Sociology

All societies have patterns of stratification and inequality, i.e. structured differences in economic resources, power, and prestige which are relatively enduring and often reproduced between generations. What’s interesting from a sociological perspective is that the structure and pattern of these inequalities varies between societies and over time in the same society. This suggests that the fundamental processes driving inequality and stratification are social and economic processes. This course focuses on the theories and measures of social class as well as social class inequalities in electoral behavior, education, and health.

This course explores human-environment relations, especially how those relations are mediated through various social institutions, economic conditions, and political power. It also covers theoretical-conceptual tools in sociology (and other social sciences) such as externalization, environmental justice, mechanisms of valuation/devaluation, classification/categorization, social facts, normal risk, etc. and how to apply those conceptual tools for a sociological understanding of various environmental issues such as concentration of hazard/risk, increase in disposability, mass waste crisis, climate change and other global-scale environmental problems, trade-offs between growth and environment, international waste trade, risks from new materials, etc.

This course explores the interconnectivity between the rapid evolution of media outlets and content, the contemporary “banalization” of terrorist and other types of violence, and their fallout over issues related to social justice in France and Europe. The course examines some recent forms of social confrontation and the way these confrontations are channeled on a grand scale through mass media, both old and new. Students interrogate the political, economic, cultural, and psychological implications, as well as the “spectatorship component,” related to the growing, constant sharing of violence over public platforms, and political agendas. Different cases of social controversies are studied and compared as we probe their relevance to some larger, technological, and globalized frames of analysis. The course examines the adjustments political institutions, social bodies, and media actors have practiced when faced with these forms of protest in moments of crisis. The course attempts to understand how, and to what extent, all these altered notions have impacted national, sectorial, and class-oriented identities.

This course introduces contemporary South Asia in terms of the significant features of social, cultural, and economic life. It discusses the physical and human resources of the region and provides an overview of developments at the outset of the new century. Through the films, literature, and arts of the region, the course illustrates the changing patterns of life of the people of South Asia.