Sociology

This course studies what legitimate authority is, under what conditions states have it, how law participates in legitimate authority, and how philosophical issues about legitimate authority are represented in positive law. It provides a grasp on the philosophical debate on legitimate state authority that can be applied in practice as jurists.

For most of us, the first intimate relationships that we experience are family relationships, although at other stages of our life-cycle non-familial relationships may dominate. The course explores different sociological understandings of such relationships and debates about the nature of social change in personal life. The course reviews research on parent-child relationships, friendship and kinship relationships, sexual relationships and couple relationships, drawing on North American, Australian, and New Zealand research as well as British literature.

The course introduces the concept of disistance and its importance for life-course criminology - theories and research. Topics include early formation - the family as precursor?; onset and maintenance in adolescence; the role of place and community in offending; understanding recidivism; the impact of imprisonment - living with conviction; pathways to desistance; models of desistance; disistance and the criminal justice system; influencing the life-course: models of intervention; and forms of intervention in Ireland.

This course offers an introduction to social movement studies, a dynamic field of academic studies that has grown in prominence for the past several decades. It focuses on the protests that have emerged and developed in the United States since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, as the United States has been home to a wide range of movements and counter-movements that have attempted to define or redefine notions such as equality, justice, and democracy. Throughout the world the 2010s and 2020s have been characterized by innovative or renewed forms of contentious politics that directly challenged the political status quo and neoliberal hegemony. Topics include Occupy Wall Street; the Tea Party; the 2011 occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol; the January 2021 attacks on the federal Capitol in Washington, D.C.; the 2012 Chicago teachers' strike and the 2018-2019 teachers' strikes in predominantly Republican states; the recent successful organizing efforts at Amazon and Starbucks; the different iterations of the Movement for Black Lives; far-right rallies under the Trump presidency; campaigns against campus sexual assault in the early 2010s; the worldwide #MeToo movement and anti-feminist reactions fueled by the so-called men's rights movement; the 2016 No Dakota Access Pipeline protests and the Green New Deal; and corporate misinformation campaigns, behind-closed-doors lobbying, and judicial battles waged by Big Oil companies against environmental justice movements.

From recurring economic crises to political upheavals, pandemics to armed conflicts, and the looming climate catastrophe, this course explores how social science perspectives can advance our understanding of the phenomenon of crisis. It provides an overview of divergent social-theoretical perspectives on crises and discusses respective concepts for assessing current socio-economic developments. On the basis of classical and more recent literature, the course examines the emergence and political constitution of crises as well as their transformative and innovative potential. The second part of the course focuses on exemplary contemporary crises and shows which insights social science research offers to makes sense of and cope with our disruptive reality. In addition to developing knowledge about crises and the state-economy-society nexus, the course also provides an opportunity to approach various formats of academic writing, transfer conceptual knowledge to other empirical fields of interest, and concisely present ideas.

This course examines urban family life and relationships within the family as well aspects of the Japanese education system, including kindergarten, various schools, and universities. The course also addresses the ‘Self,’, cultural identity and the Japanese system in domains such as family, gender, community, education, workplace, sports, and media.

This course delves into the sometimes-troubled history and present reality of the Japanese free press. It questions the heart of journalism but also seeks to define the notions of "public good" and the health of democratic systems. For example: Is state control of the news media ever justified? Using historical and present-day case studies, students will examine what press freedom means in practice, and the different ways it can be restricted.

This course focuses on the relationship between violent conflict and economic development. The first half of the course examines the concepts of conflict and development, as well as some associated theories. The second part focuses on the nexus between conflict and development, the cultural dimensions of conflict and development, and concludes with some policy interventions that could be applied to reduce the risk of conflict and accelerate development. Reference is made to some case studies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This course examines "Eugenics," using the Holocaust under the Nazi regime as a reference. The course traces the history of the end of the 19th century in England, when eugenics was born as an academic discipline, and then examines the history and development of the eugenics movement in the United States. In addition, the course also covers unique eugenics philosophy in Japan and current problems in reproductive medicine.

In the spring of 2021 the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) began paying 122 people 1200€ a month, tax free, no strings attached, for three years. The study, which will compare their fortunes to those of a much larger group who also put their hand up to receive the money but were not among the lucky few, aims to contribute empirical evidence to the debate over the merits of a basic income. We will compare the idea of a basic income to other types of government benefits in cash and in kind, and engage with arguments for and against these different benefit types. We will analyze in detail the claim that a basic income would eliminate relative poverty and reduce income inequality by studying income inequality in Germany today. We will look at any data published by the German experiment, and compare its design to that of a two-year trial carried out in Finland in 2017–18. In this way the course will serve as an introduction to research methods in social policy. By the end of the semester you will have gained an overview of tax–transfer systems and of their role in reducing income inequality, and you will be in a position to engage in an informed way in debate over the promise of a basic income.