Sociology

This course offers a productive and student-centered entry point to studying, understanding, and appreciating the American cultural mosaic through the (hi)stories that Americans have been telling themselves in an ongoing process of defining who they are—and, who they are not—vis-à-vis other cultural communities. It is through these narrative (hi)stories that first contact is often made not only with American identities, values, and mores, but also historical events and/or eras, ideological fault lines, and social (in)equalities. The course advances students’ understanding of specific American eras, historical contexts, locales, themes, issues, and fault lines through popular cultural "texts," ranging from literary texts and music to film, television, and video games.

This course examines the historical, social and political forces shaping contemporary relationships between the criminal justice system and racialized populations. It uses criminological theory and research to explore the common and distinct factors contributing to the disproportionate criminal justice contact experienced by a range of racialized populations across the world, from the Aboriginal and African communities of Australia, to African Americans and Latinos in the United States, and foreign nationals in European countries. The course further evaluates some of the key attempts criminal justice agencies have made to improve their relationship with certain racialized populations, identifying and analyzing the conditions under which practices such as police-community building initiatives, specialist Indigenous courts, and culturally-specific prison programs have emerged, and asking students to consider the tensions that remain within these responsive racialized practices.

This course examines the major forms and structures of punishment in our society, including why we punish individuals, how we do so, and how the punishment process can be viewed in a wider social context. The first part of this course considers the broad justifications for punishment, and experiences of imprisonment with particular emphasis on hidden groups such as female and indigenous prisoners. We consider the process of punishment, from sentencing to imprisonment and punishment in the community. The second part examines the work of major writers who have provided a theoretical critique of punishment and the role it plays in our society. By the end of the subject students should have a good understanding of the correctional system and be familiar with the work of important theorists like Foucault, Cohen and Garland.
 

This course explores the evolution of tourism and sociological analysis. Topics include: social research on tourism; tourism and development including social impacts and risks; tourism and environmental, social, and economic sustainability; gender and tourism; sociological analysis of the motivations of tourists; tourist locations; tourism and accessibility; tourism in the 21st century.

This course explores the connection between popular culture and social, cultural, political, and economic developments in Western societies from 1945 to 1991. Topics include: adolescence, music, and subcultures-- from beatniks and mods to punks and rappers; from atomic fears to the glorification of violence-- horror and science fiction; gender, sexual diversity, race, and pop culture-- discourses and counter-discourses; fear and social control-- from the witch hunt to the moral panic.

This course examines the close connections of fashion and politics in a globalized world. It covers how fashion circulates as a robust geopolitical, commercial, and personal element of global, national, and local cultures.

This course examines a wide range of topics on the commercialization of sports, tourism/leisure as an encounter of cultures/citizens/space, shopping mall and public sphere, and the impact on social and cultural life by the phenomenon of McDisneyization. Other topics such as advertising and pop culture, broadcasting (narrowcasting on the Net), merchandising and iconography in fashion will be examined to review key contemporary issues and debates about cultural consumption. Bringing together work on reception theory in literary studies and philosophy, studies on consumer culture in anthropology and sociology and those on media audiences within media studies, we will address the consequences and effects of increasing cultural commodifiaction and globalization, by exploring into the complex interactions of cultural production and consumption which are relevant in topics such as place and identity, visual culture and hyperreality, representation and communication technologies. 

This course examines sports in Hong Kong from personal development to the impact on society. It will first introduce different areas of sports, including medicine, the technologies involved in increasing and maintaining performance, and an overview of sports in Hong Kong. Following this, local elite athletes will share their experience in professional training and international events so that students can better understand strategies about how to tackle difficulties to reach the top of a profession and apply these principles to their own experience. 

This course examines issues of power and how it relates to language use in various institutions such as law, medicine, and business among others. It covers how people in power can influence the ways in which language is used, and exercise control over access to language by others; and similarities and differences in institutional language practices across different sociocultural contexts, including Hong Kong and other countries.