71 - 80 of 258 results for: SOC

(Graduate students register for 247.) How have the definitions, categories, and consequences of race and ethnicity differed across time and place? This course offers a historical and sociological survey of racialized divisions around the globe. Case studies include: affirmative action policies, policies of segregation and ghettoization, countries with genocidal pasts, invisible minorities, and countries that refuse to count their citizens by race at all.

(Graduate students register for 249.) Recent research and theory on the urban underclass, including evidence on the concentration of African Americans in urban ghettos, and the debate surrounding the causes of poverty in urban settings. Ethnic/racial conflict, residential segregation, and changes in the family structure of the urban poor.

(Graduate students register for 251 and 5 units. Undergraduates register for 151 and 4 units.) Comparative analysis of historical, contemporary, and anticipated demographic change. Draws on case studies from around the world to explore the relationship between social structure and population dynamics. Introduces demographic measures, concepts and theory. Course combines lecture and seminar-style discussion.

When we consider a person's health, we often look first to the body. But our bodies don't exist in a vacuum: how we feel, whether we get sick, even how long we live depends on many factors beyond our biology. In this course, we will shift our focus to the world our bodies inhabit, considering how our circumstances affect our health, healthcare, and well-being. We will explore the 'social determinants' of health outcomes, including neighborhoods, social networks, healthcare systems, inequalities, and power structures. We will also reflect on what it means to live a healthy life and the extent to which individuals may or may not be able to determine their own health outcomes.n nBeyond the substantive topic of health, a core component of applying the sociological lens is being able to use research to explain and analyze the social world. To build your critical analysis skills, you will read and engage with social science research and apply theoretical concepts to empirical observations. Throughout the course, we will engage with case studies, both in class and in assignments that ask you to turn your sociological lens to health disparities in the world around you. We will also brainstorm ways to build a world without health inequality.

How are contemporary U.S. social movements shaped by the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality? This course explores the emergence, dynamics, tactics, and targets of social movements. Readings include empirical and theoretical social movement texts, including deep dives into Black, White, and Chicana feminisms; the KKK; and queer/LGBT movements. We will explore how social movement emergence and persistence is related to participants¿ identities and experiences with inequality; how the dynamics, targets, and tactics of mobilized participants are shaped by race, class, gender, and/or sexuality; and how social movement scholars have addressed the intersectional nature of inequality, identity, and community.

(Graduate students enroll in 254. COMM 154 is offered for 5 units, COMM 254 is offered for 4 units.) Algorithms have become central actors in today's digital world. In areas as diverse as social media, journalism, education, healthcare, and policing, computing technologies increasingly mediate communication processes. This course will provide an introduction to the social and cultural forces shaping the construction, institutionalization, and uses of algorithms. In so doing, we will explore how algorithms relate to political issues of modernization, power, and inequality. Readings will range from social scientific analyses to media coverage of ongoing controversies relating to Big Data. Students will leave the course with a better appreciation of the broader challenges associated with researching, building, and using algorithms.

How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.

Family change from historical, social, demographic, and legal perspectives. Extramarital cohabitation, divorce, later marriage, interracial marriage, and same-sex cohabitation. The emergence of same-sex marriage as a political issue. Are recent changes in the American family really as dramatic as they seem? Theories about what causes family systems to change.

After decades of decline, U.S. cities today are undergoing major transformations. Young professionals are flocking to cities instead of fleeing to the suburbs. Massive increases in immigration have transformed the racial and ethnic diversity of cities and their neighborhoods. Public housing projects that once defined the inner city are disappearing, and crime rates have fallen dramatically. Do these changes signal the end of residential segregation and urban inequality? Who do these changes benefit? This course will explore these issues and strategies to address them through readings and discussion, analyzing a changing neighborhood in a major city in the Bay Area in groups (which will include at least one site visit), and studying a changing neighborhood or city of their choice for their final project. The course does not have pre-requisites.