121 - 130 of 226 results for: SOC

This course provides graduate students with a survey introduction to influential ethnographic and interview-based sociological research on race, crime, and justice. Recent social movements such as the Movement for Black Lives have drawn attention to the problem of mass criminalization in the U.S. These movements have underscored the centrality of the criminal legal system in defining race in America. Each week, students will read ethnographic books and journal articles on the role of race and racism in different dimensions of the criminal legal process from policing to court processing to incarceration written in the early twentieth century to the present. In addition to gaining foundational knowledge on the key debates within the sociological and criminological literature, students will also gain important insight into the most rigorous qualitative social science methods for studying these topics, and how these methods have changed over time.

(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.

Our social and physical environments are widely recognized as playing a central role in shaping patterns of health and disease within and across populations. Across disciplines, a key question has been: How does the social environment ¿gets under the skin to influence health? In this course, we will explore how social scientists, epidemiologists, public health experts, and physicians tackle this question. Reflecting both qualitative and quantitative approaches, we will draw on literatures in social science, public health, and medicine to understand the processes through which our environments shape health outcomes. We will examine a number of key social determinants of health, wellness and illness. These determinants include socioeconomic status, gender. race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, neighborhoods, environments, social relationships, and health care. We will also discuss a host of mechanisms through which these factors are hypothesized to influence health, such as stress, lifestyle, and access to health resources. An overall theme will be how contextual factors that adversely affect health are inequitably distributed and thereby fuel health disparities. Through all of this, we will assess the promise of public policy, planning and research for generating more equitable health outcomes across society.

This seminar introduces students to the key literature, questions, and debates about the modern welfare state. Emergence, growth, and purported demise of the welfare state. American welfare state in comparative perspective. Social and political factors affecting state development including political parties, labor markets, gender, demographic change, and immigration.

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.