SOC 340: Social Stratification
Classical and contemporary approaches to the unequal distribution of goods, status, and power. Modern analytic models of the effects of social contact, cultural capital, family background, and luck in producing inequality. The role of education in stratification. The causes and consequences of inequality by race and gender. The structure of social classes, status groupings, and prestige hierarchies in various societies. Labor markets and their role in inequality. The implications of inequality for individual lifestyles. The rise of the new class, the underclass, and other emerging forms of stratification. Prerequisite: Ph.D. student or consent of instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
SOC 341W: Workshop: Inequality
Causes, consequences, and structure of inequality; how inequality results from and shapes social classes, occupations, professions, and other aspects of the economy. Research presentations by students, faculty, and guest speakers. Discussion of controversies, theories, and recent writings. May be repeated for credit. Restricted to Sociology doctoral students; others by consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-2
SOC 342B: Gender and Social Structure
The role of gender in structuring contemporary life. Social forces affecting gender at the psychological, interactional, and structural levels. Gender inequality in labor markets, education, the household, and other institutions. Theories and research literature.
Last offered: Spring 2008
SOC 343W: Gender and Gender Inequality Workshop
This workshop is intended for PhD students whose graduate research is centered on gender and/or gender inequalities. Students will take turns presenting their research and get feedback from other students and faculty
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-3
Correll, S. (PI)
SOC 344: Intersectionality: Theory, Methods & Research
In this seminar, we will trace intersectionality from its activist origins outside of academia to its practice in contemporary social science research (and back). We will consider the range of approaches and interpretations that have emerged over the past 30 years, since Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term to critique anti-discrimination litigation, and do so with an eye toward application: how to best incorporate the insights of intersectionality into original social science research, across a variety of topics and methods. Open to all students pursuing graduate degrees in Sociology, as well as PhD students in other disciplines with instructor consent.
| Units: 4
Saperstein, A. (PI)
SOC 344A: Culture and Markets
In this course, we seek to understand economic markets as cultural institutions. Far from natural or inevitable entities, markets are social constructions that rely upon¿and reproduce¿particular shared understandings about how the world is and should be. In this course, we consider the cognitive, expressive, and normative aspects of culture in order to analyze the existence of markets, the forms they take, and the justifications for the effects they have. We begin by exploring the cultural constitution of market goods and actors. How do some, but not other, objects come to be exchanged via the market, and why do companies and consumers look and act the way they do? We then dig deeper into the key cultural forms and processes that enable and constrain economic phenomena. In what ways do classification, quantification, narrative, metaphor, and so on give rise to the market as we experience it, and who has the power to shape the way these processes take hold? Next, we delve into two special cases: money, which some hold to be impervious to social considerations, and cultural objects, which some hold to be impervious to market logic. Both turn out to be much more complicated. In the final part of course, we explore the cultural aspects of organizations and economic policymaking. The course readings are largely empirical research, so we will also critically discuss how sociologists use data and methods to build evidence.
SOC 346A: Ethnographies of Race, Crime, and Justice (SOC 246A)
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.
| Units: 4-5
Clair, M. (PI)
SOC 348: Advanced Topics in the Sociology of Gender
Seminar for graduate students who have research projects in progress that focus on questions about gender and society. Research projects can be at any stage from the initial development to the final writing up of results. Focus is on questions posed by the research projects of the seminar participants. Readings include relevant background to each other's questions and present their own work in progress. A final paper reports the progress on the seminar member's research project. May be repeat for credit
Last offered: Autumn 2017
SOC 349: Race, Space, and Stratification
Racial and ethnic stratification has been a defining yet shifting feature of U.S. society, and such inequalities shape and are shaped by the ecological structure of places. This course is a survey course for doctoral students covering sociological scholarship at the intersection of racial stratification and urban sociology. The class will include foundational readings and discussions on urban sociological theories, urban decline and suburbanization, segregation, poverty, neighborhood effects, crime and disorder, gentrification, and immigration. The course will also include discussion of new and innovative data sources and methods for research in this area throughout the quarter. Students will develop or continue a research project designed to contribute to scholarship on racial stratification and urban sociology.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
SOC 350: Sociology of Race
In this seminar, we focus our sociological lens on the concept of race itself. We will explore theoretical and conceptual debates about race and ethnicity, the history of counting by race in surveys and official statistics, as well as critiques of how race is operationalized in both quantitative and qualitative studies. By the end of the course, students will be prepared to conduct their own theoretically and methodologically rigorous research that advances knowledge about race and racial inequality. Prerequisite: Sociology graduate student; otherwise, please email instructor for consent to enroll.
| Units: 4
Jimenez, T. (PI)