Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course or the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the 19th 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

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.Discussion Section Required.

How do schools influence students? How do students make sense of their lives in the context of schools? And what role do schools play in reinforcing or challenging broader patterns of social inequality? This class will draw on multiple sources, from classical sociological texts to ethnographies of schools to our own experiences at Columbia and in this class itself, to examine the school as a central institution in modern society.

Examines social forces contributing to changes in U.S. family formation including declines in marriage, increases in nonmarital childbearing, and women's labor force participation. Analyzes forces affecting growth of "non-traditional" families including lesbian/gay, multigenerational families. Particular attention given to urban, suburban, rural contexts of poverty.Discussion Section Required.

Debates about the distribution of income, policies towards the poor, policies towards immigration, and the proper balance between state, religion, and family for addressing important social problems are an endemic feature of American politics and have sharpened considerably in the increasingly polarized condition of American politics. This course addresses the character of inequality, religion, family, and immigration in contemporary America. We will frequently use a comparative perspective to better understand the nature of American distinctiveness within the broader industrialized world. Through such comparisons, the course will also clarify the potential role that social science evidence can play in policy debates around these issues.

How did Paris become the "Capital of the 19th Century," the paradigmatic modern city? We shall look at some of the paths that Paris took to modernity, focusing on the 19th century city from the French Revolution to the Great War of 1914-1918. Readings include sociological and historical studies as well as the novels that dramatize the experience of a sociologuically imagined city.

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 will use a variety of data sets to get at 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).

An introduction to the cultural aspects of economic sociology. Consumer preferences have social origins, and the patterns of economic self-interest depend on religion, family, the state, shared stories, and social interactions. Students will examine the meanings of money, how some rational people account for their disadvantageous financial decisions, and how social movements and shared meanings affect the emergence of different types of markets.

Examines how countries have adjusted to the threat of terrorism. How the adaptation reflects the pattern of terrorist attacks, as well as structural and cultural features of the society. Adaptations by individuals, families, and organizational actors.

This seminar will focus on migration patterns to and from Israel and their effect on the ethnic composition and cleavages in Israeli society. We will discuss Jewish immigration and emigration in the pre-state period, Arab forced migration in 1948, Jewish immigration to Israel until the 1967 war, and migration patterns from the late 1960s until the present. In addition, we will discuss Jewish emigration from Israel, which is viewed as a major social problem. The focus will be on the number of emigrants, their composition, the causes for emigration, return migration, and on the question of the brain drain from contemporary Israel.

Guided by questions such as "ethnography for what purpose?, to what ends?, in what context?, with what tools?", this course will explore the territory(ies) of ethnograpohy in contemporary sociological research by pairing different kinds and modes of ethnographical research, both within the social sciences (sociology/anthropology/history) and outside (fiction/journalizm).

The nature of opportunity in American society; the measurement of inequality; trends in income and wealth inequality; issues of poverty and poverty policy; international comparisons.

Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course or the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the 19th 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

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.Discussion Section Required.

This course will teach the fundamentals of analyzing numerical data in a social science context. Students will learn effective ways of presenting informational summaries, the use of statistical inference from samples to populations, and the linear model which forms the basis of much social science research. Emphasis will be on an intuitive understanding of statistical formulae and models, and on their practical application.

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.

What is race? Is the US a post-racial society? Is such a society desirable? Is a post-racial society necessarily a just and egalitarian one? We consider these questions from ethnographic, historical, and theoretical perspectives. Topics discussed include intersectionality, multiracial identity, colorism, genetics, and the race and/or class debate.

The course will start with a review of the current state of the world, and proceed to identify and analyze the centripetal forces that push us together. We will then investigate key areas of climate change, genocide prevention and poverty alleviation, and discuss what if any responsibility we all have towards others. We will review various arguments for normative and technocratic frameworks. At the end of the course, each student will participate in thought experiments to explore her or his version of a global civics.

Exploring the major themes of religion and politics in the contemporary world: how did the major thinkers conceptualize the role of religion in society, the relationship between religion and politics, and state and church? How do different religions conceptualize and give life to these arrangements? After a mix of theoretical and historical readings, we study various substantive examples of the relationship between religion and politics, within differing contexts, different religions as well as different nation-states.

This course examines writings on "new media" and "social media." The focus will be on the ways that information technology has changed our social relations and experiences. We will examine different kinds of social collectivities, including "virtual communities," "crowd sourced" collaboratives and other kinds of social networks. Particular attention will be paid to the production and consumption of information and image, especially the making of cultural objects.

For students who are interested in combining sociological theory and methods with historical analysis in their projects. Students writing historical theses in sociology, political science, and anthropology would benefit from thinking about the combination of social scientific analysis with historical settings. Combining readings that are theoretical, methodological as well as excellent examples of essays and books that have succeeded at bridging the gap between disciplines. Class presentations and discussions of student work.

This seminar critically examines how racial/ethnic inequality is generated and maintained in contemporary American society. We will explore the merits and limitations of various paradigms that aim to explain racial inequalities and the concomitant social policies that have been implemented and/or proposed. Major topics include: residential segregation, wealth inequality, educational achievement, employment outcomes, crime & punishment, and culture.

We will concentrate on such questions as: What role have natural resources and commodities played in the formation and evolution of the capitalist world-economy? Under what circumstances has natural resource wealth been an economic disadvantage/advantage? In which ways, if any, is the contemporary period of globalization changing the mechanisms linking natural resource wealth and economic development? While the course will focus on questions relating to the political economy of natural resources and development, students will gain an overview of world-historical sociology which can be used to examine a wide range of sociological questions.