Your participation is critical to the success of the class and a key component in your grade. Come to lecture prepared to ask questions. Come to precept prepared to discuss the week's readings and lectures.
Every week you're expected to do a memo of no more than 200 words on an assigned topic. Before starting to write, do all of the week's readings, even if your memo primarily addresses only one of them. Use the memo to identify an issue, develop an idea, or take a position, and be prepared to kick off a discussion in precept about the points you make.
For the first precept (the week of September 21), please bring your memo and hand it in to the preceptor. At that first meeting, preceptors will say how they prefer to receive memos from then on. Some preceptors may prefer to get them by email the day before you meet.
Sociology 101 will have a midterm and a final examination. Each examination will include both short IDs and essay questions. More details about the format will be provided during the semester.
Grading: Midterm (30%), Final (40%), Precept [including memos and participation] (30%)
Week 1 (9/21-9/23): Keeping in mind the general theme of "Us and Them," as well as the contrast between Putnam and Sampson in their analysis of the effects of diversity, please compare two short music videos about America. The first is "Way Out Here" (2010, with Josh Thompson), which has been described as an unofficial Tea Party anthem. The second, which you can start at 2 minutes 45 seconds into the film, is the World War II era short "The House I Live In" (1945, with Frank Sinatra). Because of space limits, focus on just one or two points.
Week 2: Do the arguments of Lareau and Clark about the transmission of inequality apply to the families and communities where you grew up?
Week 3: Take Alexis de Tocqueville's argument about associations and their effects on individualism in America, and examine it from the perspective that Christakis and Fowler offer for understanding social networks and their influence?
Week 4: On the basis of the readings for this week, pick one aspect of the contemporary social transformations in China or the United States that is likely to have an especially great impact on the world over the course of your lifetime.
Week 5: Take one (or more) concept(s) or idea(s) from this week's readings (i.e. face-work, definition of the situation, looking-glass self, sincere vs. cynical performances, etc.) and show how it applies (or not) to social networking sites, online forums, or other aspects of social life on the web. In doing so, consider: Does the online interface change or modify the nature of social interaction? Does it change the way in which we perform and present ourselves? Use concrete examples to illustrate your arguments.
Week 6: no memos (midterm).
Week 7: What role do human agency and individual leadership play in bringing about social change from the perspective of two of the following three theorists: Marx, Weber, and Schumpeter?
Week 8. Pick respond to one of the following two:
Week 9. No precepts this week. Thanksgiving
Week 10: What in your view are the most significant changes in the organization of local communities and the public brought about through the Internet and new media?
Week 11. Using medicine as a reference, what distinguishes a member of a profession from an individual who just has technical expertise? And what difference does that make to organizations?
Week 12: Describe a sociological problem you would like to see studied, and which of the various methods you think would be the best way to approach it?
Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and the Bancroft Prize in American History for The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1983) and the Goldsmith Prize for The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (2004). Co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, he writes on current issues in American politics and society and served as a senior health adviser to President Clinton in 1993. His most recent books are Freedom' s Power (2007) and Remedy and Reaction (2011, revised ed. 2013).
Erin Johnston recently received her PhD from Princeton and is currently Lecturer in the Department of Sociology here. Her research interests lie at the intersection of cultural sociology, social psychology, and the study of contemporary American religion and spirituality. Erin's most recent projects involved fieldwork and interviews in three religious communities: a Catholic spiritual center, a yoga studio, and a Wiccan coven. In addition to 101, she will also be teaching a course in social psychology ("Self and Society") this fall and one in cultural sociology ("Travelers, Tourists and Pilgrims") this spring. Before coming to Princeton, Erin received her B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from Rutgers University.
Liora O'Donnell Goldensher graduated from Smith College in 2010 with majors in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies. Before coming to Princeton she worked as a labor and faith-based community organizer in Massachusetts and California, participating in campaigns around issues such as taxation, public education funding, and worker protection in the care industry. Her interests include gender and sexuality, politics and social movements, and science and medicine.
Sophie Moullin received her BA in Social and Political Science from Cambridge University and her MA in Quantitative Social Science from Columbia University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. Before starting the PhD program at Princeton, Sophie worked applying sociology to domestic policy problems, including in the British Prime Minister's Office. Her primary research interests are in inequality, mental health, and welfare states.
Emilce Santana is currently a 3rd-year student in Sociology and the Office of Population Research. She received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Her research interests include immigrant integration, race/ethnicity, and social stratification.
Elizabeth Armstrong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology with joint affiliations in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Office of Population Research. Her research interests include public health, the history and sociology of medicine, risk in obstetrics, and medical ethics. She is the author of Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
Dalton Conley is University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University and currently a visiting professor at Princeton. His research focuses on how socio-economic status is transmitted across generations and on the public policies that affect that process. In this vein, he studies sibling differences in socioeconomic success; racial inequalities; the measurement of class and social status; and how health and biology affect (and are affected by) social position. Among his books are Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth and Social Policy in America (1999); The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why (2004); You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist (2009); and Elsewhere, U.S.A: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms,and Economic Anxiety (2010.
Paul DiMaggio is A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, with a joint appointment in the Woodrow Wilson School. He has written widely on organizational analysis, sociology of culture, and social inequality. Among the several books he has written or edited are The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (with Walter Powell); Race, Ethnicity and Participation in the Arts (with Francie Ostrower); and The 21st-Century Firm: Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective.
Yu Xie is the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Sociology and the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). Newly arrived from the University of Michigan, he also serves as the inaugural director of Princeton's Center on Contemporary China. Xie's research is in the fields of social stratification, demography, sociology of science, and Chinese studies. His books include Is American Science in Decline? with Alexandra Killewald (2012); Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis, 2nd edition, with Daniel Powers (2008); Marriage and Cohabitation, with Arland Thornton and William Axinn (2007); and Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes, with Kimberlee Shauman (2003).