Introduction to Sociology

Here's where to find the readings, many of which are in more than one place:

= E-reserves or Video Reserves on Blackboard
= Blackboard course materials.
= World Wide Web (click on the link in the syllabus).
= Firestone Library reserve (mostly the full books from which excerpts are taken, in case you're curious to read more.)

There are no books or course packets for purchase.
For more information on the course, go to "What's Expected and Who's Who in 101."

Introduction.
Wednesday 9/16. Key sociological questions (Starr and Johnston)

Week One. Seeing society

Monday 9/21. The sociological imagination (Starr)

C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1959), 1-8 (Ch. 1, "The Promise").
Malcolm Gladwell, "Getting In," The New Yorker (October 10, 2005), 1-6.
Robert Merton, "Social Structure and Anomie," in Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed., (Free Press, 1968), 185-95 [first ten pages only].

F. James Davis, Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 1-30, 51-58.
Robert Putnam, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century," Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2007), 137-174.
Robert J. Sampson, "Immigration and America's Urban Revival," The American Prospect (Summer 2015), 20-25.
Two music videos: compare "Way Out Here" (2010, with Josh Thompson) and "The House I Live In" [start at 2 min 45 secs into video] (1945, with Frank Sinatra).

Week Two. Inequality

Monday 9/28. Social structure and the transmission of inequality (Guest lecturer: Prof. Dalton Conley).

Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (University of California Press, 2003), 1-11. (Optional supplement: Annette Lareau Q and A.)
Ariane Conrad, "The Hand We're Dealt: Dalton Conley Asks Why Some People Get Ahead and Others Fall Behind," The Sun (February 2015), 4-12.
Bob Ketchum, Review of The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed, and Why, by Dalton Conley,Catholic Education (2013), 10: 121-24.
Gregory Clark, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, Introduction, 1-16.

Wednesday 9/30. The resurgence of economic inequality (Starr)

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014), 1-27.
Robert Reich, "The Political Roots of Widening Inequality," The American Prospect (Spring 2015).

Optional reading on global inequality Branko Milanovic, "Trends in Global Inequality and Their Political Implications," Globalinequality, February 22, 2015.

Week Three. Social networks and their effects

Monday 10/5. Social networks and social influence (Starr)

Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, Connected (Little, Brown, 2009), ix-xiii and 3-32 and 156-158.. [Note: These are two separate links.]
Matthew J. Salganik and Duncan J. Watts, "Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market," Social Psychology Quarterly (2008), 71: 338-355.

Wednesday 10/7. Social structure and democracy (Starr)

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, Sec. 2, Ch. 2 ("Of Individualism in Democratic Countries"), Ch. 4 ("That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism with Free Institutions"), Ch. 5 ("Of the Uses which the Americans Make of Public Associations").
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (Simon and Schuster, 2000), Ch 1.

Week Four. Contemporary social transformations in China and the post-industrial world

Monday 10/12. China: The market transition debate (Guest lecture: Prof. Yu Xie)

Victor Nee, "Post-Socialist Stratification," in David Grusky, ed., Social Stratification, 4th ed. (Westview Press, 2014), 1098-1102.
Xi Song and Yu Xie, "Market Transition Theory Revisited: Changing Regimes of Housing Inequality in China, 1988-2002," Sociological Science (2014), 1: 277-291.
Yu Xie and Emily Hannum, "Regional Variations in Earnings Inequality in Reform-Era Urban China," American Journal of Sociology (1996), 4: 950-92.

Wednesday 10/14. The post-industrial transition (Starr)

Daniel Bell, "The Axial Age of Technology, Foreword 1999," in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (Basic Books, 1999 [orig. ed.1973]), ix-xx.
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (Yale University Press, 2006), Ch. 1.

Week Five. Social interaction and the self

Monday 10/19. Social interaction in everyday life (Johnston)

Erving Goffman, "The Presentation of Self," in Cahill, Kent and Sandstrom, eds., Inside Social Life, 191-199.
Jooyoung Lee, "Escaping Embarrassment: Face-work in the Rap Cipher," Social Psychology Quarterly (2009), 72: 306-324.
Joan Emerson, "Behavior in Private Places: Sustaining Definitions of Reality in Gynecological Examinations," in O'Brien, The Production of Reality, 272-285.

Wednesday 10/21. Self and society (Johnston)

Debra Van Ausdale and Joe Feagin, "Young Children's Racial and Ethnic Definitions of Self," in Cahill, Kent and Sandstrom, eds., Inside Social Life (1983), 186-197.
Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, "Doing Gender," Gender & Society (1987, 1: 125-151.
Patricia Adler and Peter Adler,"The Glorified Self," in Cahill, Kent and Sandstrom, eds., Inside Social Life, 239-248.

Week Six

Monday 10/26. In-class review session (Starr and Johnston)

Wednesday 10/28. Midterm

Fall Recess Week

Week Seven. Social order and social change: An introduction to classical social theory

Monday 11/9. Hobbes, Smith, and Marx: self-interest, harmony, and conflict (Starr)

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Ch. 13.
Adam Smith,The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book 1, Chs. 1-3.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Part I of "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848), in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader , 2d ed. (W.W. Norton, 1978), 473-483.

Wednesday 11/11. Weber and Schumpeter: Rationality and bureaucracy, charisma, and creative destruction (Starr)

Max Weber,"The Pure Types of Legitimate Authority"; "The Nature of Charismatic Authority and Its Routinization"; "Bureaucracy"; in Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 46-77, 201-208.
Joseph Schumpeter, "The Process of Creative Destruction," in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (Harper, 1942), 82-86 (begin on 82 with "The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process.")

Weeks Eight and Nine. Understanding institutions

Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 21-34 (Ch. 1 "Citizenship as Social Closure"). [Note: e-Reserves copy has the Introduction as well as chapter 1; only chapter 1 is required.)
Ayelet Scachar, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009), 1-10.
"Room for Debate: Should 'Birthright Citizenship' Be Abolished,"New York Times August 24, 2015. Josh Barro, "Just What Do You Mean By 'Anchor Baby'?" New York Times, August 28, 2015.
National Academy of Sciences, "The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Report in Brief)" September 2015.

Wednesday 11/18. Religion and society (Johnston)

Robert Putnam, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (2010),1-23.
Nancy T. Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (2014), 56-82.
Courtney Bender, Stuart R. Sarbacker, Isaac Weiner, and Jay Wexler,"Taxing Yoga: Exercise or Spiritual Practice?" The Immanent Frame (Social Science Research Council, n.d.).

Monday 11/23. Marriage and changing gender relations (Starr and Johnston)

David S. Pedulla and Sarah Thebaud, "Can We Finish the Revolution? Gender, Work-Family Ideals, and Institutional Constraint," American Sociological Review (2015),80: 116-139.
Lori Gottlieb, "Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?" New York Times Magazine,Feb. 6, 2014.

Week Ten. Changing technology, media, and society

Monday 11/30. The Internet and social change (Guest lecture: Prof. Paul DiMaggio)

Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman, "Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb." City and Community (2003), 2: 277-311.

Wednesday 12/2. Media and society (Starr)

Paul Starr, An Unexpected Crisis: The News Media in Post-Industrial Democracies," in John Lloyd and Janice Winter (eds.), Media, Politics and the Public (Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2011), 21-29.
danah boyd, "Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications," In Zizi Papacharissi, ed. Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (2010) 39-58.

Week Eleven. Medical sociology

Monday 12/7. The structure of American health care(Starr)

Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine,(Basic Books, 1982), 3-29 (Introduction).
Paul Starr, Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform rev. ed. (Yale University Press, 2013), xi-xii, 1-24 (Preface to the Revised Edition, Introduction).

Wednesday 12/9. Sociology of health and illness (Guest lecturer: Prof. Elizabeth Armstrong)

Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore, Gender and the Social Construction of Illness 2d ed. (AltaMira Press, 2002), 1-36 (Ch. 1: Overview; Ch. 2, "Women Get Sicker But Men Die Quicker: Social Epidemiology").

Week Twelve. The varieties of sociology

Monday 12/14.The varieties of sociological method (Starr and Johnston)/p>

Anthony Giddens, Mitchell Duneier, Richard P. Appelbaum, and Deborah Carr, Essentials of Sociology 24-31.
Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry (Princeton University Press, 1994), 6-13.

Wednesday 12/16. Putting it all together (Starr and Johnston)