This course offers a sociological perspective on a familiar experience: attending school. It examines the stated and hidden purposes of schooling; explores how learning in schools is organized; evaluates the drop-out problem; the determinants of educational success and failure; and, it looks at connections between school and work.

This course will engage evidence-based sociological findings that are often related to how individuals make decisions in everyday life. Special attention will be paid to how empirical findings in sociology are used as evidence in different social contexts and decision making processes. The course should enable students to make direct connections between the insights of sociology and their own lives.

An examination of power in its social context. Specific attention is devoted to how and under what conditions power is exercised, reproduced and transformed, as well as the social relations of domination, oppression, resistance and solidarity. Selected topics may include: nations, states, parties, institutions, citizenship, and social movements.

This course introduces the basic concepts and assumptions of quantitative reasoning, with a focus on using modern data science techniques and real-world data to answer key questions in sociology. It examines how numbers, counting, and statistics produce expertise, authority, and the social categories through which we define social reality. This course avoids advanced mathematical concepts and proofs.

This course offers a sociological account of economic phenomena. The central focus is to examine how economic activities are shaped, facilitated, or even impeded by cultural values and social relations, and show that economic life cannot be fully understood outside of its social context. The course will focus on economic activities of production, consumption, and exchange in a wide range of settings including labor and financial markets, corporations, household and intimate economies, informal and illegal economies, and markets of human goods.

This course builds on SOCA05H3 through a deep engagement with 4-5 significant new publications in Sociology, typically books by department faculty and visiting scholars. By developing reading and writing skills through a variety of assignments, and participating in classroom visits with the researchers who produced the publications, students will learn to "think like a sociologist." Possible topics covered include culture, gender, health, immigration/race/ethnicity, political sociology, social networks, theory, sociology of crime and law, and work/stratification/markets.

This course examines a group of theorists whose work provided key intellectual resources for articulating the basic concepts and tasks of sociology. Central topics include: the consequences of the division of labour, sources and dynamics of class conflict in commercial societies, the social effects of industrial production, the causes and directions of social progress, the foundations of feminism, linkages between belief systems and social structures, and the promises and pathologies of democratic societies.

This course studies a group of writers who in the early 20th century were pivotal in theoretically grounding sociology as a scientific discipline. Central topics include: the types and sources of social authority; the genesis and ethos of capitalism; the moral consequences of the division of labour; the nature of social facts; the origins of collective moral values; the relationship between social theory and social reform; the nature of social problems and the personal experience of being perceived as a social problem; the formal features of association; the social function of conflict; the social and personal consequences of urbanization.

A theoretical and empirical examination of the processes of urbanization and suburbanization. Considers classic and contemporary approaches to the ecology and social organization of the pre-industrial, industrial, corporate and postmodern cities.

A sociological examination of the ways in which individuals and groups have been differentiated and ranked historically and cross-culturally. Systems of differentiation and devaluation examined may include gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, citizenship/legal status, and ability/disability.

This course explores the family as a social institution, which shapes and at the same time is shaped by, the society in North America. Specific attention will be paid to family patterns in relation to class, gender, and racial/ethnic stratifications. Selected focuses include: socialization; courtship; heterosexual, gay and lesbian relations; gender division of labour; immigrant families; childbearing and childrearing; divorce; domestic violence; elderly care.

This course explores how deviance and normality is constructed and contested in everyday life. The course revolves around the themes of sexuality, gender, poverty, race and intoxication. Particular attention will be paid to the role of official knowledge in policing social norms.

The course draws on a geographically varied set of case studies to consider both the historical development and contemporary state of the sociological field of race, racialization and ethnic relations.

Economic activity drives human society. This course explores the nature of work, how it is changing, and the impact of changes on the transition from youth to adult life. It also examines racism in the workplace, female labour force participation, and why we call some jobs 'professions', but not others.

An introduction to various ways that sociologists think about and study culture. Topics will include the cultural aspects of a wide range of social phenomena - including inequality, gender, economics, religion, and organizations. We will also discuss sociological approaches to studying the production, content, and audiences of the arts and media.

This course examines the character, authority, and processes of law in contemporary liberal democracies.

What are the causes and consequences of migration in today's world? This course will explore this question in two parts. First, we will examine how although people decide to migrate, they make these decisions under circumstances which are not of their own making. Then, we will focus specifically on the experiences of racialized and immigrant groups in Canada, with a particular focus on the repercussions of Black enslavement and ongoing settler-colonialism. As we explore these questions, we will also critically interrogate the primary response of the Canadian government to questions around racial and class inequality: multiculturalism. What is multiculturalism? Is it enough? Does it make matters worse? Students will come away from this course having critically thought about what types of social change would bring about a freer and more humane society.

This course provides an introductory overview of the nature and causes of social change in contemporary societies. Topics covered include: changes in political ideology, cultural values, ethnic and sexual identities, religious affiliation, family formation, health, crime, social structure, and economic inequality.

The study of uninstitutionalized group behaviour - crowds, panics, crazes, riots and the genesis of social movements.
This course has been designated an Applied Writing Skills Course.

The development of an approach to social movements which includes the following: the origin of social movements, mobilization processes, the career of the movement and its routinization. The course readings will be closely related to the lectures, and a major concern will be to link the theoretical discussion with the concrete readings of movements.

Explores the interaction of gender and work, both paid and unpaid work. Critically assesses some cases for central theoretical debates and recent research. Considers gender differences in occupational and income attainment, housework, the relation of work and family, gender and class solidarity, and the construction of gender identity through occupational roles.

This course examines the character of policing and security programs in advanced liberal democracies. Attention will be paid to the nature and enforcement of modern law by both state and private agents of order, as well as the dynamics of the institutions of the criminal justice system. This course has been designated an Applied Writing Skills Course.

An upper level course that examines a number of critical issues and important themes in the sociological study of work. Topics covered will include: the changing nature and organization of work, precarious employment, different forms of worker organizing and mobilization, the professions, the transition from school to work.

How do people navigate their everyday lives? Why do they do what they do? And how, as sociologists, can we draw meaningful conclusions about these processes and the larger, social world we live in? Qualitative research methods adhere to the interpretative paradigm. Sociologists use them to gain a richer understanding of the relationship between the minutiae of everyday life and larger societal patterns. This course will introduce students to the qualitative methods that social scientists rely on, while also providing them with hands-on experience carrying out their own research.
This course has been designated an Applied Writing Skills Course.

A theoretical and empirical examination of different forms of family and gender relations. Of special interest is the way in which the institution of the family produces and reflects gendered inequalities in society. Themes covered include changes and continuities in family and gender relations, micro-level dynamics and macro-level trends in family and gender, as well as the interplay of structure and agency.
This course has been designated an Applied Writing Skills Course.

Why do people migrate and how do they decide where to go? How does a society determine which border crossers are ‘illegal’ and which are ‘legal’? Why are some people deemed ‘refugees’ while others are not? What consequences do labels like ‘deportee’, ‘immigrant,’ ‘refugee,’ or ‘trafficking victim’ have on the people who get assigned them? This course will examine these and other similar questions. We will explore how the politics of race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship shape the ways that states make sense of and regulate different groups of migrants as well as how these regulatory processes affect im/migrants’ life opportunities.

A popular civic strategy in transforming post-industrial cities has been the deployment of culture and the arts as tools for urban regeneration. In this course, we analyze culture-led development both as political economy and as policy discourse. Topics include the creative city; spectacular consumption spaces; the re-use of historic buildings; cultural clustering and gentrification; eventful cities; and urban 'scenes'.

This course examines the political economy of suburban development, the myth and reality of suburbanism as a way of life, the working class suburb, the increasing diversity of suburban communities, suburbia and social exclusion, and the growth of contemporary suburban forms such as gated communities and lifestyle shopping malls.

In this course, students read and evaluate recent research related to the sociology of families and gender in the modern Middle East. The course explores the diversity of family forms and processes across time and space in this region, where kinship structures have in the past been characterized as static and uniformly patriarchal. Topics covered include marriage, the life course, family nucleation, the work-family nexus, divorce, family violence, and masculinities.

The young figure prominently in people's views about, and fears of, crime. This course examines definitions of crime, how crime problems are constructed and measured. It looks at schools and the street as sites of criminal behaviour, and considers how we often react to crime in the form of moral panics.
This course has been designated an Applied Writing Skills Course.