61 - 70 of 204 results for: SOC

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.

How can emerging technologies and human-centered design be used to help people going through problems with housing, medical care, and debt? In this class, we will work with local partners to develop new tech and design prototypes to address poverty-related problems. We will explore new digital solutions, as well as how to use emerging technologies like AI and blockchain. At the same time, we will explore policy and legal reforms that could address root causes of the problems.nnStudents will work in small, interdisciplinary teams with partners organizations in law, medicine, and policy. They will do design research in the field, propose new solutions and test them, and develop new initiatives that will be piloted. The goal is to incubate promising, feasible public interest technology and design projects.nnThe class will be run in parallel to similar classes in Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia. Students will have the chance to learn about similar innovation efforts in other countries, and will be challenged to think about how their own projects could be replicated and scaled

We derive analytical tools from the social sciences in studying a variety of organizations given their strategies, and in particular, when their strategies change. Focus is on how to design effective organizations and projects within and across institutional settings. This class is associated with a study on guide Michelin starred restaurants' changes of strategies and how these impact the organization of the kitchen. Recommended: FINANCE 377, MS&E 180, SOC 160, ECON 149, or MGTECON 330.

"Intersectionality" is so popular, it's almost impossible to avoid: it was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2017, it was painted on signs at the Women's Marches, and it guides modern day social movement organizers. But what does intersectionality mean? What can intersectionality offer And what does it mean for research and social movements to be truly intersectional? The aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the concept of intersectionality. First, we will delve into the works (chiefly from Black feminist scholars) that provide the foundation for today's concept of intersectionality. We will then explore, compare, and critique sociological research that applies (or fails to apply) an intersectional lens to its objects of study. Finally, we will investigate the use of intersectionality in social movements and outside academia. Throughout the course, we will prioritize reading, evaluating, and questioning sociological theory and research.

(Graduate students register for 270). We usually take it for granted that people around us follow social rules, norms, and conventions. But how are social order and stable social existence possible? And under what conditions does social change become possible? When we follow the rules or mobilize for new ones, do we act as free-willing individuals or do we merely respond to social structures that we have no control over? This class will discuss the insights from classical sociologists (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel) on these and other fundamental social questions. We will discuss other macro-level issues like the emergence of capitalism, the relationship between social structure and politics, and the social sources of religion and political ideology. In doing so, we will analyze how these thinkers are still relevant to understanding contemporary social transformations as well as how the world has changed since these thinkers wrote.

This course introduces students to computational social science from a sociological perspective, grounding popular computational methods such as text mining and network analysis in sociological theory. While the course is open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students from any discipline, the materials will be primarily sourced from sociology. Students with no prior computer science experience will find this course a menu of potential methodologies for future research, while students with some programming experience or with a pre-existing research question can use this course to advance their research projects. By framing these methods in sociological theory, students will gain a more critical understanding of why scientists select these methods and how computational methods impact society.

This course examines the ways in which higher education structures and policies interact with gender, gender identity, and other characteristics in the United States, around the world, and over time. Attention is paid to how changes in those structures and policies relate to access to, experiences in, and outcomes of higher education by gender. Students can expect to gain an understanding of theories and perspectives from the social sciences relevant to an understanding of the role of higher education in relation to structures of gender differentiation and hierarchy. Topics include undergraduate and graduate education; identity and sexuality; gender and science; gender and faculty; and feminist scholarship and pedagogy.

How do neighborhoods come to be? How and why do they change? What is the role of power, money, race, immigration, segregation, culture, government, and other forces? In this course, students will interrogate these questions using literatures from sociology, geography, and political science, along with archival, observational, interview, and cartographic (GIS) methods. Students will work in small groups to create content (e.g., images, audio, and video) for a self-guided ¿neighborhood tour,¿ which will be added to a mobile app and/or website.

Why do some songs become popular, but not others? Why are music genres that were wildly popular in the 1950s no longer popular today? Trends and fads and can be found nearly everywhere in our daily lives movie tropes, skirt lengths, styles of shoes, internet memes, hot stock-picks all of these go in and out of fashion. But, why should they? Did something change? And if so¿what? This course seeks to understand how and why things become (un)popular. The course begins with early 20th century theories on the massification and commodification of culture and traces development of this literature over time. Topics covered include propaganda, social influence, and significant responses to questions such as: What constitutes high/low culture? Does popular culture manifest--"from the bottom-up", for the people by the people--or is popular culture dictated--"from the top down", by elites and commercial interests? To what extent do social networks (and the status and power of the people within them) influence these relationships? How is popular culture received, interpreted, and used? Today, the media landscape looks significantly different than it did in the early 20th century, and in the final portion of the course we will consider the extent to which new technologies, media platforms, hyper-focused advertising, and cluster-based similarity algorithms have impacted the way we think about and answer these questions. In the final portion of the course, we will critically examine active and ongoing debates in the literature related to this question and produce a final paper that contributes to the discussion. No final exam.