This course examines primary, secondary and higher educational institutions in modern industrial societies. Among the topics explored are social factors in educational achievement, accessibility, school culture, the role and professional status of teachers, and knowledge and power in learning situations. The study of uninstitutionalized group behaviour - crowds, panics, crazes, riots and the genesis of social movements. An examination of international conflict and cooperation in the context of global change. This course begins with an examination of the nuclear arms race, then explores how technology, economics, population growth, and environment interact to create interdependencies and afford new opportunities for world order.
Special attention is given to North-South relations and to climate change.
Y, SOCB03 Y SOCC21 Y3 Sociology of Religion A sociological analysis of religion as a social institution. SOCB03 Y SOCC28 H3 Sociology of Aging An examination of the latter stages of the family life cycle, with special reference to the period following middle age, and including social and psychological dimensions of aging, changing roles, departure of children, the significance of retirement, problems of adjustment to aging, the place of the aged person in the modern family, and bereavement. Forms A review and sociological analysis of non-traditional family forms and innovative life styles representing departures from conventional marriage and family patterns. Special reference will be made to structural and functional dimensions, role changes, special problems and community response. A comparative analysis of social systems, social institutions and social organizations which attempts to link the specific to the general and the local to the global in the area of social structure.