Topics include the childhood socialization, the sociology of education, social trends in marriage and parenting, the changing workplace, and lastly, the sociology of aging and death. This class links personal experiences with broader cultural perspectives. Students analyze and question the cultural and structural forces that have shaped and continue to shape their lives. Special attention will be given to social justice, cultural assimilation, race, class, feminism, family, education, work, and the mass media. This class looks at the way food is produced and distributed in the global economy, and considers alternatives proposed by advocates and practitioners of sustainable agriculture.
Social control is the reproduction of the culture of dominant groups in a society.
Deviance and innovation are responses by dominant groups to subordinate group cultures and efforts to change the dominant culture. Dominant social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them outsiders. This course focuses on rule making and enforcement, on the social construction of rule-breaking as either deviance or innovation, and the powerful discourses, including law and medicine, which embody the culture of dominant groups. Describing and explaining social inequality constitute two of the principal motivations or doing sociology. This course provides an overview of the key concepts and theories which have informed sociological perspectives on the nature and origins of inequality.