Department of Sociology

SOCY 501a, Foundations of Sociological Theory. Iván Szelényi.

An intensive reading seminar on the key works of a few select classical social theorists. In previous semesters this course has focused on the works of Max Weber and Karl Marx. (Students who need a broad survey of classical social theory should audit SOCY 151, Foundations of Modern Social Theory.)

SOCY 504a, Research Methods: Design and Data Collection. Deborah Davis.

Survey of (re)current debates, problems, and innovations in qualitative and quantitative empirical research, including both data collection and data analysis issues. Focus on assessing and improving validity and generalizability within the theoretical and practical limits of social science research. Aims at developing a set of skills necessary for everyone who is interested in designing empirical fieldwork. Familiarity with statistics may be helpful but is not required.

SOCY 506b, Research Methods: Applied Data Analysis. Hannah Brückner.

Focus on practical experience with analyzing complex data, including data management, exploration, description, and multivariate analysis. Familiarity with the basics of research methodology and statistical inference is required. Special emphasis is given to issues of comparisons across time and space with both descriptive and analytic methods. A second theme throughout the class is how to measure, describe, and explain changes/differences in inequality. The class covers basic statistics as well as multivariate regression models for continuous and categorical dependent variables.

SOCY 507a/b, Social Science Workshop on Contemporary China. Deborah Davis.

This is a yearlong course for one credit. Students must register for and complete both terms. This workshop examines contemporary Chinese development from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, economics, law, political science, and sociology. At each session, Yale faculty, visitors, and advanced graduate students deliver short presentations of current works in progress, circulated in advance, for group discussion and critique. This format is designed to educate participants about particular topics, provide constructive feedback on developing works of scholarship, and generally foster interdisciplinary dialogue and perspectives among the broad community of social scientists focusing on China at Yale. One unit of course credit is available to students who attend the colloquium in both the fall and spring terms and submit a thirty-page paper. Permission of instructors required. Also EAST 501.

SOCY 509b, Advanced Methods of Ethnographic Field Research. Rachel Sherman.

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 510b^u, Religious Nationalism. Philip Gorski.

Until recently, historians and social scientists have generally assumed that “religious nationalism” was an oxymoron or a transitional phase. In this course, we read recent scholarship on religious nationalism in past and present in both the East and the West, and reflect on the normative issues that it raises. We explore the religious roots of Western nationalism, compare the nationalistic propensities of different religious traditions, identify the conditions under which religious nationalism turns violent, and consider whether religion, nationalism, pluralism, and democracy are compatible.

SOCY 519b, The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Philip Gorski.

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was arguably the greatest sociologist since the classical generation of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. This seminar surveys his life’s work. Through an intensive and extensive reading of Bourdieu’s works, students learn what distinguishes Bourdieu’s approach from other classical and contemporary versions of sociology and social science; develop a firm and nuanced grasp of his trademark concepts (“habitus,” “capital,” and “field”); and observe how Bourdieu applied them to the analysis of various social fields (class, gender, the state, politics, art and culture). In short, students learn how to analyze the world in a Bourdieuian fashion.

SOCY 525a, Cultural Sociology. Jeffrey Alexander.

After a review of a broad range of contemporary perspectives, the seminar proceeds to examine in depth, and in its variations, the strong program in cultural sociology. This includes looking at theoretical ideas about hermeneutics and interpretation, critical theory, semiotics, structuralism and post-structuralism, social drama and ritual, performance studies, and social approaches to symbolic process. It also includes looking at empirical studies that apply cultural methods to such issues as politics, violence, civil society, and collective trauma.

SOCY 526a, Social Stratification. Iván Szelényi.

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 529b, Legislation.

SOCY 536a, Colonialism and Empire. Julia Adams.

This seminar explores the dynamics of imperial states, societies, and subjectivities, as well as the theoretical literature addressing problems of colonialism and empire. We survey current debates over the question of the imperial status of the contemporary United States, as well as ranging over historical imperial contexts including the Roman and Ottoman empires; the overseas empires of the early modern Western European states; the struggle for imperium in the late nineteenth-century world; twentieth-century colonial empires; and decolonization and imperial aftermath in both the post-state socialist and third worlds. We pay particular attention to the thorny issue of how and why empires are made, cohere, or come apart. The reflections and experiences of both those who operate empires and those who live within their borders are threaded throughout the course.

SOCY 544b, Social Movements. Ron Eyerman.

The course covers the dynamic field of social movement research from its origins to the present day. We discuss developments in theory and methodology primarily from European and American (North and South) perspectives, but touch on others as well. The course is open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates; some knowledge of sociological theory is helpful, but not required. Run as a seminar, the course requires active participation. Instruction includes the use of film and music.

SOCY 548a, The Sociology of the Arts: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives. Ron Eyerman.

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 561b^u, Topics in Contemporary Chinese Society. Deborah Davis.

Discussion of the social and political consequences of China’s entry into the global economy with a focus on patterns of inequality and the success of individuals and communities seeking greater social autonomy and political freedoms. In addition to the weekly seminar meeting, there is an optional discussion section conducted entirely in Chinese. Knowledge of modern Chinese desirable but not necessary. Prerequisite: at least one course focused on China after 1911.

SOCY 567b^u, Cultural Performances. The Whitney Seminar on New Perspectives in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Jeffrey Alexander.

“Performance” has become a major new topic in both the humanities and the social sciences, and provides a new bridge for interrelating the disciplines that compose them. Performance allows textual emphasis to be related to contingency and context, symbolic action to be related to power and control, and dramatic production to be related to audience response. In this seminar, we examine the critical texts of this movement and host, in person, some of its most prominent students and practitioners. Also WHIT 971b.

SOCY 577a, Topics in Multivariate Data Analysis.

SOCY 585b, Life Course Research: Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Approaches. Karl Ulrich Mayer.

This course has been designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the current state of life course research. The first part of the course covers methods of cohort and event history analysis. The second part addresses substantive problems and examples of current research on work and family lives and their interconnections. How do societies structure human lives? What are universal features of age differentiation and what are historically emergent patterns of life courses? How do advanced societies differ in the ways they organize life transitions, life phases, and life trajectories? How are life course regimes and the stratification of life chances related to each other?

SOCY 590b, Early Modern Empires: Theory and History. Steve Pincus, Julia Adams.

This co-taught graduate seminar explores the dynamics of early modern empires, as well as the relevant theoretical literature that addresses problems of colonialism and empire more generally. Why and where were the successive early modern empires built; how and why did they cohere and come apart? What differentiates them from contemporary or ancient colonialism and empire? Our readings range over varied intersecting historical colonial contexts including the first wave of overseas empire of the western European states; the Ottoman Empire; and imperial orders in Asia and the Americas. The reflections and experiences of both those who operated the levers of empires and those who lived within their borders are featured throughout the course. Students write a primary-source-based research paper at the close of the course. Also HIST 610b.

SOCY 601a, Work and Gender. Vicki Schultz.

This course examines how workplaces, jobs, and workers come to be structured along gendered lines. The class reads theoretical accounts, empirical studies, ethnographies, and legal cases to obtain an understanding of the mechanisms through which work becomes gendered. Among the questions the course addresses are: Does the workplace reflect or rather actively reproduce gendered social relations and identities? What is the relationship among wage work, citizenship, and gender? How do structural features of organizations tend to reproduce sex segregation and gender harassment? How should we understand the relationship between gender and sexuality at work? Which theories ground past and present interpretations of the law's ban on sex discrimination? Which theories should do so? The representation of gender and work in the popular media is also explored, through an accompanying, required, in-class film series. Self-scheduled examination. Also LAW 20398, WGSS 704a.

SOCY 627a, Sociology of the Welfare State.

SOCY 627b, Gender and Society.

SOCY 633b, Economic Sociology. Jennifer Bair.

This course provides an overview to the field of economic sociology. Focus is on continuity and change in theory and method over time, from the field’s foundations to the so-called new economic sociology of the last fifteen years. Texts include works by Marx, Weber, Bourdieu, Granovetter, Hamilton, North, and Fligstein.

SOCY 643b^u, Transitions and Transformation in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Jennifer Bair.

A comparative discussion of the political economy of reform and restructuring in Eastern Europe and China. Processes of institutional and social transformation in each region are examined, with particular attention paid to the effectiveness of different transition policy packages.

SOCY 647b, Social Processes. Scott Boorman.

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 of 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 non-profit and other non-market social structures,” Economics Letters, 1982, 10, 1-7) and its applications to non-profits and complex statues; weak ties models of job information transmission and other information transfer in elite social networks; “garbage can” models of the internal problem-solving dynamics of complex organizations.