Sociology
How societies hold together, sort people, change and come apart, measured and argued over from every continent.
For: anyone who has wondered why some neighbourhoods, families or countries end up so different, anyone thinking of studying the social sciences, and anyone who reads the news and wants the patterns under it.
Shaped by the American Sociological Association's guidance on the sociology major (The Sociology Major in the Changing Landscape of Higher Education, 2017), the UK QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Sociology and the core of programmes such as the LSE's; told worldwide, with Ibn Khaldun, W. E. B. Du Bois, Harriet Martineau, Fei Xiaotong, Orlando Fals Borda and Raewyn Connell beside Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and every school stated in its own best terms.
Year 1 · Seeing society
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01Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min
Classical Social Theory: What Holds a Society Together, and What Pulls It Apart
Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Du Bois and the questions they set.
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02Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Sociological Research Methods: How Sociologists Know What They Know
Surveys, interviews, ethnography and how sociologists know.
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03ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min
Probability & Statistics: Reasoning with Uncertainty
The statistics behind every survey and census.
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04Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Social Psychology: How Other People Change What We Do
How other people change what we do, from the psychology side.
Year 2 · Structure
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05Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min
Contemporary Social Theory: Stage, Capital, Power, Category and Choice
Goffman, Bourdieu, Foucault, feminist and postcolonial theory, and their critics.
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06Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Stratification & Inequality: Measuring Who Gets What
Class, status, mobility and inequality, measured.
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07ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Cities, Communities & Social Networks: Why Where You Live Is Who You Meet
Cities, neighbourhoods and the networks that connect people.
Year 3 · Who we are said to be
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08Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Race, Ethnicity & Migration: Who Made the Categories
Race, ethnicity and migration, and how the categories were made.
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09Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Gender, Family & Sexuality: What Is Measured and What Is Argued
Gender, family and sexuality across societies.
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10ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Deviance, Crime & Social Control: Who Counts as Doing Wrong, and Who Counts It
Crime, deviance, policing and punishment.
Year 4 · Change
the free OpenStax Introduction to Sociology; the World Inequality Database and Our World in Data, free; the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's 30 Society & Sociology (hierarchy, class and status, caste, mobility, institutions).
History
How we know what happened, who gets to tell it, and the human story from the first cities to yesterday, on every continent.