The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the sociological perspective. Its goal is to illuminate the way in which social forces impinge on our individual lives and affect human society. The course is organized into four main parts. In the first, key sociological concepts and methods will be introduced via the study of the fathers of sociology: Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. In the second part, we will examine the significance of various forms of social inequality, particularly those based on class, race, and gender. We will then survey several important social institutions: the family, the economic order, the political order, education, and religion. The fourth and final part of the course will focus on the inter-related issues of ideology, social movements, and social change.

In this course we study how eminent thinkers have attempted to come to terms with the fundamental problems of the relationship between the modern individual and Western society in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 and the development of capitalism. These problems include social atomization, alienation, and loneliness (Marx, Durkheim); social disorganization (Comte, Durkheim); secularization and the decline of traditional religious beliefs (Weber, Comte, Durkheim); a growing pessimism about the individuals capacity for rational control (Freud, Pareto); class conflict (Marx, Veblen); and other forms of conflict within society (Simmel, Pareto, and others). In analyzing how classical sociologists attempt to make sense of the complex and changing modern world, we will also consider how they search for a fair and just society and what they consider to be the promise of sociology in terms of both its potential as a humanistic discipline and its claims to be a science.

Cross-listed: Gender Studies

The course analyzes the family as a social institution and as an intimate group. Topics include the impact of industrialization on the family, marriage and divorce, sex roles, parenthood, the influence of social class on the family, and variations in lifestyle. The emphasis is on contemporary U.S. Society with some cross-cultural comparative material.

Cross-listed: American Studies, MES

This is the first half of a full-year sequence. What metaphor best fits the experience of American immigrant and ethnic dynamics? Have groups 'melted' into one, been tossed about while yet preserving their distinctiveness, fitted neatly into patterns, or expressed themselves differently yet in harmony? This course will explore the experiences of immigrants to the United States and the experience of the United States with its many waves of immigrants. We will study how and why immigrants came, and how they adjusted to and transformed American society -- its economy, culture and politics. The course will also explore in detail the evolution of immigrants into ethnics: how the descendants of immigrants (children, grandchildren and still later-generation descendants) related to their immigrant roots, how the dynamics of cultural pluralism and assimilation were expressed over time, and to what extent the United States was a multicultural society over the course of its history. We will take a roughly chronological approach, dealing in the first semester with immigration and ethnicity from colonial times until the end of unrestricted immigration from Europe in the 1920s. In the second semester we will follow the story into the present. Major themes will then include the evolution of European immigrants' descendants into "white Americans," American immigration policy after the 1920s, the characteristics of the immigration of our own time, how this recent immigration compares to the last great wave of immigration and what the comparison suggests about ethnic pluralism today. Throughout both semesters, the course will try to strike a balance between generalizing about all, or most, groups and dealing in detail with the concrete experiences of specific immigrant groups. We will also try to strike a balance between readings from the work of historians and social scientists and readings from periods and people being studied.

In this course we will examine work in its various forms; including craft work, slavery, industrial work, intellectual work and housework/family labor. The latter part of the course will move to an exploration of questions of worker organization, automation, gender and the prospects of human freedom in the 21st century global market. Materials will include sections of Marx's Capital, Bendix's study of corporate organization, Edwards' Contested Terrain, and the study of work by Simone Weil. Prerequisite: Sociology 101 or permission of instructor.

In this course we will examine sociological explanations for social movements, such as structuralism, resource mobilization and class analysis. We will then look closely at several historical social movements in the United States. These may include Shay's Rebellion, Abolitionism and the first Women's Rights Movement, the Populist Movement of farmers at the turn of the century, the 1930's labor movement, the Civil Rights movement, 1960's Student and Antiwar Movements, Feminism, Ecology and AIDS organizing. Possible readings include Piven and Clowerd's Poor People Movements, Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment, Taylor Branch's study of the civil rights movement and recent work on environmental racism, and Wells' study of the anti-Vietnam war movement. Prerequisite: Sociology 101 or permission of the instructor.

This course will examine the various ways in which people are divided by class, race and ethnicity, and gender, and the way in which they also turn these categories of division into the bases for new forms of solidarity. We will stress both sides of this contradiction, the moments of common endeavor among diverse groups, as well as the moments of division, in order better to understand how such social divisions are created and sustained, or subverted and overthrown. Possible readings include Peter Linebaugh The London Hanged, Mary Crow Dog's Lakota Woman, WEB DuBois Black Reconstruction in America, Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingpahan's reader, Material Feminism, recent work on women's movements in Africa, Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White, and Immanuel Wallerstein and Etienne Balibar's Race, Nation, Class, as well as material on gender and masculinity. Prerequsite: moderated status or instructor's permission.

A complete picture of society must include the fact that social norms are violated as well as adhered to. The sociological study of deviance and social control is largely concerned with the process by which certain people or behaviors come to be considered beyond the limits of tolerance. The sociological problem is not to explain why a particular person becomes deviant; it is to understand why some acts and not others are defined as deviant, why deviance arises, and why it follows certain patterns. The course looks at past sociological perspectives on deviance and addresses current issues such as family violence, mugging, corporate crime, and the politics of sexual preference. Readings include works by Goffman (Asylums and Stigma), Foucault (Discipline and Punish), Watney (Policing Desire), and Erikson (Wayward Puritans). Prerequisite: Sociology 101 or permission of the instructor.