Sociology

This course focuses on the sociology of the State and its relations with society in contemporary Russia. Historical and political sociologists have focused on the state in the form it has taken in the West since the Middle Ages. These essential and fundamental analyses form the starting point for study of the sociological reality of the state in post-Soviet Russia. Using the tools of the historical sociology of politics and comparative politics, the course studies the political transition following the collapse of the USSR, the reform of public action, the trajectories of elites and state agents, and the reform of the state and its authoritarian modernization. Ultimately, the course considers what makes the recent transformations of the Russian state so singular on the one hand and so banal on the other, in the context of the global neoliberal modernization of the state and public action.

This course focuses on the social transformations of food systems. More specifically it focuses on a) how less sustainable systems of food provisioning are deliberately transformed into more sustainable ones and b) how this transformation process and its implications can be understood and assessed from a social sciences perspective.  The course provides a social sciences perspective on the dynamics and diversity of sustainable systems of food provisioning and includes the tools to assess their impact on the environment, society, and health. This is achieved by a combination of lectures, group assignments, and workshops.

This course demonstrates how the political mobilization of law can be analyzed from a sociological perspective. At the intersection of the sociology of law and the sociology of mobilizations, it shows how the "weapon of law" constitutes an essential dimension of contemporary mobilizations. The place of law in the repertoires of collective action is examined: its scope, its limits, and the historicity of its uses. The course looks at various forms of mobilization, both in France and abroad, such as anti-colonial struggles, feminist mobilizations, trade union struggles, the defense of freedoms, and mobilizations in favor of the environment.

Social entrepreneurship pertains to establishing enterprises with the primary purpose of finding a solution to a social problem or creating social value by reaching out to underserved sections of society. This course introduces students to the concept, theories, and real cases of social enterprises. Through real-world examples and case study analysis, students will learn how such enterprises are organized, what their challenges are, and how exactly they try to solve social problems.

This course will be conducted with a combination of lectures and case discussions. Students are required to purchase and read the assigned cases before the course begins. Links to case studies will be given in class.

This course covers various theoretical traditions of scholarship within the sociology of education, and explores questions about the role of education in society. It explores institutional based processes, such as institutional power dynamics, teacher labelling, the curriculum and "hidden curriculum," and the construct of ability. In doing so, the course explores the processes through which educational and social inequality are generated and how alternative forms of education might address inequality.

This course analyzes, from a sociological perspective, the impact of industrialization (and its later development) in the organization of productive processes, companies, and society as a whole. It discusses the different conflicts related to the emergence and changes of industrial societies including the regulation of labor relations, mobilization of the workforce, the relationship between education and employment, etc. 

This course regards autotheory, autoethnography, and autofiction as critical methods, modes of inquiry, and forms of representation in anthropological research. Against the background of debates around positionality, students will learn and explore how the self even when intimate, vulnerable and ambivalent can be a public archive; that it offers a rich mode for thinking through our affective embroilments in the world. We will discuss how writing can embrace but also respond to issues of belonging, experiences of class and queerness, racial or gendered difference, de/coloniality and so on. We will read works that call into question the sharp divides between academic and other forms of writing, theory and poetry, ethnography and fiction. The course is designed to be interactive and workshop-oriented. Participants will engage in short writing exercises in class and will be encouraged to draw on their own experiences of life and learning in research.

This course explores the many ways in which inequalities and class relations shape people's lives, their ways of seeing the world, the way institutions function, and collective mobilizations. It begins by recalling the main terms of the theoretical debate on social classes, demonstrating the originality of sociological approaches. It then considers the international dimension of the question of social class, and ways of classifying and being classified in social space. The course then focuses on the relationship between social classes and questions of work, education, culture, and politics. Finally, it examines the bourgeoisie and the "middle classes," as well as how class is interwoven with social relations of gender and race, in an intersectional approach.

For much of the 20th Century, Ireland lagged behind other states in Northern Europe in terms of economic development and average standard of living. Yet in the last decade of the century Ireland’s economic fortunes changed dramatically with the advent of the "Celtic Tiger." Ireland experienced rapid economic, social and cultural change over a short period of time that continues to unfold. Rapid population and demographic change and liberalization of social attitudes and values have all contributed to this change. Such changes have reinvigorated debates about what it means to be Irish, the values, lifestyles, and identities associated with such changes and the institutional practices, occupational structures, and the political priorities evident in Irish society. Yet there are continuities that can be traced back in Irish history that underpin and also help explain the dynamics of Irish society. This course utilizes theories of social change to explore what type of society Ireland is. It critically evaluates theories of development that have been used by academics and experts in Ireland to explain Ireland’s conversion from a "late modernizer" to a "knowledge society." Finally, it locates Ireland’s societal change in the context of Europe and globally.