What is the balance of individual self-determination and institutionalized constraint in shaping people’s lives? Social institutions such as the educational system and the economy sort people and distribute rewards, but their workings are profoundly shaped by persistent inequalities of class, ethnicity, gender, age, race and nationality. How and why do such inequalities persist? How might opportunities be more fairly distributed? What sorts of individual and collective action affect existing structures of constraint?

Basic Courses:
SOC 2 Social Problems and Public Policy
SOC 5 American Society
SOC 6 Race and Ethnic Relations
SOC 8 Political Sociology
SOC 10 Social Stratification
SOC 11 Urban Sociology
SOC 103 Asian Americans in Contemporary Society
SOC 104 Sociology of Sex: Comparative Approach
SOC 110 The Rich and the Poor
SOC 112 Discrimination: Sexual and Racial Conflict
SOC 117 Sociology of Work
SOC 122 Sociology of Gender
SOC 130 Social Problems in Modern Mexico
SOC 140 Social Conflict
SOC 143 Modern Social Movements
SOC 144 Corporations and Managers in American Society
SOC 233 Criminology
SOC 367 Philadelphia 1700-2000
SOC 425 Women and Political Activism



Advanced Courses:
SOC 530 Critical Race Theory
SOC 530 Social Movement and Social Change
SOC 541 Gender the Labor Force and Markets
SOC 542 Work and Gender
SOC 546 Feminist Theory
SOC 550 Social Mobility
SOC 566 Sociology of Professions
SOC 581 Political Sociology
SOC 591 Racial Justice and the Sociology of the Law

Last Modified: 07-Nov-2003
For updates, comments please contact: saunderc@ssc.upenn.edu