1 - 10 of 65 results for: SOC

Preference to freshmen. Seminar discussion of how various institutions in U.S. society employ racial categories, and how race is studied and conceptualized across disciplines. Course introduces perspectives from demography, history, law, genetics, sociology, psychology, and medicine. Students will read original social science research, learn to collect and analyze data from in-depth interviews, and use library resources to conduct legal/archival case studies.

This Introductory Seminar reviews the history of social network studies, investigates how networks have changed over the past hundred years and asks how new technologies will impact them. We will draw from scholarly publications, popular culture and personal experience as ways to approach this central aspect of the human experience.

Although most of us think that feelings are deeply personal and private experiences, this seminar explores the social side of emotion¿including how they are socially learned, shaped, regulated, and distributed in the population as well as the consequences of emotion culture, emotion norms, emotional labor, and emotional deviance for individuals and society. We will consider specific emotions ¿ including jealousy, fear, sympathy, and happiness ¿ as well as more general patterns ¿ including the commercialization of emotion and the role of emotions in politics.

Strategies of environmental movements to contain domestic and foreign corporations that are viewed as major perpetrators of rainforest devastation and the socio-economic degradation of this vast region. Topics: Origins, roles and inter-relations among corporations (zero deforestation agreements in soybean agriculture and cattle ranching), the development of environmental law and the efficacy of government and NGO movements¿ strategies, and whether this emerging economy shapes social classes, groups, tribes, family life to further embed inequality and immobility. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.

20th-century Korea from a comparative historical perspective. Colonialism, nationalism, development, state-society relations, democratization, and globalization with reference to the Korean experience.

Social, cultural, political, economic, and international factors affecting the development and consolidation of democracy in historical and comparative perspective. Individual country experiences with democracy, democratization, and regime performance. Emphasis is on global third wave of democratization beginning in the mid-1970s, the recent global recession of democracy (including the rise of illiberal populist parties and movements), and the contemporary challenges and prospects for democratic change.

Poverty rates in Israel are high and have been relatively stable in recent decades, with about one fifth of all households (and a third of all children) living below the poverty line. In this class we will learn about poverty and inequality in Israel and we will compare with the US and other countries.nnIn the first few weeks of this class we will review basic theories of poverty and inequality and we will discuss how theories regarding poverty have changed over the years, from the "culture of poverty" to theories of welfare state regimes. We will also learn about various ways of measuring poverty, material hardship, and inequality, and we will review the methods and data used.nnIn the remaining weeks of the class we will turn to substantive topics such as gender, immigration, ethnicity/nationality, welfare policy, age, and health. Within each topic we will survey the debates within contemporary scholarship and we will compare Israel and the US. Examination of these issues will introduce students to some of the challenges that Israeli society faces today.

(Graduate students register for 226.) Theory, methods, and research. Concepts such as density, homogeneity, and centrality; applications to substantive areas. The impact of social network structure on individuals and groups in areas such as communities, neighborhoods, families, work life, and innovations.

The effects of schools and schooling on individuals, the stratification system, and society. Education as socializing individuals and as legitimizing social institutions. The social and individual factors affecting the expansion of schooling, individual educational attainment, and the organizational structure of schooling.