1 - 10 of 69 results for: SOC ; Currently searching winter courses. You can expand your search to include all quarters

Deep disagreement pervades our democracy, from arguments over issues ranging from foreign policy, free speech, and reparations to college admissions policy and the professionalization of college athletics. Loud voices drown out discussion. Open-mindedness, humility, and critical thinking seem in short supply among politicians, citizens, and other residents alike. Yet constructive disagreement is an essential feature of a democratic society. This class explores and models respectful, civil disagreement. Each week features scholars who disagree - sometimes quite strongly - about major policy issues. Students will have the opportunity to probe those disagreements, understand why they persist, and improve their own understanding of the facts and values that underlie them. The course may be taken for one or two units. The basic, one-unit class is open to all Stanford students, with other members of the Stanford community welcome to audit individual classes. The requirements are to do readings in advance of each class, attend, and listen attentively and critically. Because the topics are different, students who took the course in 2023-24 may enroll this year as well. A limited number of undergraduates may take a second unit of credit. Students enrolled in the two unit course will participate in weekly small group discussion seminars about the topics discussed by guest presenters in the course that week. The discussion seminars will be led by peer facilitators, with the goals of developing critical thinking skills and discourse skills, such as active listening and curiosity. The peer facilitators are undergraduate students who have completed training in dialogue facilitation. Each discussion seminar will have a maximum of 10 students. If interest in discussion seminars exceeds the number offered, students will be chosen by lottery.

This course will trace China's winding path to the present through two radically different periods: the revolutionary changes and upheavals in the middle of the 20th century, and the shift to market reform and rapid economic development after 1980. We will examine the formation of China's first modern nation-state out of a long period of internal war, and how that form of government has evolved in the decades since. The main focus of the first half of the course is on the Mao era, and in particular the two famous upheavals of that period - the Great Leap Forward and subsequent famine, and the decade-long upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. In the second half, we will explore the surprising shift toward market reform and openness to the outside world after 1980, and the economic growth and social changes that followed. In addition to accessible readings, the course will feature documentary films, dramatic productions by Chinese directors, memoirs and fiction by Chinese authors, and classroom discussion. Students will gain an in depth background for understanding China's role in current world affairs, and a good foundation for further coursework on contemporary China.

The seminar introduces students to major themes connected to the immigrant experience, including identity, education, assimilation, transnationalism, political membership, and intergroup relations. There will also be some attention given to research methodology. The seminar addresses these themes through reading ethnographies that document the everyday experience of immigrants and immigrant communities, broadly defined, in the United States. The course readings primarily come from more contemporary ethnographic research, but it will also include a sampling of ethnographies that examine the experience of previous waves of immigrants. Student participation will include in-class discussions of readings, short written responses to readings, and a final paper in which students draw on original ethnographic research that they conduct during the quarter. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to identify the social, political, and economic forces that shape the immigrant experience. More importantly, students will understand HOW these forces enter the immigrant experience in everyday life.

Today, for the first time in history, a majority of people live in cities. By 2050, cities will hold two-thirds of the world's population. This transformation touches everyone, and raises critical questions. What draws people to live in cities? How will urban growth affect the world's environment? Why are cities so divided by race and by class, and what can be done about it? How do cities change who we are, and how can we change cities? In this class, you will learn to see cities in new ways, from the smallest everyday interactions on a city sidewalk to the largest patterns of global migration and trade. We will use specific examples from cities around the world to illustrate the concepts that we learn in class. The course is intended primarily for freshmen and sophomores.

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

(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.

How do we make sense of a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected, and where social problems like climate change, democratization, human rights, and economic stability are increasingly global in their scope? How have international institutions attempted to regulate these processes and maintain social order? Why have recent social and political movements in an increasing number of countries targeted globalization as a source of their society¿s problems? In this course, we will explore how globalization is as an economic, political, and cultural process that shapes major social problems in today¿s world. To do so, we will draw on a range of theories and interdisciplinary research in economics, political science, and sociology.

(Graduate students register for 249.) We explore the history of residential segregation, urban policy, race, discrimination, policing and mass incarceration in the US. What are the various causes and consequences of poverty? How do institutions that serve the poor work and sometimes fail? We will read deeply into the social, political, and the legal causes of today¿s conflicts.