Social Change in Theory and Practice

Catalog description

Sociology as a discipline formed in the effort to comprehend the emergence of modern society via industrialization, urbanization, and marketization, with concurrent transformation in social beliefs, typical life courses, and social networks. Much of today's sociology is implicitly oriented to a related concern with theorizing quantitative and qualitative change, as can be seen in investigation of online interaction, gender roles and identity, political polarization, modification in organizational forms, and the like. This course examines conceptions of substantive social change by leading sociologists like Daniel Bell, James Coleman, Randall Collins, Alvin Gouldner, John Meyer, Theda Skocpol, Duncan Watts, and Harrison White, and considers how they inform and are enriched by empirical inquiry.