks, the way that culture constrains and enables economic outcomes, and the effect that systems of power have the reproduction of economic inequalities. These tools are the foundation on which economic sociology seeks to explain, criticize, influence, and predict economic action. The first part of the course establishes three primary intellectual camps or “theories” of economic action: power, culture, and rational action. The second part of the course applies these theoretical approaches to address a series of contemporary economic questions and concerns.

This course discusses patterns and processes of social inequality, the main theories on their determinants, and forms of human action to increase equality. The course discusses modern and classic concepts of class and status, as well as the process of status attainment. The roles of family, gender, education, partner choice, and social mobility are scrutinized. Classic, as well as state-of-the-art articles, are read.

This course introduces and critically examines various understandings of the social categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Instead of assuming these categories to be biological, ahistorical and/or static, theories of social constructionism are used to analyze these categories as relational and contingent - depending on the historical, political, cultural, economic and national contexts. Finally, the class explores ways in which these categories intersect to shape experiences of inequalities in South Africa and outside both historically and in the present.

This course is an introduction to the skills and principles involved when working with people, in a voluntary or paid capacity. It is a requirement that students have work experience to draw upon. The focus of this course is on the practical work experiences that the students bring and the tutorial discussion analyzing those experiences. During the tutorials students are encouraged to engage in reflection upon their own and others work experience. Skill development takes place through participation in group learning, based around presentations and discussion. 

This course offers an overview of emerging social issues in contemporary China, focusing on changes after 1949 and how China’s transition from a command economy to a market economy has brought fundamental and rapid changes in its social structure and social relationships among members of different subgroups in society. Topics include sociological perspectives such as changes and new challenges in Chinese families, gender roles, demographic structure and distribution, social safety net, and environment. The course combines lectures, academic readings, films, sources from the mass media, and discussions.