Department of Sociology

Sociology offers a cutting-edge undergraduate major for students interested in the social dimensions of politics, economics, history, psychology, and demography. Concentrators can deepen their understanding of globalization, and the program is designed so that students who wish to go abroad in the spring of their junior year can do so.

Sociology is a department where students can integrate different approaches to knowledge. It was founded in the 19th century by Auguste Comte, who said it was destined to be the “Queen of the Sciences.” He believed that this new field could produce knowledge about society based on scientific evidence. He regarded sociology as the last science to be developed—following physics, chemistry, and biology—but sociology, he believed, should contribute to the welfare of humanity by using science to understand and therefore control and predict human behavior.

Sociology professors at Princeton are researching and teaching on important topics of concern in the “real world” inside and outside the University. For example, Professor Paul Starr (a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the co-founder of American Prospect magazine) teaches a popular course on the big issues of American society and politics. And Douglas Massey (former president of the American Sociological Association and a member of the National Academy of Sciences) teaches a popular class on race and public policy. Other recent courses have dealt with issues such as the way that information technology is changing our daily lives, the red state-blue state divide, the dilemmas surrounding diversity in higher education, the ghetto as a socio-historical problem, and how to understand poverty and inequality in America.

Recent books by professors in the department include studies of the immigrant experience and immigration policy, the 21st-century corporate firm, religious diversity, the mass media, school shootings, affirmative action, and growing up with a single parent. Our sociological perspective on all of these subjects tends to look at things from below, rather than from above. We are interested in revealing the exercise of power when none appears to be operating. We’re interested in the social experience of groups that have, until recently, largely been invisible. We emphasize the careful use of evidence to develop and enrich our understanding of social processes, and we use a wide variety of statistical, ethnographic, and historical methods.

Sociology majors benefit from a smaller major where they receive more individual attention from faculty than they reasonably can expect in the larger concentrations. It is also the most diverse major in the University, attracting students committed to an environment of respect and acceptance.

Our students tend to do extremely well in applying to a wide range of graduate programs, from medicine to law to business, because professional schools are increasingly looking for intellectual diversity and sociology provides a valued perspective in the contemporary professions. In addition, students who major in sociology go into a wide range of fields from investment banking to law to education, activism, and the non-profit sector.

For junior sociology majors planning to study abroad

Sociology at Princeton is filled with cutting edge-scholarship at the crossroads of global and international sociology. Our department believes that study abroad adds a valuable dimension to the experience in sociology as well as a possible basis for independent work in the junior and senior year. The department encourages its students to take advantage of the many fine programs in other countries that exist for Princeton students. Sociology has created a special fall semester junior seminar for concentrators interested in going abroad and/or writing a junior paper on global and international questions. (The seminar is also available to those focusing on global and international sociology while remaining in Princeton.) This special version focuses on the same core methodological questions as found in the standard required methods course, but with an emphasis on providing exceptional preparation in this subject area. Students in the seminar will begin their junior paper in the first semester. Those who spend the spring abroad will continue to be advised by the seminar instructor, who will guide them through the completion of the paper while they are away from Princeton.