This course is a broad introduction to the field of sociology. Course materials are designed to illustrate the distinctive features of the sociological perspective and to start you thinking sociologically about yourself and the broader social world. To think sociologically is to recognize that being embedded in the world constrains behavior, and that individuals are both social actors and social products. To think sociologically is also to recognize that our contemporary world, with its enduring cultural, political, and economic institutions, is as much a social product as we are. We will begin by covering theoretical and methodological foundations of the sociological perspective.  We will go on to explore the concept of social stratification and will survey primary axes of social difference. In the second half of the course we will look more closely at how individuals relate to each other, how social inequality is enacted and reinforced in everyday life, and at the way in which the organization of social life shapes individuals and groups, such as through social networks, residential neighborhoods, schooling, families, and on-line communication.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (D-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 1101 - Introduction to Sociology

"Social Problems in the U.S." teaches students how to think like a social scientist when encountering claims about major contemporary issues. Through readings and assignments, students develop an analytical toolkit for evaluating the scope, causes, consequences, and proposed solutions to a wide range of complicated social problems, such as: childhood poverty, racial segregation and discrimination, job insecurity, family instability, discrimination by sexual identity, unequal pay for women's work, gender imbalances in family life, health disparities, food insecurity, drug abuse, and educational inequality. Rather than cover all of these (and other) social problems in depth, the course emphasizes a conceptual framework that can be applied broadly. The semester culminates with a written proposal examining a social problem and developing an approach to address it with public policy.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (CA-AG, D-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 2070 - Social Problems in the United States

This interdisciplinary course examines network structures and how they matter in everyday life. The course examines how each of the computing, economic, sociological and natural worlds are connected and how the structure of these connections affects each of these worlds. Tools of graph theory and game theory are taught and then used to analyze networks. Topics covered include the web, the small world phenomenon, markets, neural networks, contagion, search and the evolution of networks.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 2090 - Networks

Full details for SOC 2180 - Data Management and Programming for Policy and Society

Introduction to population studies. The primary focus is on the relationships between demographic processes (fertility, mortality, and immigration) and social and economic issues. Discussion covers special topics related to population growth and spatial distribution, including marriage and family formation, population aging, changing roles and statuses of women, labor force participation, immigrations, urban growth and urbanization, resource allocation, and the environment.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (CA-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 2202 - Population and Social Change

In recent years, poverty and inequality have become increasingly common topics of public debate, as academics, journalists, and politicians attempt to come to terms with growing income inequality, with the increasing visibility of inter-country differences in wealth and income, and with the persistence of racial, ethnic, and gender stratification. This course introduces students to ongoing social scientific debates about the sources and consequences of inequality, as well as the types of public policy that might appropriately be pursued to reduce (or increase) inequality. These topics will be addressed in related units, some of which include guest lectures by faculty from other universities (funded by the Center for the Study of Inequality). Each unit culminates with a highly spirited class discussion and debate.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS, SSC-AS) (D-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 2220 - Controversies About Inequality

Public policy is a fundamental mechanism for addressing the most vexing and important social problems of our time. Racial inequality and structural racism are chief among such problems. Policy is thus widely understood and frequently touted as a means for redressing the harms of racism. Yet, public policy has also been identified as a channel through which racism flows. These seemingly paradoxical understandings of the relationships between racism and public policy raise critical questions about equality, democracy, the economy, and politics. This course examines such questions. questions. We begin by theoretically grounding key concepts such as "race" "racism" and "public policy." We then consider the historical record, highlighting the fundamental role of racism in shaping politics and policy. Next, we build on these conceptual and historical foundations through thematic investigation of core policy elements (e.g., policy design, policy implementation, policy feedback), key policy institutions (e.g., legislatures, parties) and significant policy actors (e.g., social movement organizations, interest groups). Finally, the class wraps up with a series of policy "deep dives" involving close examination of specific policy domains (e.g., housing, health, the enviornment). This course provides students with the knowledge and analytical tools necessary to better understand the realities and complexities of race, racism, and public policy in the United States.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS, SSC-AS) (D-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 2370 - Race, Racism, and Public Policy

This course is modeled after "Great Books" literature courses in the humanities, but with two important differences: we read non-fiction books in the social sciences rather than the humanities, written by highly prominent contemporary social scientists. The course title refers to the fact that the books are new, hence their potential greatness has yet to be confirmed by the test of time. We choose living authors to give students a unique opportunity: to interact with each of the six authors in Q&A sessions via live or recorded video conferencing. 

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 2580 - Six Pretty Good Books: Explorations in Social Science

This course will introduce students to the theory and mathematics of statistical analysis. Many decisions made by ourselves and others around us are based on statistics, yet few people have a solid grip on the strengths and limitations of these techniques. This course will provide a firm foundation for statistical reasoning and logical inference using probability. While there is math in this course, it is not a math class per se, as a considerable amount of attention is devoted to interpreting statistics as well as calculating them.

Catalog Distribution: (SDS-AS, SSC-AS) (MQL-AG, OPHLS-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 3010 - Statistics for Sociological Research

Examines the social institution of the family, challenges to the institution's well-being and stability, and the role of public policy in these transformations. Topics include family structure and responsibilities; marriage as a traditional building block of the family and challenges to the institution of marriage, including divorce, nonmarital childbearing, cohabitation, and same-sex unions; children, and the impact of family change on their wellbeing, including the effects of child poverty, maternal employment, and paternal involvement. The role of public policy in managing and shaping these developments is discussed.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 3360 - Evolving Families: Challenges to Public Policy

Disasters are usually sudden events that result in catastrophic loss of life and/or property. They are often described using terms like disorder, chaos, and panic - descriptions which belie the highly socially structured nature of disasters. This course takes a closer look at disaster situations using a sociological lens. We will examine the social elements of several disasters, including the sinking of Titanic, the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and others. Through these cases, students will learn about (1) the social-psychological and collective dynamics that govern behavior in disaster situations, (2) the role social networks and organizations play in disaster occurrence, response and recovery, and especially (3) the role of social disadvantage in shaping vulnerability to and mortality risk in disasters.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 3650 - Sociology of Disasters

This course introduces the classics in sociology – primarily works by Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel. Students will also study some works of Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Talcott Parsons, members of the Chicago School of Sociology, and others. Special emphasis is placed on the concepts, ideas, and analytical approaches that characterize the foundations of sociology, and how those elements have informed the broader scholarly dialogue in sociology since its inception.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 3750 - Classical Sociological Theory

Is the welfare state a protector from capitalism or an accomplice to capitalism? Social safety nets and capitalist markets have a complicated relationship for workers. Healthcare, retirement pensions, unemployment insurance — these provisions protect workers from the risks of getting sick, old, and fired. These same provisions are also tremendous sources of capital, invested into the very employers and asset-managers who pose risks to workers. This contradiction is not an "American thing," but extends to social democracies like the Netherlands who steward one of the largest national capital-funded pensions. This course uncovers these complexities of the welfare state, with special theoretical and empirical attention to labor. Geographically it will focus on the United States, with frequent international comparisons to examine the commonalities and differences of welfare states. And lastly, it will be equal parts sociology and history, illuminating the origins, transformations, and inequalities of the welfare state in the United States.

Full details for SOC 3800 - The Welfare State and Its Contradictions for Workers

This introductory course introduces students to issues and debates related to international migration and will provide an interdisciplinary foundation to understanding the factors that shape migration flows and migrant experiences. We will start by reviewing theories of the state and historical examples of immigrant racialization and exclusion in the United States and beyond. We will critically examine the notions of borders, citizenship/non-citizenship, and the creation of diasporas. Students will also hear a range of perspectives by exposing them to Cornell guest faculty who do research and teach on migration across different disciplines and methodologies and in different world areas. Examples include demographic researchers concerned with immigrant inequality and family formation, geographic perspectives on the changing landscapes of immigrant metropolises, legal scholarship on the rights of immigrant workers, and the study of immigrant culture from a feminist studies lens. Offered each fall semester.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 3820 - Migration: Histories, Controversies, and Perspectives

This course is a survey of theories and politics of the labor process exploring how employers organize work, how workers respond to these efforts, and how this shapes industrial labor relations. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution scholars from Marx to Taylor considered how the design of the labor process impacted not only profit but workers' subjective experience of their work and their resistance. The last two decades have again seen significant changes and upheaval in the nature of work—gigification, digital surveillance, and the disruptive specter of generative AI—raising the importance of these questions yet again. Exploring the politics of how work is organized this course seeks to interrogate the historical context of these contemporary debates.

Full details for SOC 3890 - From Luddites to Silicon Valley: The Politics of Tech and Work

What is health? What does it mean to be "healthy" (or not) in today's world? How does health (or illness) shape an individual's identity and relationship to other people and institutions? This course grapples with the social underpinnings of health and has two main components: substantive and practice. First (substantive), we will explore core concepts and methods from the research areas of medical sociology and population health. We will read a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research on topics such as disease, reproductive health, sexuality, public health, medicalization, inequality, and activism. These readings spread across 3 thematic units: (1) what is health?, (2) health disparities, and (3) politics of health. Second (practice), we will focus on research design and writing. You will develop your own research question about the relationship between social context and health and will spend the semester collecting and analyzing data, drafting and revising your results, and polishing and presenting your social science research. This course is supported by Cornell's John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines as a "Writing in the Majors (WIM)" course. As such, our aim is to integrate learning about our topic and developing our skills as writers in advanced undergraduate courses across the College of Arts & Sciences.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS, SDS-AS) (D-AG, OPHLS-AG)

Full details for SOC 4120 - Health and Social Context

American society has evolved dramatically over the last century while retaining distinctive ideals and social tensions. Rural communities have given way to digital worlds, pork barrel politics to polarization, and fixed conceptions of sexuality to fluid ones. At the same time, the country is marked by a longstanding celebrity culture, frontier mindset, and enduring conflicts around class, race, and gender. The course seeks insight into complex patterns of social change through the lens of film. Each week we watch a movie made in a given historical period, and read from the sociological literature of that period. The course travels about a decade per week, covering films from the Silent Era up to the present, watching films such as Modern Times (1936), Double Indemnity (1944), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The President's Analyst (1967), Taxi Driver(1976), She's Gotta Have It (1986), American Beauty (1999), District 9 (2009), Her (2013).

Catalog Distribution: (HST-AS, SSC-AS) (HA-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 4290 - Moving Pictures and a Changing Society

Is there a "culture war for the soul of Amerca"? This seminar will explore the definition, types, causes, dynamics, diffusion, and consequences of partisan cultural alignment. Readings will include theoretical models and empirical studies of opinion cascades, identity politics, motivated reasoning, network homophily, echo chambers, filter bubbles, social contagion, conformity, and cultural cognition. What is polarization? Is it the disappearance of a consensual middle ground or the tendency for substantively unrelated opinions to become correlated? Did polarization emerge from the top down, beginning with political and cultural elites, or from the bottom up, through the self-reinforcing dynamics of network homophily and peer influence? Do social media and cable news contribute to polarization or merely reflect it? Can polarization be reversed, and if not, what are the implications for democratic institutions?

Catalog Distribution: (SDS-AS, SSC-AS)

Full details for SOC 4320 - Culture Wars in the Age of Tribal Politics

This course provides an introduction to the theoretical and empirical literature on the sociology of sex and gender. The readings cover theory and methods, feminism, masculinity, intersectionality, international/comparative perspectives, gender roles, and recent sociological research in this area.

Catalog Distribution: (SCD-AS, SSC-AS) (D-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 4370 - Sociology of Sex and Gender

Evaluation is a pervasive feature of contemporary life. Professors, doctors, countries, hotels, pollution, books, intelligence: there is hardly anything that is not subject to some form of review, rating, or ranking these days. This senior seminar examines the practices, cultures, and technologies of evaluation and asks how value is established, maintained, compared, subverted, resisted, and institutionalized in a range of different settings. Topics include user reviews, institutional audit, ranking and commensuration, algorithmic evaluation, tasting, gossip, and awards. Drawing on case studies from science, technology, culture, accounting, art, environment, and everyday life, we shall explore how evaluation comes to order our lives – and why it is so difficult to resist.

Catalog Distribution: (SSC-AS) (SBA-AG)

Full details for SOC 4560 - Evaluation and Society

This is a capstone seminar for seniors who are interested in graduate or professional study in scientific disciplines that focus on human behavior and social interaction. The intent is to provide seniors with an opportunity to summon, integrate, and apply insights that they have acquired over the course of their undergraduate education, and give prospective graduate students the opportunity to lead discussions in a large introductory lecture course, "Six Pretty Good Books". Each seminar member is part of a two or three-person team that leads the discussion together, under the supervision of a graduate teaching assistant. Seminar meetings are devoted to building lesson plans for leading an effective discussion of each of the six books. The authors vary from year to year but include Malcolm Gladwell, Michelle Alexander, Nate Silver, and Nicholas Christakis. All authors have agreed to participate in a "Q&A" session with the students which seminar members are required to attend.

Full details for SOC 4580 - The Science of Social Behavior

This is for undergraduates who wish to obtain research experience or to do extensive reading on a special topic.

Full details for SOC 4910 - Independent Study

Students choose a sociology faculty member to work with on research to write an honors thesis. Candidates for honors must maintain a cumulative GPA at least an A- in all sociology classes.

Full details for SOC 4950 - Honors Research

Continuation of SOC 4950.  Continue to work with honors supervisor and work on and write an honors thesis.

Full details for SOC 4960 - Honors Thesis: Senior Year

 

Full details for SOC 5010 - Basic Problems in Sociology I

This course serves as an introduction to contemporary theories, debates, and models regarding the structure of social classes, the determinants of social mobility, the sources and cases of racial, ethnic, and gender-based inequality, and the putative rise of postmodern forms of stratification. The twofold objective is to both review contemporary theorizing and to identify areas in which new theories, hypotheses, and research agendas might be fruitfully developed.

Full details for SOC 5180 - Social Inequality: Contemporary Theories, Debates, and Models

This course provides a forum in which students and others can present, discuss, and receive instant feedback on their inequality-related research. Its primary goals is to help students advance their own research; its secondary goal is to introduce selected debates in the contemporary inequality literature in a more comprehensive fashion that is possible in the introductory graduate-level seminar on inequality.

Full details for SOC 5190 - Workshop on Social Inequality

This course provides an introduction to analytical approaches in quantitative sociological research. The class will cover data description and graphical approaches, elementary probability theory, hypothesis testing, bivariate and multivariate linear regression, and data analysis and interpretation. Although the course will be taught using basic mathematics and statistics, I will develop the topics intuitively throughout the course. The class is geared towards sociological thinking--all homework and class examples will use real data and focus on questions from the social world. The course covers the basic building blocks of quantitative data analysis with the goal of training students to be informed consumers of quantitative social science research. This class is also the starting point for students interested in using quantitative methods in their own research.

Full details for SOC 6010 - Statistics for Sociological Research

This course is designed to assist the student's professional development on a "learning by doing and feedback" basis. The course is organized around presentation and discussion of ongoing research projects. As a general rule the course welcomes auditors and all members of the sociology community interested in the variety of research being pursued at Cornell, though participation is with the permission of the instructor(s).

Full details for SOC 6030 - Graduate Research Practicum

Discussion of the current state of sociology and of the research interests of members of the graduate field; taught by all members of the field.

Full details for SOC 6080 - Proseminar in Sociology

This course will expose students to ethnography, experiments, small-N comparison, content analysis, archival research, internet data scraping, data visualization, network and sequence approaches, and more. We will begin to answer the following core questions: What are the strengths of different methods? What are their weaknesses? What assumptions about research design issues are built into each method? What assumptions about the scientific status of sociology are built into each method? How can different methods be combined so that their strengths and weaknesses balance one another?

Full details for SOC 6130 - Logics and Methods of Sociological Research

Introduces students to theories and methods of data collection techniques such as in-depth interviews, ethnography, focus groups, and surveys as well as mixed-method approaches used in policy and evaluation research. Addresses the strengths and weaknesses of various methods and the design of qualitative and mixed-method studies. Covers epistemology, ethics, induction and deduction, measurement, validity, and triangulation. Also discusses more concrete issues such as gaining access to a field site, developing a qualitative interview guide and survey questionnaire, conducting a qualitative interview, managing data, and assessing data quality.

Full details for SOC 6150 - Qualitative, Survey, and Mixed Method Approaches to Policy Research

Full details for SOC 6180 - Data Management and Programming for Policy and Society

Full details for SOC 6370 - Sociology of Sex and Gender

Diffusion - the spread of social practices - is of central interest for the way it combines attention to social structure and social change. The course reviews theory and method in both classic and contemporary diffusion studies. Theoretical perspectives include choice-theoretic ideas about the gains to mimicry under uncertainty, network analysis of the relational structures that facilitate diffusion, and institutional accounts of the way actors interpret and normalize social practices. Methodological approaches include analysis of the distribution of adoption times, event history models of individual adoption, spatial correlation, simulation, and process tracing. Discussion of statistical methods is introduced with a focus on concepts, and is designed to be accessible to doctoral students regardless of prior coursework in multivariate data analysis.

Full details for SOC 6420 - Sociology of Diffusion

This seminar will provide a graduate-level examination of the social organization of urban communities. We will begin with the classic urban sociological theories of the Chicago School and recent extensions and revisions of this perspective. Then, we will consider both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of topics including urban social networks, neighborhood social context, urban inequality and social problems, and processes of urban change.

Full details for SOC 6440 - Urban Structure and Process

Political and cultural polarization have steadily increased in the three decades since Patrick Buchanan declared a "cultural war for the soul of America." Concerns include echo chambers, filter bubbles, and increasingly vitriolic discourse, with the cumulative potential to erode democratic institutions. The first half of the semester explores the definition, types, measures, dynamics, and consequences of partisan cultural alignment. The second half addresses the causes, diffusion, and consequences of polarization. Readings will include theoretical models and empirical studies of opinion cascades, identity politics, motivated reasoning, network homophily, echo chambers, filter bubbles, social contagion, conformity, and cultural cognition. Weekly discussions will grapple with a range of questions, including: What is polarization? Is it the tendency for opinions to be extreme, with the disappearance of a consensual middle ground, or is it the tendency for substantively unrelated opinions to become correlated? Did polarization emerge from the top down, beginning with political and cultural elites, or from the bottom up, through the self-reinforcing dynamics of network homophily and peer influence? Do social media and cable news contribute to polarization or merely reflect it? Can polarization be reversed, and if not, what are the implications for democratic institutions?

Full details for SOC 6520 - Culture Wars in the Age of Tribal Politics

This is a course on networks and text in quantitative social science. The course will cover published research using text and social network data, focusing on health, politics, and everyday life, and it will introduce methods and approaches for incorporating high-dimensional data into familiar research designs. Students will evaluate past studies and propose original research.

Full details for SOC 6610 - Text and Networks in Social Science Research

This course is a survey of theories and politics of the labor process exploring how employers organize work, how workers respond to these efforts, and how this shapes industrial labor relations. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution scholars from Marx to Taylor considered how the design of the labor process impacted not only profit but workers' subjective experience of their work and their resistance. The last two decades have again seen significant changes and upheaval in the nature of work—gigification, digital surveillance, and the disruptive specter of generative AI—raising the importance of these questions yet again. Exploring the politics of how work is organized this course seeks to interrogate the historical context of these contemporary debates.

Full details for SOC 6890 - From Luddites to Silicon Valley: The Politics of Tech and Work

For graduates who wish to obtain research experience or to do extensive reading on a special topic. Permission to enroll for independent study is granted only to students who present an acceptable prospectus and secure the agreement of a faculty member to serve as supervisor for the project throughout the semester.

Full details for SOC 6910 - Independent Study

Work with a faculty member on a project that is related to your dissertation work.

Full details for SOC 8910 - Graduate Research

Work with chair of your committee on your dissertation work.

Full details for SOC 8950 - Thesis Research