Sociology

Darwin's idea of evolution by means of natural selection has united the biological disciplines in the previous century and is currently recognized as a very fruitful concept for Humanities and Social Sciences as well. This course on evolution offers a synthetic view and understanding of human nature, cooperation, and culture from the perspective of biological evolution. It allows students of different departments to be acquainted with the evolutionary theory and its manifold implications as well as to practice evolutionary thinking. Evolutionary thinking refers to analyzing complex topics from an evolutionary point of view, applying the concept of evolution to understand what has shaped the human being over millions of years into its current appearance, behavior, and cultural expressions. A large part of the course deals with different aspects of cooperation, including altruism and reciprocity, and its biological and social relevance. Through this course, students combine their knowledge from different departments and disciplines, and construct a fresh and interdisciplinary look at broader scientific, social and cultural issues, all aimed to foster an improved understanding of human nature. Although Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection has been recognized as one of the great achievements of human kind and as the most profound shift in conceptual thinking in the last millennium, the evolutionary theory nevertheless is also notoriously controversial. Not only in society (i.e. creationism, intelligent design, and eugenics), but also within the academic world, groups of scientists question the relevance and applicability of evolutionary thinking to human affairs. Attention is also given to the arguments and counterarguments that are often used which still lead to debates.

This course draws upon research linked to youth studies, sociology, criminology, psychology, and social policy. The course provides students with an in-depth, research-based understanding of youth, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. The course focuses on key theoretical approaches to understanding youth in society and considers a range of substantive issues and areas within contemporary research on both "mainstream" and "marginalized" youth, but with a strong emphasis on youth "at risk," including homeless youth, young people with care experience, and young people who use drugs. Varying approaches to the study of youth are reviewed and students explore how social and economic forces influence the lives and experiences of young people generally and marginalized youth in particular.

This course provides a sociological analysis of gender. It examines the concepts of gender and history of the social position of women, the concepts of inequality and difference between men and women, and the different aspects of socialization, education and the transition of men and women into adulthood. The course also looks at the conditions of productive and reproductive work and the participation of women in positions of economic, political and symbolic power. Other topics covered include: nature and society; history of women; family and relationships at home; violence and image of women on the media; paid and unpaid work.

This course provides an introduction to the field of sociology, particularly analytical and critical reflection of society and culture from a scientific perspective. It covers main concepts and sociological processes; the function of different social institutions according to the most relevant sociological theories; and ideologies on which the practices of social institutions are based. Note: This course is the same as SOC 30, but taught in English

This course introduces students to the transformation of an ordinary experience –to have a sex, to identify with a gender, to practice sexuality– to an object of sociological research. The course defines each of the terms and deconstructs the meanings of common sense attached to it. The course considers the following topics: the sex of bodies as biological and the meaning of bodies as cultural; is heterosexuality a need of the human species; is sexuality natural; social relationships as constructions of differences in hierarchies between the feminine and the masculine; the constructs that give meaning to sex, sexuality, identifications, and gender relations. The course also shows that differences in sex and gender, which are not in themselves problematic, become a "problem" within egalitarian societies when they lead to the creation of inequalities, discrimination and violence against women, men who are not sufficiently masculine, non-heterosexuals, and transgender people.

This course offers a study of the European labor market, social institutions, and laws that attempt to resolve problems within the European social system. Other topics include: equality in the labor market; sustainable working conditions; social protection.

This is an intermediate undergraduate level course on theory formation and model building in Sociology. Thus the course focuses on the “Theory”, in the “Problems-Theory-Empirical Research-Policy implications” sequence that characterizes the various steps in analytical social science. The focus is on the common logic underlying different, sometimes competing but also often complementary sociological approaches. The core steps involved in theory formation and model building are discussed: the formulation of problems (societal problems as well as sociological problems), (re)construction of theories, derivation of testable hypotheses from general theories, and generating policy recommendations using sociological theories as well as results of empirical research. A focus on carefully designed arguments is a characteristic feature of the course: what assumptions do we need in order to derive certain implications? What implications follow from a certain set of assumptions? This includes making assumptions explicit which often remain implicit in theoretical reasoning. Another feature of the course is that we carefully reconstruct the links between propositions on the micro-level of individual behavior and propositions on the macro-level of social phenomena and processes. For this purpose, we introduce students to theoretical tools such as game theory and agent-based modeling. The course proceeds from examples of sociological analyses, each related to one of the main themes of sociology as a discipline: problems of order and cooperation (sometimes referred to as the problem of cohesion), problems of social inequality, and problems of social change.