Sociology

This course introduces students to key social, economic, and political current issues—such as climate change, economic liberalization, transnational migrations, terrorism, pandemics—and how different stakeholders—municipalities, nation-states, civil societies, as well as regional and international organizations—measure up to these issues and challenges. The course will also emphasize the connection and the articulation of these current affairs and public policies between the global and local levels. The course will thus make room for guest-speakers from local NGOs, news agencies or institutions to present their own take on global matters. While some of the topics addressed in this class have been covered at length by the literature, some will reflect immediate concerns as they arise from current affairs. 

In this course, students explore the evolution, contemporary controversies, and ongoing validity of human rights.

Through a range of cases studies around gender, citizenship and migration, torture, the death penalty, development, and corporate abuses of human rights, the course outlines the rise of the human rights regime, analyzes whether we now live in a post-human rights world, and considers the implications for human rights in a post-human era. Students draw on international examples of human rights institutions and violations, including torture in Guantanamo Bay, the death penalty in the US and countries such as Saudi Arabia, and the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in Europe.

This course offers a study of the structure and historical evolution of family and family relationships, as well as new family models and family organization. It focuses specifically on Spanish society. 

Throughout history, people have always worked, not only to survive, but also to create material and social conditions that allow them to recover and reproduce. However, Karl Marx (2004 [1867]) has shown that the way people work is shaped by the unequal relations of production between those who must labor to survive and those who can enjoy the labor of others. But how is work different from labor and other activities, as another German philosopher, Hannah Arendt (2013 [1958]), once noted? And what role does work play, for example, for different societies where the distinction between work and non-work is not so clear (Spittler, 2015)? This is the task of this seminar, which aims to introduce classical (Durkheim, 1984 [1893]; Godelier and Ignatieff 1980) and contemporary anthropological and non-anthropological studies of labor that incorporate a variety of issues such as gender (Narotzky, 2014), "race” (Stuesse, 2016), postcoloniality (Appel, 2019), and intimacy (Schields, 2023). The seminar aims not only to deconstruct "Western" notions of work and labor, but also to explore how these notions cannot be reduced to a physical activity, usually performed in an industrial or agricultural setting. Care work and domestic work (Amrith, 2017; Parreñas, 2011) are equally important forms of labor that have often been neglected in social theory. Moreover, with the development of new digital technologies and infrastructures, this seminar will also address new forms of digital (Gregg, 2011), post-Fordist (Hardt and Negri, 2000), affective (Muehlebach, 2011), and platform (Jones, 2021) forms of labor. It will offer methodological tools to examine the meaning of labor in people's everyday lives and its various entanglements with their environment, as well as to understand the emerging labor struggles that address past and contemporary exploitation and discrimination (Kasmir and Carbonella, 2008).

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course develops an appropriate knowledge base of theories of gender in relation to cultural processes and an understanding of the relevance of gender as a lens to analyze operations of power. In addition, it develops a good awareness of methodological issues in the study of gender and space/place and their mutually constitutive nature. The course focuses on the analytical skills needed for digesting complex theories to put theories to use in engaging with contemporary debates inside and outside of academia. Finally, this course develops appropriate and diverse research and communication skills where theory can be applied in projects outside of the classroom. This course explores the construction and lived realities of gender in its intersection with race, space, and place. Exploring “gender” as a fluid, socially, and spatially constructed category, the course guides through the ways that gender, race, and space intertwine in theory and in lived experience, both historically and in present times. Taught through interdisciplinary contributions ranging from social, feminist, queer, and affect theories – across disciplines such as anthropology, political geography, cultural studies, architecture - the course examines the diverse and interconnected understandings, experiences, and effects of “gender” as a system of meaning-making and power across spaces, places, and historical times. The course includes gender and feminist theories, starting from the nature/culture divide through to the contestation and dissolution of gender binaries. The course further examines the interface between gender theory and a variety of other theoretical perspectives applied to the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including postcolonialism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism. The course also investigates central questions of epistemology and methodology in relation to the application of gender theories in the field of cross-cultural studies. The main focus running through the course is the body, and body politics. The class pays particular attention to introducing diverse feminist trajectories and embodied politics, including Black feminism, Islamic feminism, feminist liberation movements in the Global south, and others.

This course investigates the cultural and political significance of food within Paris, with a distinctive literary approach. Focusing on the lively debates and controversies surrounding French culinary culture, it explores how food acts as a gateway to understanding dynamic changes in cities, global systems, and national identity formation. The course analyzes how food has been instrumental in fostering ideas of community and belonging. Through a rich selection of interdisciplinary readings, literary analyses, writing assignments, and exploratory excursions throughout Paris, the course examines how food influences personal identities, everyday life, and the political sphere, with a special emphasis on its representation in literature and the arts.

This course offers an overview of the history and recent transformations within the field of cultural geography including contemporary theories and practices. The four thematic units are: the objects of cultural geography; nature, landscape, and cultural geography; culture, territory, and identity in a global world; space, difference and power, and geographies of inclusion and exclusion.

Economic and especially wealth inequality in the US is rising, along with the number of and power exerted by billionaires, multibillionaires, and multinational enterprises (MNEs). While taxes count as one key instrument to reduce inequalities, the most affluent individuals and corporations seem to make use of multiple pathways to circumvent their tax obligations and thereby harm the redistributive effect of taxation. In this seminar, students will become familiar with general economic and sociological theories on tax evasion and avoidance, and challenge the view of tax havens as Caribbean island paradises, where the rich and famous store their money. We will discuss ways in which tax evasion works, the impact of tax havens on regional and global inequality, historical developments of tax havens, and economic approaches to measure tax evasion. Students are expected to have knowledge or the willingness to learn basic sociological as well as economic concepts and theories such as tradeoffs, opportunity costs, and expected utility theory. 

This course focuses on childhood cognitive development, a field of study within developmental psychology focusing on how the ability to think and reason develops throughout childhood. The course discusses how children learn to do many of the tasks we accomplish on a daily basis, including speaking language, understanding other people’s thoughts, inhibiting impulses, memorizing and recalling information, and problem-solving.