Sociology

This course examines the great contemporary problems of poverty and inequality within the context of a globalizing world. Sources and selected empirical cases of poverty and inequality are explored and related development theories and policies are examined. The geographical scope of the course ranges from local to international. One or more African languages may accompany English in some lectures or reading material. Coursework counts 60%; an examination counts 40% of the final mark.

This course considers popular music within a social context. This does not just mean how and where popular music is used (though this is important) but, rather, how popular music is socially constructed: how do social conditions give rise to particular forms of popular music, and how do they affect the creation of popular music, and its reception? Using both historical and contemporary examples, the unit introduces students to some of the key ideas needed to understand popular music sociologically.

Topics include the development of the study of victimization; measuring victimization; theoretical perspectives on victimology; the ideal victims and claims to victimhood; victims' role in the criminal justice system and rebalancing in favor of the victim; victim offender overlap; the vulnerable victim; victims of sex crimes; victims of state and corporate crime; overcoming victimization; and victim support organizations.

The theme of this seminar is “identities,” focusing particularly on racial, ethnic, and national identities. Through readings and discussions about contentious issues around identities, the course aims to critically examine basic social science concepts, such as: communities, groups/collectivities, nation-states, race and ethnicity, home, and ultimately, the boundaries that define “us” and “them.” The course collectively thinks about questions such as: What does it mean to be Japanese, and what does it take to become (and cease to become) Japanese (part of Japanese nationhood)? 

This course introduces students to South Korean sexuality issues through the lens of sexuality, addressing topics such as colonialism and migration; industrialization, family, and sexual harassment; popular culture, media, and masculinity; militarization and conscription; and South Korea’s blooming LGBTQ+ movement. The methodology to approach these issues in the class is not to judge the phenomena only with one standard, but to articulate the multi-layers intersecting each issue. The course examines how historical change from liberated Korea in 1945 to the present-day was both motivated by and determinative of various gender dynamics, using secondary critical readings by scholars to better understand the relationship between society and sexuality in a chronological fashion. Students will learn about how Koreans have recognized diverse sexual orientations and gender roles over time.

This course introduces the field of social network analysis (SNA). Social networks are ubiquitous nowadays; SNA emerged in the 1960s as a vibrant social science specialty trying to give substance to individuals, not through their inner psychological and demographic, or professional characteristics but through the relationships they entertain with their social environment. The first objective of this class is to introduce the concepts and metrics designed and theorized by this specific stream of sociology and test how operative they still are in our connected environment. How useful are centrality or cohesion measures today? What can we learn about our current online world with concepts forged in the 1960s and the 1970s like homophily, transitivity, cohesion, diffusion processes? To do so, this course examines the seminal papers in SNA. However, this intellectual journey is complemented by a more hands-on approach, as half of the course is devoted to teaching the students basic operations in Python such that they can collect data from digital social media platforms before modeling, measuring, and visualizing this data using recent network analysis libraries. The course puts the ancient concepts of SNA to the test and assesses how fruitful they are in understanding online interaction data. No prior coding experience is required as the course extensively uses AI capacities (such as Gemini, directly available in Google Colab notebooks) to assist with coding. The class alternates readings of historical sociology papers and more contemporaneous articles typical of the digital age mixing concepts from SNA in the larger realm of computational social sciences. Most classes are split into three parts: the discussion around a scientific paper, a lecture about a new SNA-related concept, and a third part where students are invited to experiment on their own laptops with the newly introduced concepts, metrics, or algorithms with empirical data.

This course offers an introduction to the key concepts, theories, methodological approaches, and empirical evidence on social inequality and social mobility. First, it focuses on the structure of inequality; considering how unequal societies are today and how and why this has changed in recent decades.  Second, the course discusses who gets to occupy privileged positions in society and why. It explores how characteristics that are not in peoples' control, such as socio-economic background, shape important outcomes in their lives, such as their level of education, their job, or their income. Finally, it explores what policies can reduce inequality of opportunity in society.

This course provides a study of cinema from a sociological perspective. It examines different film genres and challenges related to film representation. Themes, films, and topics may vary by semester and instructor.

This course allows students to explore current and enduring educational questions through a sociological lens and to identify the relationships between education and social inequalities. Special attention is paid to issues of social justice, inclusion/exclusion, and possibilities for social transformation. The course considers various axes of power, identity and institutional organization, including sessions focused on social class, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and learner and teacher identities.  

Globalization and Japan is usually connected with the oft researched policy of “Cool Japan, ” which emphasizes popular culture, particularly anime and manga. Courses on anime and manga tend to focus on an analysis of the object, whether it is a particular anime or manga title. This course aims to fill the gap, by shifting the focus to the industries as popular culture cannot exist without the complex structures of business, form and application of anime and manga.

The course aims: 

1. To introduce the student to the “behind-the-scenes” aspects of anime and manga.
2. To introduce the student to research on anime and manga from a case study.
3. To engage students in critical approaches towards familiar topics.
4. To encourage students in think critically through their own projects of a chosen case study.