Sociology

The course offers students an introduction to modern Swedish society from an anthropological perspective. It is based on issues of politics, social norms, and social change in Sweden and on a number of ethnographical research studies. Anthropology is often based on an empirical understanding of people's experiences and can therefore provide insights into the everyday life of people and organizations. The course enables students to investigate and analyze case studies of social and political changes in Swedish society. Examples of this include the views of political governance, work and education, and focusing on the way they affect the people concerned. 

The course deals with the wide theme of the skills necessary to form citizens who are able to face the challenges of contemporary life and to meet and interpret forms of citizenship that are much broader than national or European ones, including global ones: a citizenship, therefore, aware and active, oriented to the values of civil coexistence and the common good, to the relationship with the environment according to sustainable approaches. In this perspective, active citizenship education is linked to the concepts of empowerment, the recognition of one's own and others’ identity, autonomy, cooperation, the values of social solidarity and respect for the other, overcoming the discrimination of gender, to the possibilities of change. In particular, the course presents some fundamental concepts of citizenship education and active participation (identity, community, belonging, stereotypes/prejudges, etc.) and, starting from these, the course focuses on the role of the student and her/his active participation in civil society, school, and university contexts as a "training gym" to exercise her/his citizenship rights and duties.

This course discusses political and social history to understand the transformation of society and long-term rules of social convention. It examines how sovereignty, rights and freedoms, ideologies, and beliefs change over time with a focus on the role of large social movements.

Occupying a favorable position in a network can be seen as a strategic asset. This course is interested in understanding how rational individuals behave when they position themselves in networks or interact through a given network. These issues are analyzed in the microeconomic/game theoretical framework of utility maximizing agents. Tools for modeling, describing, and analyzing networks are introduced and criteria for identifying the most central, well-connected, or influential agents in the network are reviewed. The problem of strategic network formation is explored in different contexts and the stability and efficiency of the networks that are formed are analyzed. Finally, the course is interested in how network architecture can influence different social processes such as the spread of an innovation or a trend in a population or the adoption of socially desirable or undesirable behaviors.

Students analyze how gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexual orientation are shaped by cultural and societal influences. The focus is on the comparisons of European and U.S. gender regimes and diversity differences, interpretation and evaluation of social actions by religious, gender, ethnic, racial, class, sexual orientation groups affecting equality and social justice in Europe and the U.S. Discussions within this framework include Communist concepts of gender equality, post-socialist transformation, and globalization as well as of current cultural gender representations, beauty myths, and advertising. Documentaries, other visual materials, field trips, and a guest speaker lecture are a part of this course.