Global Inequalities and Social Change
This class is a 16-week course within the Sociology degree curriculum and is also applicable for social science and interdisciplinary majors, such as Global Studies.
What is social change? How does social change intersect with social inequalities locally, but also across the world? In what ways can you affect change in your own life and the lives of others? These are the central questions that will carry us through this course as we study the links between global inequalities and social change.
As you may already be able to tell, this is a class about big questions, and we will handle these through a handful of theories and topics as well as case studies like global water inequality, the uses of waste, financial collapses and booms, labor markets, the rise and fall of social movements, political regimes, and the McDonaldization of society. Hopefully, since you have decided to take this class, you are already interested in some of these things. But if not, rest assured, they are interested in you!
The overarching goal of this course is to develop your own sociological perspective to begin seeing how apparently abstract social forces shape the everyday material circumstances of your life. You will become a more critical consumer of facts, media, and knowledge towards better assessing and articulating the causes and consequences of social changes. The course will be especially useful to those students taking more courses in the future on substantive areas of the field like economic sociology, political economy, transnational sociology, social movements, environmental sociology, and social theory.
The course begins with segments that are largely focused on what may, at first glance, seem familiar to you – the context of the United States. The middle segment of the course will then be concentrated on theoretical issues surrounding social change at local, but also global scales, social movements, and reform movements. While we will discuss the global implications and issues of inequality throughout the course, these will become especially apparent in the final segment, where we explicitly focus on global processes such as consumerism, banking, work, and the role of debt in society. As with all my courses, students are encouraged to inform me of topics of interest to them, as I often will teach from such examples where possible.
Icon Image - Båstad Riots of 1968, public domain