SOCIOL 101-8 The Past & Future of the Future: How We Think About Individual and Collective Futures
Individually and collectively, we think about what might happen. We consider the future over a range of time-horizons, from the immediate (what will happen in the next hour) to the distant (how will things look in a century). We worry about our own individual futures (will I have a job when I graduate from Northwestern?), we worry about other peoples’ futures (will my child get a job after they graduate from college?), and we worry about our collective futures (what will climate change do to our society over the next 50 years?). Frequently, we make plans for the future, either to create a future that we seek, or to avoid a future that is problematic. Public policy is often concerned with how to create better collective futures, and the tricky part is figuring out which alternatives are better than others, and for whom. Sometimes people make contingency plans, deciding what to do if something happens (for example, disaster planning). Such activity generally involves making two types of guesses: what will or could happen in the future, and what will our future preferences be about those various possibilities. In certain cases, the predictions we make are “self-fulfilling” in that the prediction helps to make itself come true (bank runs are a classic example). In this course, we will work through a series of examples where people have thought about the future, sometimes focused on its very specific features. Prompted by weekly required readings, we will discuss these examples seminar-style in order to hone our own thinking about the future.
Who is "elite"? And what do elites do to stay on top? In an era of extreme economic inequality and populist politics in the United States, many point to elites as a group to rally against, but few explain what it takes to be elite. This writing seminar will explore cutting-edge social science on how to define this group, relying on timely evidence and centuries-old theoretical debates. The course will also examine how individuals go about maintaining their elite status and passing it on to their children. Through consecutive writing exercises, students will not only refine their understanding of contemporary elites in the United States, but also learn the central tenants of academic writing in the social sciences.
Sociology is a field of study that examines how people and groups interact, navigate, and make decisions within the structure and constraints of their social world. Often these social processes go unobserved or unacknowledged, and sociologists treat it as their job to shed analytical light on how people experience and participate in society. Through sociological analysis, we can answer questions like: How did Evanston become largely segregated by race? Why is it illegal for people to sell their kidneys? Is suicide contagious? Why would someone pay for Instagram followers?
Sociology is a huge field of study, and includes and enormous variety of topics and methods. Each week, we will focus on a specific area of sociological study (Culture, Gender, Race, Family, Money, Deviance, etc.) with the goal of offering you a general overview of the types of questions sociologists ask and how they answer them. By the end of the quarter, you will be able to think sociologically about your own world, and hopefully develop a budding interest in one or more of the areas we discuss in class.
Law is everywhere. Law permits, prohibits, enables, legitimates, protects, and prosecutes. Law shapes our day-to-day lives in countless ways. This course examines the connections and relationships of law and society using an interdisciplinary social science approach. As one of the founders of the Law and Society movement observed, "law is too important to leave to lawyers." Accordingly, this course will borrow from several theoretical, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives (such as sociology, history, anthropology, political science, critical studies, and psychology) in order to explore the sociology of law and law's role primarily in the American context (but with some attention to international law and global human rights efforts). The thematic topics to be discussed include law and social control; law's role in social change; and law's capacity to reach into complex social relations and intervene in existing normative institutions and organizational structures.
Gender studies have traditionally focused on women. Yet critical work on men and masculinities show us how people of all genders are impacted by gender expectations and assumptions. Furthermore, studies of masculinities shed light on practical questions like, why do men die earlier than women? And, why are men more likely to commit mass shootings? In recent years, the public spotlight has cast light on savory and unsavory aspects of masculinity; think about the rise of the term “toxic masculinity,” the #MeToo movement, advertisements aimed at men, and blogs commenting on the behavior of men on the reality show The Bachelorette. In this course, we will go beyond banal statements like “men are trash” to critically ask, What role does masculinity play in social life? How is masculinity produced, and are there different ways to be masculine? This course provides students with an intensive introduction to the foundational theory and research in the field of masculinities studies. We will use an intersectional lens to study the ways in which the concept and lived experience of masculinity are shaped by economic, social, cultural, and political forces. As we study the institutions that socialize people into gender, we will examine how the gendered social order influences the way people of all genders perform masculinity as well as the ways men perceive themselves, people of other genders, and social situations. Verbally and in writing, students will develop an argument about the way contemporary masculinity is constructed and performed.
How do sociologists do their work? How do they make discoveries and draw conclusions about the social world around us? This course is an introduction to sociological research methods. We will learn how to design a research study - everything from choosing a topic and formulating a research question to developing a research plan. We will explore a range of research methods from surveys, interviewing, observational methods and content analysis to "big" data approaches. We will also think about the strengths and weaknesses of various sociological methods and what these methods can contribute to our understanding of the social world. We will also debate and discuss the role of the researcher in the research process along with thinking about ethical concerns and IRB protections for research subjects. We will also critically examine how social science research is presented to us in our everyday lives (including news reporting, political polls and social media postings). The goal of this course is for students to be able to design an appropriate methods plan to investigate a sociological research question they are interested in, but also to become more critical when learning about the latest social science study from media and social media outlets.
Disasters are catastrophic events with human and natural causes and may be gradual or sudden and unexpected. What these events share is their potential to disrupt communities, displace residents, and cause economic, emotional, and social suffering. We know that disasters are on the rise globally and in the US, incurring significant economic and social consequences. The aim of this course is to understand how disasters like pandemics, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, plane crashes, oil spills, and terrorism provide a “strategic research site” where we can examine social life and inequality. In this course, students will be introduced to the idea that disasters are fundamentally social events. We will focus on the social, political, and economic conditions that influence disaster experience and recovery, paying special attention to the ways that social characteristics like race, class, gender, and age structure social vulnerability to risk before, during, and after disasters. In learning to think critically about prevailing media representations of disasters, students will master content analysis methodology by engaging in a term-long research project in which they study one recent disaster event and the associated media coverage. This is an introductory level course without any prerequisites.
The concentration of crime in disadvantaged neighborhoods is one of sociology's most enduring findings. In this course, we will seek to understand why crime and the reach of the criminal legal system are unequally distributed across neighborhoods. To do so, we will critically examine how factors like neighborhood inequality, structure and organization, culture, and social-processes of neighborhood life relate to crime and formal and informal responses to crime.
SOCIOL 303-0 Analysis and Interpretation of Social Data
This course introduces statistics and data analysis for the social sciences, focusing on understanding, interpreting, and deploying data and statistical analysis to understand the social world.
The course begins without numbers, encouraging students to be critical and analytical of the data they encounter every day. Using examples from policy, journalism, and the election, students will practice reading, interpreting, and critiquing empirical analyses.
After gaining familiarity with the reasoning underlying data analysis, the second part of the course will introduce basic statistical analysis. Students will collect, analyze, and interpret data in an area of their interest. The goal is for students to critically engage with statistical topics – to understand the strengths, weaknesses, assumptions, and contributions of statistics to scientific understanding and exploration.
Finally, the course will explore how computation is remaking modern social understanding. Though a focus on machine learning and neural networks, students will explore the contribution of data to human knowledge, while also gaining insight on why such methods pose serious challenges to human well-being.
While not a programming course, students will do exercises and homework using free tools, such as google sheets and the statistical software “R”. Labs will be focused on gaining proficiency with these tools.
On a daily basis we consume—often without notice or concern—a substantial amount of racial knowledge. We routinely ingest, for example, infographics about demographic trends, media coverage on crime and undocumented immigration, and advertisements for ancestry tests. In complex and contextually specific ways, this diet shapes our personal and collective identities, social interactions and relationships, and political aspirations and anxieties. In this course, we endeavor to study the politics of racial knowledge—the ways in which categories, measurements, and other techniques of knowledge production have helped to constitute “race” as a seemingly objective, natural demarcation among human populations and institute forms of racial domination and inequality. Historically, racial knowledge has stipulated and legitimated what we might describe as a kind of racial ontology, a set of assumptions, claims, and prescriptions about race and racial superiority/inferiority—e.g. the notion that “whites” or “the West” represent the apex of human civilization.
Drawing on diverse texts, this course explores of the emergence, evolution, and effects of racial knowledge. This exploration will begin by discussing the historical relationship between the modern concept of race and European colonialism and slavery. Subsequently, we will track several major developments in the history of racial knowledge, from Enlightenment naturalists to censuses to contemporary genomics research.
The main emphasis in this course is on how sociological theory informs social research. We will read selections of classical social theory and then look at how various scholars have used that theory to help them analyze some aspect of society. We will keep moving between theoretical statements and applications or refinements of that theory. The course will be a mix of lectures and discussion.
This class will investigate how gender shapes politics and policy, and how these in turn shape gender, in the United States and other countries, situated in global context. Gender is conceptualized as a set of relations, identities and cultural schema, always constituted with other dimensions of power, difference and inequality (e.g., race, class, sexuality, religion, citizenship status). We will analyze the gendered character of citizenship, political participation and representation, social rights and economic rights. We aim to understand gendered politics and policy from both "top down" and "bottom up" perspectives. What do states do, via institutions of political participation and representation, citizenship rights and policies, to shape gender relations? How do gender relations influence the nature of policy and citizenship? How has feminism emerged as a radical challenge to the androcentrism and restricted character of the democratic public sphere? And how has anti-feminism come to be a significant dimension of politics? We expand on conventional conceptions of political participation and citizenship rights to include the grassroots democratic activism that gave birth to modern women's movements. We explore how women's political efforts have given rise to the creation of alternative visions of democracy, social provision and economic participation, as well as reshaping formal politics and policies. And, finally, we will take advantage of the fact that we are in the middle of an election to examine some of the gendered aspects of the political landscape in the contemporary United States.
The course readings feature different types of materials – original documents, scholarly books and articles, a textbook, policy reports, popular non-fiction work on aspects of gender, policy, politics and society. These are supplemented by films and online resources.
Social stratification explores how human society gets divided into haves and have-nots. It encompasses both the unequal distribution of scarce resources and the processes through which those resources are distributed unevenly to individuals according to a wide range of social characteristics. It also explores how individuals can change their social position over time (mobility) and examines how different dimensions of social status (such as race, class, and gender) can intersect, or sometimes diverge. This class will cover sociological explanations, theories, and research on key forms of inequality in the United States. Some of the main questions we will address include: What is social stratification and how is society “stratified”? What do the extremes of social inequality look like? How does one climb the ranks in society? What are the social institutions that contribute to, and sometimes attenuate, inequality? What role do race and gender play in stratifying society? What are the consequences of inequality in the United States for individuals? And where do we go from here?
SOCIOL 329-0 Field Research and Methods of Data Collection
The goal of this course is to give students experience in qualitative research methodologies. Qualitative methods are a primary way that sociologists learn about the larger social world, test and develop theories and hypotheses, and make sense of complex situations and interactions. Qualitative methods allow sociologists to understand the world from the perspective of the individual and gain a better understanding of how the social world operates.
What is sex? What is gender? What is sexuality? How are they related? Are they social constructs or biological realities? Can we have one without the others? In this upper division undergraduate seminar, we will explore the interconnected nexus of sex, gender, and sexuality. The course will expose students to a range of theoretical approaches to sex, gender, and sexuality from sociology and other disciplines. The course will also provide students with practice applying these theories to real-life cases. Additionally, students will develop the skills to perform qualitative coding—a key method of analysis of sociological data. By the end of the course, students will have explored a research question of their choice related to sex, gender, and/or sexuality by qualitatively coding data using NVivo.
SOCIOL 392-0 Racial Inequalities in American Schooling
What are the racial inequalities in K-12 schooling in the United States? Why do these racial disparities persist? In this course, we critically examine the last 25 years of scholarship on race and schooling to consider how racial inequality is defined and measured, and how education scholars explain the causes of racial disparities in education. As a starting point, we look at racial disparities in academic achievement and discipline. Then, we focus on different approaches scholars use to explain why racial inequality continues to persist in K-12 education. In particular, we focus on key debates such as the extent to which schools compensate or exacerbate differences in achievement, how policy interventions impact inequality in schools, and how racial hierarchies are embedded in school structures and practices. In the final portion of this course, we consider what should come next in the study of race and inequality in schools.
What is money? How is the US dollar different from other forms of money in the past or present? Can the government simply print as much money as it needs to do what it wants? In this seminar, we will explore the nature and history of money from antiquity to cryptocurrency. Because our intuitions about money often rest on many myths and false assumptions, the history of money is usually shocking and fascinating even to people familiar with basic economic sociology. Furthermore, careful study of money helps us shine new light on big questions about politics, inequality, and government which will be of immense practical interest to students.
Course material will be interdisciplinary and students of all backgrounds are welcome. Each week readings will be divided between a new theoretical perspective on the first meeting, and a new empirical case on the second meeting. The empirical material will embrace the spirit of comparative historical research in sociology by introducing students to a wide range of cases including money in colonial America, Reconstruction, renaissance Florence, ancient Rome, cryptocurrency, and Sub-Saharan Africa. These cases will be carefully paired with new perspectives on money that will allow us to interrogate both the case and the theory in a structured, easy-to-follow way.
This course is part of the quantitative methods sequence for graduate students in sociology. The main topic of the course is the theory and practice of linear regression analysis. We will cover multiple ordinary least squares regression, regression assumptions, regression diagnostics, basic path models, data transformations, and issues in causal inference. If time permits, we may discuss other regression-based topics such as fixed and random effects models.
SOCIOL 403-0 Field Methods: Qualitative Data Collection
This course is designed to introduce graduate students to qualitative research, including field work and interviewing. Students will explore qualitative research approaches by undertaking their own research study as well as reading and discussing relevant writing on the subject. The readings, topics for discussion, and assignments in this course center on three issues: • The epistemological underpinnings of approaches to qualitative research. In addition to considering different theoretical traditions, students will also consider issues such as trustworthiness and the use of negative or deviant cases. • The practice of qualitative inquiry. Students will explore sampling strategies; instrument and research design; observation and interview techniques; and a variety of approaches to data analysis and data presentation. • Key issues that researchers encounter in doing qualitative research. Students will consider a range of practical issues that they will have to deal with as researchers including access to sites and ethical issues relating to qualitative work.
The course will be conducted as a "clinical seminar." Class work will be organized around prescribed readings on a particular issue as well as students’ fieldwork. Materials (e.g., research design, instruments, data) from students' research projects (a required assignment for this course) will be used to ground weekly discussions.
SOCIOL 406-3 Contemporary Theory in Sociological Analysis
This course offers an introduction to classical sociological theory. A “classical” work is thought to be a must-read, a foundational text that influenced the older (as opposed to contemporary or modern) ideas that undergird discipline of sociology, both the way we think about it and perform it. We will focus mainly on Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Du Bois, exploring what they have to teach us about the sociological enterprise. Readings and graded assignments focus on determining these foundational disciplinary authors’ (1) methods for viewing and understanding the socioeconomic world, (2) ideas about the proper objects and subjects of study and how sociology should be properly conducted, and (3) key contributions to early sociological thought. Ten weeks is a very short time to acquire and engage with this knowledge, so expect this course to be very reading and writing intensive.
This course provides an introduction to economic sociology. It poses the key idea of "embeddedness" and develops it by exploring the connections between economic institutions and behavior, on the one hand, and social processes, structures and relations, on the other. The course is organized topically, and people are expected to read all the required material.
This is an advanced seminar style course that takes a broad theoretical approach to understanding gender as a social phenomenon. There is increasing consensus among sociologists of gender that gender is not primarily an identity or role that is taught in childhood and enacted in family relations. Instead, gender is an institutionalized system of social practices for constituting people as significantly different categories, and organizing social relations of inequality on the basis of that difference. We will begin with an examination of the key theoretical works in sociology that address this conceptualization, focusing on social processes that occur at the macro, meso (interactional), and micro levels. We will consider how gender intersects with other axes of inequality, including class, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. We will also examine the gendered body, asking what is the relation between “the natural” and “the social.” We will then apply these theoretical approaches as we explore the processes by which gender difference and inequality are maintained or changed in contemporary American society. Students will then develop a research proposal where they apply a multi-level perspective of gender to an empirical problem of their own choosing.
Much of the social world is stored in digital text. Such textual traces include social media posts, email correspondences, party manifestos, blogs, novels, newspaper articles, press releases, medical records, academic articles, and much more. Not only are archival data increasingly available in electronic form, but more and more human communication and interaction occurs natively through digital text. These vast amounts of data can be a treasure trove for social science – but to make them useful for our purposes, we need natural language processing and machine learning methods.
This class offers an overview of text analytical tools currently used in social science research. You will be introduced to a set of methods and provided with examples of how they are applied to answer concrete social science research questions. Beyond surveying approaches, we will explore some of the methods ourselves, and you will learn how to use them for your own work. In this class, we will use R. Therefore, some coding experience (or exceptional motivation to attain it independently alongside the class) is expected.
