Smiling Ghanaian girls...
COURSE DESCRIPTION
If sociology has a “punch line,” it is this: Our everyday lives – our thoughts, ideas and actions – are the product of a complicated interplay between our personal traits and large-scale social forces outside ourselves. We can’t understand either the individual “self” or the larger “society” if we don’t understand them both, and how they work together. This understanding is known as the “sociological imagination,” and this course is designed to help you cultivate the ability to see this intersection between self and society. To do this we will be looking at three different social institutions or forces, and asking a key question for each:
• Education: "Does our system of education promote or inhibit equality of opportunity?"
• Globalization: "How do decisions made in the developed countries of the North affect the lives of those in the developing countries of the South?"
• Conflict/Conflict Resolution: “What forms does conflict take in divided societies, and what are the best ways to build peace?”
These topics will also give us the opportunity to examine a number of issues central to the discipline of sociology itself, such as how sociologists use theories and data to answer these kinds of questions, the relationship between the individual and society, how social change occurs, and so on. What I hope you will take away from this course is a new ability to analyze the society in which you live, its influence on you, and your ability to influence it in turn.
