Home » Departments and Centres » Academic catalogue » Course detail

Open sidebar menu

Sociology: Core Contemporary Debates (SPS-RE-SO-VAR-26)

SPS-RE-SO-VAR-26

Purpose

This is a course in a 3-course curriculum “SOCIOLOGY”. The other courses are the field seminar “SOCIOLOGY: Main questions and building blocks” and the elective “SOCIOLOGY: Key concepts, designs and mechanisms”.  Taking the field seminar first is recommended but not a condition for participation. The present course zooms in on selected core contemporary debates in sociology, and asks where the research agenda came from, what is currently at stake, and where the field may move in the near future. Starting from recent high-profile studies in the sociological literature, we dissect which puzzle or tension is presented, how it is presented, and how it follows on long-standing debates in the literature. We then, collectively, develop ideas on what the next frontier could be in the chosen debates. The weekly two-hour sessions are hands-on: Students discuss the place of a study in the literature, make links with other subfields, and present applications proposed in assignments. Example debates could be about migrant assimilation, whether institutions matter for individual life outcomes among high-income countries, whether the gender wage gap is really a parenthood gap, or how contemporary complex families structure primary relationships. 

 

Description

Syllabus is available here.

Register for this course