Sociology

This course introduces the microsociology of small groups and subcultures and reviews the sociological theories and research methods used to understand them. It examines how small groups and subcultures structure social life, as well as how they form and change over time. The course discusses key social aspects of group and subcultures such as norms, social structures, leadership, conformity, power, inequality, conflict, and cooperation. It identifies the different social roles that exist in small groups and subcultures and considers how small groups and subcultures affect identity, deviance, emotions, and creativity. The course highlights the significance of small groups and subcultures for social life and individual biographies, and provides an understanding of the complex interplay between micro and macro forms of social interaction.

This course examines the experience of health and wellbeing over the lifespan. Developmental theory and perspectives on coping and resilience are used to illuminate individual and ecological factors that promote or inhibit the physical, psychological and social wellbeing of individuals over the lifecourse.

This course examines how social, political, cultural and material conditions shape scientific work and how science, in turn, shapes society. Because of the central role of science, technology and medicine in driving modern developments, understanding the relationships among science, technology and society is crucial for understanding the history of humanity and the contemporary world. 

This course examines identity, cultural and urban space issues in Hong Kong in the local-national-global nexus, focusing on how popular culture, the state and civil society shape meanings, values, discourses and ideologies, and vice versa, from colonial times to the post-colonial era.

This course covers the principles for developing intellectual, emotional, and social skills to achieve their goals and live a meaningful life. It analyzes different self-development philosophies and provides opportunities for self-reflection. The course helps students identify their personal and professional goals and provides tools to achieve those goals. It also focuses on improving public speaking skills.

This course examines study abroad/overseas exchanges, aiming to integrate individual and collective insights for transformative learning. The course draws upon three main student experiences: 1) Pre-Departure (students intending to go on exchange or an equivalent experience) 2) Re-Integration (students returning from exchange or an equivalent experience) and 3) On- Going (incoming exchange students to HKU from overseas). It will first examine the concepts of transformation, experience, and learning, and how they can be integrated from interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., the metaphor of metamorphosis; the morality of human development; the phenomenology of perception and stereotypes). It will then examine the structures and theories of unfamiliar places, rootedness, mobility, cross-cultural encounters, reciprocity, and service learning in the context of students’ unique identities and experiences. It will conclude with reflections on transformation of the “whole person” as an embodied, transnational process.

Since the 1983's March for equality and against racism (“Marche des Beurs”), up until the current debates on Islamism separatism, the French public sphere is struggling with a new intellectual debate, which can be described as “the postcolonial question”. By defining and questioning this phrasing, this course first establishes a political history of immigration in France, and how it has deeply defined and redefined the definitions of social progress. Moreover, using diverse approaches in social science, the course explains this rising issue of identity politics in France which seems to have deeply impacted the political scene. The appearance of this issue is mostly due to economic crises, recent immigration waves and diverse social and political movements which stirred a topical debate on the notion of identity - but also the parallels established with the American debate on race and gender, and how the French university has used (or refused) these categories. Analyzing the evolution of immigration and Islam in France, and how the administration has tried to address these stakes, the course discusses political and religious phenomena which currently are one of the main fault lines within French parties - both within the left and the right, on the question of integration or assimilation, on a liberal or strict vision of laïcité. The teaching mainly focuses on France, in order to understand the consequences of these events as a matter of domestic policy. However, those dynamics are systematically compared to foreign similar events and replaced in a Euro-Mediterranean context through a comprehensive chronology.