21 - 30 of 212 results for: SOC

Causes, effects, and solutions to various forms of corruption in business and politics in both developing regions (e.g. Asia, E. Europe) and developed ones (the US and the EU).

(Graduate students register for 214.) The sociological approach to production, distribution, consumption, and markets, emphasizing the impact of norms, power, social structure, and institutions on the economy. Comparison of classic and contemporary approaches to the economy among the social science disciplines. Topics: consumption, labor markets, organization of professions such as law and medicine, the economic role of informal networks, industrial organization, including the structure and history of the computer and popular music industries, business alliances, capitalism in non-Western societies, and the transition from state socialism in E. Europe and China.

(Graduate students register for 217A.) The transformation of Chinese society from the 1949 revolution to the eve of China's reforms in 1978: creation of a socialist economy, reorganization of rural society and urban workplaces, emergence of new inequalities of power and opportunity, and new forms of social conflict during Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1966-69 and its aftermath.

Why social movements arise, who participates in them, the obstacles they face, the tactics they choose, and how to gauge movement success or failure. Theory and empirical research. Application of concepts and methods to social movements such as civil rights, environmental justice, antiglobalization, and anti-war.

The demographic, economic, political, and cultural roots of social change in the 60s; its legacy in the present U.S.

Why do some people have better ideas than others? Why are some more likely to be bullied in school, get a job, or catch a disease? Why do some innovations, apps, rumors, or revolutions spread like a wildfire, while others never get off the ground? Why are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Spotify so good at recommending people, news, pictures, or songs we might know or like? What do a power outage, the collapse of the Roman Empire, a human stroke, and the Financial Crisis of 2008 have in common? What explains the success of Silicon Valley? And why are there only six (or less) people between us and any other human on this planet? While these questions may seem totally unrelated to each other on first glance, they can all be explored with the help of a single, yet powerful framework: social network analysis. In this class, you will learn to see the world as a web of relations: not only are people, ideas/concepts and things all increasingly connected to each other; the pattern of these relations can tell us a great deal about many phenomena in our social world that defy traditional explanations. At the end of this class, you will not only see networks everywhere; you will have taken a big step toward connecting some of the dots in (y)our world: this is the power of thinking in relations.

In this class we will learn about Israel's unique demographic structure and we will compare it to the US and other countries. Reading materials include general theories as well as research published in scholarly journals. In the first half of this class we will review basic demographic concepts (mortality, fertility and migration), and we will apply them to the Israeli context, with comparisons between different social groups in Israel and with comparison to the US. We will also review basic demographic theories (theories of population change) and apply them to different countries. nnIn the second half of the class we will focus on demography of the family. We will ask how fertility, marriage and divorce differ for different population groups in Israel and the US, and we will tie family processes to current theories of gender and family change. We will also learn how demographic processes may be related to the reproduction of poverty, and inequality.

(Graduate students register for 220.) Forming ties, developing norms, status, conformity, deviance, social exchange, power, and coalition formation; important traditions of research have developed from the basic theories of these processes. Emphasis is on understanding basic theories and drawing out their implications for change in a broad range of situations, families, work groups, and friendship groups.

What does mass incarceration have in common with ICE detention? What role do little-known legal doctrines from the previous century play in making courts inaccessible to survivors of sexual assault and trans people fighting discrimination? In this class we will answer those questions by examining how the seemingly objective nature of the law makes it a potent social tool to promote the interests of the powerful at the expense of the powerless while appearing neutral. This obfuscating power of the law has long been used to reinforce and perpetuate forms of social inequality. In this class we will analyze a few notable examples of such usage of the law and their role as pillars of current social inequality: We will examine how the high burden of proof courts have placed on complainants claiming gender discrimination has blocked most targets of such discrimination from seeking legal remedy; We will examine how redlining and mass incarceration have resulted in the current rates of racial inequality; and how immigration law has resulted in a seemingly objective yet deeply racist system of detention by ICE.