Columbia University in the City of New York · Courses
SOCI UN
24 courses with the subject SOCI UN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
SOCI UN1000THE SOCIAL WORLD4.00
Identification of the distinctive elements of sociological perspectives on society. Readings confront classical and contemporary approaches with key social issues that include power and authority, culture and communication, poverty and discrimination, social change, and popular uses of sociological concepts. Please note you must also register for a discussion section to take this course
An examination of the diverse values, meanings and identities that comprise American pluralism, the moral and political clashes and communities that emerge from them, and the sociological concepts that make sense of them. Part One explores larger macro-themes (American exceptionalism; individualism and community; religion and secularism; pleasure and restraint in post-Puritan America; race, immigration and identity). Part Two explores the interplay between these large themes and cultural polarization in post-Trump America, with special focus on the cultural forces at play in the 2024 presidential election: red states, blues states and cultural sorting; changing conceptions of liberalism and conservatism; class divisions and the global rise of cultural populism; the concept of “epistemic tribes” and media silos; fights over religion and race, sexuality and family; the current war on “wokeness” and the debate on free expression
SOCI UN2234Gender, Sexuality, and Health: Social Science Perspectives4.00
Gender and sexuality are fundamental to how we understand ourselves as individuals – but have you thought about them as kinds of social inequality, similar to race, class, or disability? In this course, students will learn about gender and sexuality as elements of social context which are fundamental to our social worlds, as aspects of social organization, as key forms of inequality (heterosexuality/homosexuality, cis/trans or nonbinary, men/women), and as forces that shape health. Developing skills to analyze how gender and sexuality shape health includes mastering some key concepts at the intersection of social science, gender and sexuality studies, and health sciences as well as learning some content about social aspects of a range of health problems. This course, which has no prerequisites, may be of particular interest to students majoring in sociology, anthropology, or gender and sexuality studies, as well as to students interested in health science careers (note, our engagement with questions about inequality and social structure speak to topics on the MCAT). A key element of course design is that all graded writing is done *during* class time (of course with appropriate disability accommodations), both with the goal of structuring AI-free writing and helping students manage their workload
Despite the ubiquity of sexual imagery in contemporary Western popular culture, most people regard sexuality to be an intimate topic that concerns the drives, experiences and pleasures of individuals. In this course, we will examine the social and pluralistic character of sexual desires, meanings, practices and politics, their variations, cultural locations, institutional determinants and even geopolitical dimensions. We will begin by surveying some of the most influential theoretical works from psychoanalysis, sexology and early sociological writings on sexualities, paying particular attention to how they undergird more contemporary social thought. We then move on to examine the influence of queer theoretical critique on sociological thinking about heterosexuality, whiteness, sexual diversity, and cross-national differences in the interrelationships between gender and sexuality. We will end the course by looking at three discrete topics within the larger sociological subfield of sexuality studies: global sex work, the ethics of participants observation in sexual; communities and contemporary discourses of sexual consent (the last with a particular focus on campus sexual cultures)
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries. Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels. Selected topics: individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action
Prerequisites: SOCI W1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission Required for all Sociology majors. Introductory course in social scientific research methods. Provides a general overview of the ways sociologists collect information about social phenomena, focusing on how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to our research questions
SOCI UN3120Trust and Mistrust in Science and Expertise4
Skepticism about science and expertise is evident today in multiple arenas and clearly can no longer be considered a passing phenomenon. From climate change to vaccines; from mammograms to Coronavirus testing; from opposition to rules regulating acceptable levels of carcinogens to AI algorithms purporting to yield better decisions than human experts; the challenges to the authority of experts come from both sides of the political spectrum and take multiple forms. Most discussions of the challenges to expertise start from the question of mistrust. They ask why do people mistrust science and experts given their obvious and well-documented successes and their contribution to immense improvements in collective well-being? This way of posing the question inevitably leads to the conclusion that people mistrusting experts are irrational, uninformed or duped. This, however, may not be the most productive way to pose the question. For the social scientist, mistrust is not the puzzle, trust is. It is not surprising that people would tend to mistrust decisions taken in locales far removed from their daily lives, that are supported by forms of knowledge and technical arrangements that can be relatively opaque and difficult to grasp. It is not surprising especially since these decisions impact some individuals and groups adversely, while benefitting others. Finally, every now and then, but predictably so, it becomes obvious in hindsight that the wrong decisions were taken. Under these circumstances it is far more puzzling, counter-intuitive and difficult to understand why, how, and under what conditions people do trust science and experts. If we want to understand mistrust, and ultimately arrive at a more balanced arrangement of the relations between experts and laypeople, we need to begin by asking what is trust? How is it typically organized and secured? What sustains trust in experts and scientists? Only after we have some grasp of the mechanisms by which trust is cultivated, can we hope to have an explanation of the contemporary atmosphere of mistrust, that does not deteriorate into mere name- calling (“climate denial,” “anti-vaxxers,” etc.) This course will be organized, accordingly, in two parts. In the first part, we will consider different approaches to trust, and specifically for how trust in science and experts is elicited and secured. The second half of the course will be dedicated to examining contemporary case studies of mistrust in science and experts, while exploring different “engines of crisis”: the demand for parity between doctors and patients/parents, especially in the case of vaccinations; the emergence of “risk” as the central topic of the politics of expertise, especially as regarding environmental pollution; the strategic manufacturing of ignorance (“agnotology”) by tobacco manufacturers and by opponents of climate change research; the replacement of expert judgment with “black-boxed” algorithms in forensics and risk assessment; the legitimation crisis of regulatory science; and the rejection of dependence on experts in the name of an ethics of “care of self.”
SOCI UN3121Trust and Mistrust in Science and Expertise - DISC0.00
Discussion Section for SOCI 3120UN - TRUST AND MISTRUST IN SCIENCE AND EXPERTISE. Skepticism about science and expertise is evident today in multiple arenas and clearly can no longer be considered a passing phenomenon. From climate change to vaccines; from mammograms to Coronavirus testing; from opposition to rules regulating acceptable levels of carcinogens to AI algorithms purporting to yield better decisions than human experts; the challenges to the authority of experts come from both sides of the political spectrum and take multiple forms. Most discussions of the challenges to expertise start from the question of mistrust. They ask why do people mistrust science and experts given their obvious and well-documented successes and their contribution to immense improvements in collective well-being? This way of posing the question inevitably leads to the conclusion that people mistrusting experts are irrational, uninformed or duped. This, however, may not be the most productive way to pose the question. For the social scientist, mistrust is not the puzzle, trust is. It is not surprising that people would tend to mistrust decisions taken in locales far removed from their daily lives, that are supported by forms of knowledge and technical arrangements that can be relatively opaque and difficult to grasp. It is not surprising especially since these decisions impact some individuals and groups adversely, while benefitting others. Finally, every now and then, but predictably so, it becomes obvious in hindsight that the wrong decisions were taken. Under these circumstances it is far more puzzling, counter-intuitive and difficult to understand why, how, and under what conditions people do trust science and experts
Prerequisites: One introductory course in Sociology suggested. Prerequisites: One introductory course in Sociology suggested. Social movements and the theories social scientists use to explain them, with emphasis on contemporary American activism. Cases include the Southern civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, contemporary feminist mobilizations, LGBTQ activism, immigrant rights and more recent forms of grassroots politics
This course examines gender as a flexible but persistent boundary that continues to organize our work lives and our home lives, as well as the relationship between the two spheres. We will explore the ways in which gender affects how work is structured; the relationship between work and home; the household as a place of paid (and unpaid) labor; and how changes in the global economy affect gender and work identities
The purpose of the course is to acquaint students with Israeli society through the lens of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. The underlying assumption in this course is that much of the social, economic, political, and cultural processes in contemporary Israel have been shaped by the 100-year Israeli- Arab/Palestinian conflict
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement Using classical texts about cities (do they still work for us?) and on the diverse new literatures on cities and larger subjects with direct urban implications, we ill use a variety of data sets to get a detailed empirical information, and draw on two large ongoing research projects involving major and minor global cities around the world (a total of over 60 cities are covered in detail as of 2008). Students will need to register for a discussion section as well; details to be announced.
This course examines major innovations in organizations and asks whether innovation itself can be organized. We study a range of forms of organizing (e.g. bureaucratic, post-bureaucratic, and open architecture network forms) in a broad variety of settings: from fast food franchises to the military-entertainment complex, from airline cockpits to Wall Street trading rooms, from engineering firms to mega-churches, from scientific management at the turn of the twentieth century to collaborative filtering and open source programming at the beginning of the twenty-first. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between organizational forms and new digital technologies
This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S. to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text
The course analyzes the relationship between race/ethnicity and spatial inequality, emphasizing the institutions, processes, and mechanisms that shape the lives of urban dwellers. It surveys major theoretical approaches and empirical investigations of racial and ethnic stratification in several urban cities, and their concomitant policy considerations
Sociology came to the study of human rights much later than law, philosophy, or political science. In this course, you’ll learn (1) what constitutes a sociology of human rights and (2) what sociology, its classics, and its diverse methods bring to the empirical study and theory of human rights. We’ll explore the history, social institutions and laws, ideas, practices, and theories of human rights. We’ll become familiar with the social actors, social structures, and relationships involved in practices such as violation, claims-making, advocacy, and protection. We’ll consider how social, cultural, political, and economic forces affect human rights issues. We’ll learn about the questions sociologists ask, starting with the most basic (but far from simple) question, “what is a human right?” We’ll tackle key debates in the field, considering – for instance – whether human rights are universal and how human rights relate to cultural norms/values, national sovereignty, and national security. Finally, we’ll apply the concepts we’ve learned to a wide range of issues (ex: how racial, ethnic, gender, and other social inequalities relate to human rights), rights (ex: LGBTQ rights, the rights of laborers, the rights of refugees), and cases (ex: enslavement, the separation of children from their families, circumcision, sterilization, the use of torture). We’ll consider human rights cases in the United States and across the globe, and how events and actions in one place relate to human rights violations in another
SOCI UN3960SEMINAR - PROBLEMS OF LAW ＆ SOCIETY4.00
This course addresses basic contemporary social issues from several angles of vision: from the perspective of scientists, social scientists, legal scholars, and judges. Through the use of case studies, students will examine the nature of theories, evidence, facts, proof, and argument as found in the work of scientists and scholars who have engaged the substantive issues presented in the course
In this class we will examine the school as a central institution in modern society, and we will grapple with an important question in the sociology of education: what role to schools play in reinforcing or challenging broader patters of social inequality? We will pay special attention to the ways in which students class, race/ethnicity and gender shape their educational experiences. We will also look at how schools are organized, how schools construct differences among students, and how schools sort kids into different (and unequal) groups. Finally we will explore the types of interventions - at both the individual and organizational levels - that can mitigate inequality in educational achievement and help low-income students to succeed. One such intervention that has shown promise is tutoring in academic and social and behavioral skills, and interventions that strengthen self-affirmation. A major component of this class is your experience as a tutor. You will be trained as tutors to work with students from local high schools both through in-person tutoring and through tutoring using social networking technologies. Throughout the semester we will combine our academic learning with critical reflection on our experience sin the field. Because you will be working with NYC high school students, we will pay special attention to how NYC high schools are organized and how current issues in education play out in the context of NYC schools
Prerequisites: required methods and theory courses for the major, and the instructor's permission. Prerequisites: required methods and theory courses for the major, and the instructors permission. Students wishing to qualify for departmental honors must take W3996y. Students carry out individual research projects and write a senior thesis under the supervision of the instructor and with class discussion. Written and oral progress reports
