Sociology

140 Prospect, 432.3323
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Jeffrey Alexander

Director of Graduate Studies
Karl Ulrich Mayer

Professors
Jeffrey Alexander, Scott Boorman, Deborah Davis, Ron Eyerman, Paul Gilroy, Karl Ulrich Mayer, Ivan Szelenyi

Assistant Professors
Jennifer Bair, Hannah Brueckner, Averil Clarke, Lawrence King, Sharon Kinsella,
Alondra Nelson (African American Studies), Christopher Rhomberg, Andrew Schrank, Rachel Sherman, Philip Smith

Lecturer
Vron Ware

Fields of Study
Fields include Social Policy, Comparative Sociology/Macrosociology, Culture, Historical Sociology, Mathematical Sociology, Methodology (Qualitative and QFields include Comparative Sociology/Macrosociology, Cultural and Historical Sociology, Life Course/Social Stratification, Mathematical Sociology, Methodology (Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches), Networks, Political Sociology, Race/Gender/ Ethnic/ Minority Relations, Social Change, Social Movements, Theory (General, Critical, Hermeneutic), Urban Sociology.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Qualification for admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. will take place during the student’s first three years of study at Yale. A student who has not been admitted to candidacy will not be permitted to register for the seventh term of study. To qualify for candidacy the student must complete fourteen term courses and demonstrate competence in sociological theory, statistics, and research methods, competence in which may be demonstrated by passing two term courses in each area. After completion of courses, students prepare written and oral comprehensive examinations in two selected fields and defend a dissertation prospectus.

Teaching is an important part of the professional preparation of graduate students in Sociology. Students teach therefore in the third and fourth years of study.

Combined Ph.D. Degree in Sociology and African American Studies
The Department of Sociology offers, in conjunction with the program in African American Studies, a combined Ph.D. degree in Sociology and African American Studies.

Students accepted to the joint Ph.D. program must meet all of the requirements of the Ph.D. in Sociology with the exception that, excluding the courses required to demonstrate competence in sociological theory, statistics, research methods, and comprehensive examination in two substantive fields, joint-degree students may substitute African American Studies courses for six of the fourteen term courses required to qualify for the Ph.D. in Sociology. For further details see African American Studies.

Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements.

M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). Eight term courses are required for the M.A. degree. Two of these courses must include statistics and theory. A grade of High Pass or Honors must be achieved in five of the eight required courses. A student may petition for the M.A. degree in the term following the one in which he/she completes the course requirements.

Program materials are available at www.yale.edu/socdept/.

Courses
SOCY 501a, Foundations of Sociological Theory.  Ivan Szelenyi. Th 9–11
An intensive reading seminar on the key works of a few select classical social theorists. During the fall 2003 the course focuses on the works of Max Weber. Students who need a broad survey of classical social theory should audit the undergraduate course on classical theory, SOCY 151a.

[SOCY 502b, Contemporary Sociological Theory.]

[SOCY 504b, Research Design and Research Practice.]

[SOCY 506a, Survey Methods.]

SOCY 509a, Advanced Methods of Ethnographic Field Research.  Rachel Sherman. Th 1–3
This seminar is a practicum in participant observation. We begin with readings on ethical and methodological issues pertaining to ethnographic fieldwork, but the bulk of the course focuses on workshop-style discussions of students’ experience in their field sites. Participants are required to spend four hours per week in a field site and to write and share field notes, as well as hand in a final paper. Participants should initiate a field placement before the semester begins, as this process can be time-consuming and it is essential that students have access to a site by the second week of the semester.

[SOCY 510bu, Setting the Scholarly Agenda.]

SOCY 522au, The Sociology of Development.  Andrew Schrank. Th 2.30–4.20
The seminar asks how and why states, firms, and popular organizations in the developing world use their natural and human resource endowments to generate different social, political, and economic outcomes.

[SOCY 524b, Sociology of Culture.]

SOCY 525b, Cultural Sociology.  Philip Smith. Th 10–12
The course looks in depth at the tie between culture and society. It reviews the major approaches to this topic within cultural theory over the past one hundred years. We explore diverse understanding of the content and social impact of culture such as functionalism, structuralism, and postmodernism. Emphasis is given to ways we can theorize the autonomy of culture as a determining force in the organization of social life.

[SOCY 526a, Recent Trends in Social Stratification Processes.]

SOCY 526b, Social Stratification in Advanced Societies.  Karl Ulrich Mayer. M 4–6
Social and economic inequalities based on social class and status are a major dimension of individual life chances and life aspirations as well as of the structure and dynamics of societies and the world system. The course is intended to cover the current state of the field in regard to academic and policy debates, theories, methods, crucial research findings, as well as comparative analyses.

[SOCY 528au, Reading Race and Gender.]

[SOCY 529b, Legislation.]

[SOCY 534a, Writing Sociology.]

[SOCY 541b, New Theories of Civil Society.]

SOCY 543bu, Sociology of Education.  Heike Solga. Th 1.30–3.20
Modern educational systems are situated at the intersection of social stratification, culture, and politics. In the seminar we discuss economic and sociological theories developed to understand the causes and mechanisms of educational stratification and its consequences in other life domains, especially with regard to intergenerational mobility and labor markets. We discuss a multiplicity of theoretical, methodological, and empirical considerations that concern the microeconomic and sociological perspective on education. Thereby, we compare the United States to Western European countries. The course work covers readings and discussions of theoretical as well as empirical work. Students are also asked to develop empirical research designs and to carry out some statistical analyses on selected issues of educational stratification and its consequences in labor markets. Authors read include G. Becker, Bell, Boudon, Bourdieu/Passeron, Bowles/Gintis, Collins, Halsey, Jencks, Kerckhoff, Meyer, Mueller/Shavit, Rosenbaum, Spence.

[SOCY 545a, Reading Karl Marx.]

SOCY 548a, The Sociology of the Arts: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives.  Ronald Eyerman. W 10–12
This seminar covers the classical and contemporary sociological perspectives on the arts; the “arts” being understood in the broad sense to include fine art and popular culture. Framing these perspectives is the dominant sociological narrative, periodized as a movement from traditional to modern and late or postmodern society. The central theoretical focus is on the Frankfurt School and the notion of a culture industry.

[SOCY 550a, The Future of Work.]

[SOCY 552bu, Corruption and Development.]  

SOCY 557a, Current Debates in Political Sociology.  Christopher Rhomberg. T 3.30–5.20
Examination of current topics in the sociology of the state and politics. Initial consideration of issues in political philosophy; primary focus then turns to recent debates, including globalization and neoliberalism, restructuring of the welfare state, relations between state and civil society, racial and gendered character of politics, collective actors and social movements, and war and violence, among other topics.

SOCY 560a,b, Comparative Research Workshop.  Ivan Szelenyi, Andrew Schrank. W 6–8
This weekly interdisciplinary seminar is devoted to discussions of work-in-progress (forthcoming articles, M.A. thesis drafts, dissertation proposals, dissertation chapter drafts) by distinguished visiting scholars, Yale graduate students, and faculty from various social science disciplines. Papers are distributed a week ahead of time and are also posted at the Web site of the Center for Comparative Research. Students who take the course for a letter grade have to present a paper the semester they are enrolled for credit. Also PLSC 734a,b.

SOCY 561au, Topics in Contemporary Chinese Society.  Deborah Davis. T 1.30–3.20
In the past two decades, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have completely jettisoned the socialist blueprint and “warmly embraced” global markets and private entrepreneurship. At the same time they continue to reject all challenges to their monopoly of political power and outlaw unofficial unions, popular religious associations, and Web sites that carry stories unfriendly to the Party. In this seminar students first review the competing elements of post-Mao reforms and then evaluate the consequences of these tensions on rural and urban society. Knowledge of modern Chinese is desirable but not necessary. Prerequisite: at least one course focused on China after 1911.

[SOCY 567b, The Performative Turn in Cultural Sociology.]  

[SOCY 577a, Topics in Multivariate Data Analysis.]

SOCY 578a, Logic of Social Inquiry.  Karl Ulrich Mayer. M 4–6
The seminar is an intensive introduction into the methodology of the social sciences. It covers such topics as concepts and indicators, propositions and theory, explanation and understanding, observation and measurement, types of data, units of analysis and levels of variables, experiments and quasi-experiments, description and causal modeling, verification and falsifi-cation, testing and inference, longitudinal analysis. Besides the discussion of selected texts we re-analyze classical studies as well as recent research papers.

[SOCY 580au, Introduction to Statistics in Sociology.]

[SOCY 581b, Multivariate Methods for the Social Sciences.]

[SOCY 585b, Life Course Research: Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Approaches.] 

SOCY 597a,b, Special Topics in Sociology.  Faculty.
Students enroll in Special Topics if they wish to retake a course for credit when there is a new instructor and a substantially different syllabus from the first time they took the course. Only with the permission of the DGS.

SOCY 598a, 599b, Independent Study.
By arrangement with faculty.

[SOCY 607b, Seminar on Field Methods.]  

SOCY 611bu, Advanced Methods in Historical Inquiry.  Christopher Rhomberg. T 2–4
This advanced seminar focuses on analytical and methodological problems of doing research in historical sociology. Topics include the uses of theory, research design, archival investigation, types of evidence, narrative genres, and strategies of historical argument, drawing on several exemplary published works of sociology and on the students’ own practice of historical research.

[SOCY 615bu, Black Communities in the Twentieth Century.]

SOCY 625a, Analysis of Social Structure.  Scott Boorman. M 10–12
Develops and integrates a variety of the most promising contemporary approaches to the study of social structure and social organization.

[SOCY 627a, Sociology of the Welfare State.]

[SOCY 627b, Gender and Society.]

SOCY 628a, Workshop in Cultural Sociology.  Jeffrey Alexander, Philip Smith, Rachel Sherman. F 12–2
This workshop is designed to be a permanent, ongoing part of the graduate curriculum. Meeting weekly throughout both the fall and spring terms, it constitutes an ongoing, informal seminar to explore areas of mutual interest among students and faculty, both visiting and permanent. The core concern of the workshop is social meaning and its forms and processes of institutionalization, with special reference to the problem of civil society, democracy, and inclusion. Meaning is approached both as structure and performance, drawing not only upon the burgeoning area of cultural sociology but on the humanities, philosophy, and other social sciences. Our references are codes, narratives, and metaphors, otherwise known as “values and ideologies,” and the elements of their performance. Institutionalization refers to the social processes that provide the context for culture creation and that stratify its effects. Our references here are the normal stuff of sociology—class, race, gender, sexuality, religion, status hierarchies and marginality, centers and peripheries, globality.

SOCY 628b,Workshop in Cultural Sociology and Civil Society.  Jeffrey Alexander, Philip Smith, Rachel Sherman. F 12–2
Continuation of SOCY 628a; see 628a for course description.

[SOCY 637b, The Transition to Democracy and Capitalism in Eastern Europe.]  

SOCY 643bu, Topics in Comparative Political Economy.  Jennifer Bair. W 2.30–4.20
This class focuses on the political economy of reform and restructuring in Eastern Europe and Latin America. We address this topic in a comparative framework, as we seek to identify similarities and differences across as well as within these regions. Processes of institutional and social transformation in each region are examined, with particular attention paid to how these are shaped by, and in turn shape, the dynamics of regional integration in North America (NAFTA/FTAA) and Europe (EU). Among the questions we address are how these processes of transformation are understood; what are these economies transitioning to? How are their experiences of reform shaped by the institutional legacies of past political-economic strategies and development models? How do we theorize and understand political and economic change in the context of “globalization”?

SOCY 644a, Theorizing the Racial Formation of the United States in the Late Twentieth Century.  Paul Gilroy. T 9.30–11.20
A designated core course for students in the joint Ph.D. program; also open to students in American Studies and Sociology. The interdisciplinary seminar includes readings from the fields of anthropology, critical legal studies, cultural studies, literary history, history, politics, and sociology. Also AFAM 505a, AMST 643a.

SOCY 647b, Social Processes.  Scott Boorman. M 10–12
Focus is on identifying and exploring robust alternatives/complements to the rational choice models that have come to dominate so much of the analysis of social (including organizational) processes in recent years. Specifically, emphasis is placed on a range of mathematical models and related analytic approaches originating outside the rational choice literature—in fields such as social network analysis, evolutionary biology, organization theory, and the law. Possible starting points include: the Boorman-Levitt network matching model (see, e.g., Scott A. Boorman and Paul R. Levitt, “The network matching principle: A model of efficient resource allocation by informal social networks in nonprofit and other non-market social structures,” Economics Letters, 1982, 10, 1–7) and its applications to nonprofits and complex statutes; weak ties model of job information transmission and other information transfer in elite social networks; “garbage can” models of the internal problem-solving dynamics of complex organizations.

SOCY 650b, Modernity and Its Others: Self, Subject, and Cultural Differences. Paul Gilroy. T 9.30–11.20
This social theory course explores aspects of the political, philosophical, and sociological debates that have emerged around the concept of modernity. It looks particularly at articulations of modernity and “race” following four interlinked lines of inquiry: how has the subject of modernity been imagined and articulated; what attributes and experiences have qualified that subject as properly human and rational; where has identity been recognized as coming from, culturally and materially; and where has cosmopolitan loyalty emerged as a demand to see and act beyond the boundaries of immediate particularity? Also AFAM 712b.

[SOCY 651a, Roots and Routes: Identity and Travel in African American Political Culture.]

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