The School of Mind & Society · the social sciences
Sociology
Why societies hold together, come apart, and press on every private life.
The sociological imagination: learning to see private troubles as public patterns.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — The Sociological Imagination
Private troubles, public issues · Norms, roles, and institutions · Culture and socialization
Unit II — Structure & Inequality
Class, status, and power · Race and ethnicity as social facts · Gender as structure
Unit III — Institutions at Work
Family, school, and work · Religion and civic life · The state and social policy
Unit IV — Change
Urbanization and modernity · Social movements · Mass media and public opinion
Three thinkers read closely — the lenses that still set the terms of the field.
Syllabus · 5 units · ~30 hours
Unit I — Why Theory
Industrialization and the birth of sociology · What a social theory must explain
Unit II — Marx
Historical materialism · Class conflict and capital · Alienation and ideology
Unit III — Durkheim
Social facts · The division of labor and solidarity · Suicide as a study in method · Religion and collective effervescence
Unit IV — Weber
Verstehen and ideal types · The Protestant ethic argument · Bureaucracy, authority, and rationalization
Unit V — After the Classics
Functionalism and conflict theory · Symbolic interactionism · Where theory stands now
Who gets what and why it sticks: class, mobility, and the machinery of advantage.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~26 hours
Unit I — Mapping Inequality
Measuring class: income, wealth, occupation · Status and cultural capital · Inequality compared across nations
Unit II — How Advantage Travels
Intergenerational mobility · Schools as sorting machines · Neighborhoods and networks
Unit III — Contested Explanations
Functionalist and conflict accounts · Discrimination and its measurement · Policy levers and their evidence
Households and kinship: the smallest institution, and the one that shapes all the others.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~22 hours
Unit I — Kinship Across Cultures
Family forms worldwide · Marriage as alliance and contract · Household economics
Unit II — The Modern Family
Industrialization and the private household · Divorce, cohabitation, and demographic change · Parenting styles and social class
Unit III — Family & State
Family law and policy · Care work, paid and unpaid · Futures of the family
Rule-breaking and rule-making: how societies decide what counts as wrong, and who pays.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — What Counts as Deviant
The relativity of deviance · Labeling theory · Moral panics
Unit II — Explaining Deviance
Strain and anomie · Differential association and subcultures · Control theory
Unit III — Punishment & Control
Surveillance and stigma · Prisons and their alternatives · Deviance as an engine of social change
Interviews, surveys, and fieldwork: getting honest data out of a self-aware species.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~30 hours
Unit I — The Logic of Social Inquiry
Questions, concepts, and measures · Reactivity: when studying people changes them
Unit II — Fieldwork
Participant observation · The craft of interviewing · Field notes and coding
Unit III — Surveys & Data
Writing questions that don't lead · Sampling and nonresponse · Secondary and administrative data
Unit IV — Ethics & Writing
Consent and confidentiality · Position and bias in the field · Writing up qualitative and quantitative findings