141 - 150 of 241 results for: SOC

(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.

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.

This course surveys quantitative methods to make causal inferences in the absence of randomized experiment including the use of natural and quasi-experiments, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, fixed effects estimators, and difference-in-differences. We emphasize the proper interpretation of these research designs and critical engagement with their key assumptions for applied researchers. Prerequisites: Prior training in multivariate regression (e.g., ECON 102B or the permission of the instructor).

This course focuses on the skills needed to conduct theoretically-informed and policy-relevant descriptive social science. Students read recent examples of rigorous descriptive quantitative research that exemplifies the use of data to describe important phenomena related to educational and social inequality. The course will help develop skills necessary to conceptualize, operationalize, and communicate descriptive research, including techniques related to measurement and measurement error, data harmonization, data reduction, and visualization. Students develop a descriptive project during the course. Prerequisite: satisfactory completion of a course in multivariate regression.

(Graduate students register for 260.) Organizations are ubiquitous: they educate us, manage our finances, and structure our daily routines. They also distribute resources, status, and opportunities. This course will explore the role of formal organizations in contemporary social life, and their consequences for individuals. Drawing on a range of research in the social sciences and examples from the real world, we will examine several topics, including: the origins of organizations, how decisions are made in organizations, why some organizations survive while others die, incentives and employment relationships, how social networks shape social stratification, and what kinds of organizational policies promote diversity.

Social and political forces that shape market outcomes. The emergence and creation of markets, how markets go wrong, and the roles of government and society in structuring market exchange. Applied topics include development, inequality, globalization, and economic meltdown. Preference to Sociology majors and Sociology coterm students.

Post-WW II transformation in the Asia-Pacific region, with focus on the ascent of Japan, the development of newly industrialized capitalist countries (S. Korea and Taiwan), the emergence of socialist states (China and N. Korea), and the changing relationship between the U.S. and these countries.

In this class we study the design of effective human organizations, within and across institutional settings. We learn how to apply analytical tools, from the social sciences, to organizations, to understand the process of executing strategies, the challenges in changing them, and accountability. The theme for 2022 year's class will be defunding the police or reorganizing it from within. Recommended: FINANCE 377, MS&E 180, SOC 160, ECON 149, or MGTECON 330.