SOCG001 - Understanding Societies (Prerequisite for SOCG Major) - Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1

The purpose of this introductory course is to provide students with a basic understanding of Sociology as a social science discipline. Sociology is the use of analytic and systematic way to study human society and human social behaviors. It enables us to identify the social forces external to individuals that could shape human behaviors and therefore the society. The course will go through the basic theoretical assumptions of the discipline and will use a few sub-areas of specialty in Sociology to illustrate the distinctive perspective of the discipline. Through this course, students will be exposed to a wide range of sociological concepts, theories, and social phenomena.

IDIS100 Research Methods in Sociology and Political Science

This course will provide a brief introduction to all the major social science research methods, particularly experiments, quasi-experiments (observational), surveys, fieldwork/ethnography, and use of historical/documentary sources. Basic principles of ethical research design will also be covered.

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*Compulsory course for students admitted in AY2014/15 onwards.

SOCG109 Contemporary South Asian Societies (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1)

This course involves a study of contemporary India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. Topics of study include colonialism and the emergence of nation states; political structures and economic development; literature, music and film; religion; language and ethnicity; nationalisms; gender; and peace and conflict. The course involves drawing on a wide variety of sources including academic writing, journalism, poetry and novels. This course is cross-listed for both Sociology and International and Asian Studies, and it counts towards the SMU requirement for Global and Regional Studies (GRS).

SOCG201 Social Stratification and Inequality (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1)

This course examines social stratification and inequality with a global perspective. It is designed to help students begin to understand “Who gets what, and why?” and to think critically about public policy issues pertaining to social and economic inequality. The course begins by surveying the history of global inequality using the theoretical perspectives of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and World Systems Theory, as well as others. The social class structure will be examined, locating the power and wealth of the upper class, addressing the experiences and life chances of the middle class, and illuminating the despair and poverty of the poor as we look at the lifestyles of different social classes. Additionally, gender inequality, ethnic/racial stratification, educational stratification, the process of status attainment, and intergenerational mobility will be studied in a comparative perspective. We will address how the world became stratified, and what global stratification and inequality looks like today, particularly examining why some of the world’s nations remain poor while others have been able to develop. Importantly, we will explore the use of public policies to mitigate inequality at national and international levels.

SOCG203 Gender and Family

This course explores the extent to which the concept of the family is gendered social construction and how gender relations and family life are intertwined. We will consider how the institution of the family reflects and perpetuates gender roles that are intrinsically woven into the social norms of society. This course will analyze ideas about the family both as a cohesive unit and as a locus of struggle between differentially situated individuals within it. We will take into consideration various theoretical perspectives on the family. Topics will include the social construction of femininity and masculinity, trends in mate selection, marriage and its division of household labor, dual-career family, the differing ideals of fatherhood versus motherhood, life course transitions, and alternative approaches to family formation. Trends in cohabitation, single parenthood, delayed marriage, divorce and remarriage, and same-sex marriage will be placed in a gendered context for critical analysis. We will draw upon examples from both developed and developing countries around the world. We will also examine how the sociological perspectives on gender and family can better inform social policies and planning.

A diverse set of questions will be discussed in this course, including: To what extent does the shift from dating to hooking up impact gender roles in romantic relationships? Why do we marry? How is marriage an economic decision? Can one marry their cousin? Can a woman marry her husband’s brothers? Given that a few countries have allowed their citizens to classify their sex as “neutral” (neither male nor female), is it really possible to be “genderless” in the world full of gendered social constructs? How did the recent global economic recession affect men’s and women’s work roles and in turn, the gender division of household labor? To what extent can Singapore’s highly publicized baby bonus scheme successfully address the country’s birth dearth? Given that most of us are now marrying for love, why do we divorce more often?

SOCG213: Sociology of Fads and Fashion (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T2)

From bell bottoms to iPhones, yoyos to tech stocks, what is in-fashion or popular at one point of time can be easily displaced by a new trend. However, while the forms may change, many of the essential features of fashion and fads remain constant.

Sociologists have long grappled with the understanding of fashions and tastes as problems of cultural change and social stability. This course reviews sociological classical and contemporary writings and explores the research literature and social reality along these two guiding questions:

 What drives fashion to change and fads to occur?

 How can social science research of fashion and fad be usefully applied in the real world, from high-fashion to policy making, from marketing to economic planning?

The major topics explored include thresholds and tipping points, contagiousness and social diseases, information cascades, social class and the origins of taste, self-fulfilling prophesies, and theories of social networks.

The course draws on a diverse range of case studies, including racial segregation, riots, high-fashion, economic bubbles, streaking as a fad, music preference and the diffusion of self-immolation (suicide by fire) as a tactic of civil protest.

SOCG 215: Introduction to Sociological Theory (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1 & T2)

The objective of this course is to introduce to students the foundational theories in sociology. Besides exposing students to major classical sociological theories, this course also aims to demonstrate to students the explanatory power of sociological theories on complex social phenomena and teach students how to apply these theories to think about contemporary issues. This course is tailored for those who have taken the Understanding Societies course and would like to further understand the theoretical work in the discipline of Sociology.

SOCG 218 Social Problems in Asia (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1)

Social problems are real problems, often with consequences for real people. Nevertheless, all problems exist within the contexts of their particular societies and cultures. What is a social problem and how we seek to solve social problems are influenced by particular social settings, governments’ policy orientation, media, opportunities for social movements, and individual actors’ choices. This course explores the social roots to the problems and how social problems affect and being affected by our social institutions and culture. In particular, we will learn about common social issues in Asian countries such as drug addiction, prostitution, poverty and gender inequalities.

SOCG 208: Understanding China’s Economic Miracles: Social Origins and Social Impact (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T2)

This course is about social changes in contemporary China.

China’s rise as an economic power is the world-transforming event of this new century. For SMU students in particular, the rising China will most likely enter your future careers and lives in some consequential ways. Whether to participate in China’s economic boom through business or engage the rising giant in other ways, not knowing the societal context of China’s transformation will be a handicap that will lead to misunderstandings and missed opportunities.

This course thus takes you beyond China’s economic growth record, which everybody can find in news headlines. It situates China’s economic growth in the transformation of the Chinese society—of which economic growth is part and parcel—to understand the broad social changes that are happening in China and how these changes are intricately connected with China’s economic growth.

There are three key objectives for this course: first, to give students a sound understanding of the social changes that are transforming the Chinese society; second, to show to students the social impact of China’s economic growth and the implications for future development; and third, to teach students an analytical framework that help to understand the development experiences and challenges in any country.

This course hopes to equip students with the analytical ability, basic knowledge, and intellectual curiosity that enables them to effectively deal with any specific issues on Chinese society that may come to their tasks. The course should be equally beneficial to students from China as to other students. All readings and class discussion will be in English.

SOCG 219 Global and transnational sociology

“Globalization” is one of the most important concepts for understanding the nature of the contemporary world, where various connections and interdependencies continue to proliferate and intensify across national borders. Especially in Singapore, we live globalization on a daily basis; for example, the mixing of various cultures and peoples from the East and the West, and the growing business interests and financial investments from all over the world. Moreover, the postcolonial context of Singapore sheds light on historical connections between contemporary globalization and legacies of imperialism. Thus, Singapore is a natural laboratory for studying the trajectories and frontiers of globalization.

SOCG 220: Sociology of terrorism and violence

Have you ever watched news coverage of a major act of political violence and wondered to yourself – what would lead people to do this? Is “terrorist” just a political label – one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter? Does terrorism actually work? Why do terrorists deliberately target innocent civilians? How does coping with the threat of terrorism change a society? In this class you will learn some of the latest social science research, concepts, and theories that are used to answer these and other questions on a topic that sometimes generates more heat than light. Our goal is to go beyond pop-culture explanations and politicized rhetoric and try to understand, on a much deeper level, why human beings resort to terrorism as well as other forms of political violence.

SOCG221: Sociological theories of crime and deviance

Crime and deviance are universal features of all societies. They are often exciting and popular areas of investigation for sociology and sociologists. What constitutes crime and deviance however varies across cultures and through time. Their changeability suggests that crime and deviance are socially constructed categories. Who defines acts of crime and deviance in a particular society? Why do certain acts become deviant or criminalised in a particular society at a particular point in time? How can the cross-culturally relative notions of crime and deviance be sociologically accounted for? What are the tools necessary to disseminate who and what are to be considered deviant or normal and to impose these definitions upon society at large?

This module distinguishes the sociological analysis of crime and deviance categorisations from biological and psychological explanations of criminality and deviance that are rooted in the individual. Students will trace the historical development of sociological theories of crime and deviance. This includes the seeing criminals and deviants as preserving social order through the functionalist perspective, theorising anomie as a motivator of criminality and deviance, understanding gangs and subcultures as resistors of mainstream culture and analysing criminalisation as tools of the powerful to oppress those they govern. These perspectives will be utilised and illustrated through a study of the changing patterns of defining and controlling crime and deviance in Singapore society with reference to selected substantive issues. Students will learn that social control is at the heart of crime and deviance management. If the state has access to the laws, courts and police to criminalise individuals, the rest of us have recourse to informal ways of reinforcing or challenging social control like collective action, labelling, prejudice and discrimination. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to be reflective about how their everyday actions in Singapore society, which is extensively governed by laws and norms, fluctuate between that of conformists and deviants and to be critical of the social construction of normative orders.

SOCG 222 Nation-Building in Asia (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1)

Even in this age of globalization, we continue to live in the world of nation-states, and nationalism is ready to flare up whenever disputes break out over territories, natural resources, and historical injustices. But why do people come to feel so strongly about their national identities that they do not hesitate to denounce and even demonize foreigners? This question has important implications for Asia, where many nation-states are relatively young and forced to negotiate the competing demands for nation-building and regional integration. This course thus takes a sociological look at how national identity is socially constructed within the larger context of economic development, cultural practices, and domestic and international politics.

SOCG301 Special Topics in Sociology Political Sociology and Chinese Politics (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T2)

Aims of the Course: This is a course in political sociology and Chinese politics that has two aims. The first is to introduce students to different sociological traditions in the analysis of political order and political disorder, and in particular to the sociological analysis of rebellion and revolution. The second is to apply these concepts to the analysis of the Chinese revolution and the subsequent course of Chinese politics from 1949 to the upheaval of 1989. We will employ concepts from political sociology to try to understand the unfolding of these events in China, which were frequently tumultuous and dramatic.

SOCG 304: Social Networks (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T1)

Our attitudes, behaviors, and life chances are not only a product of our talents and personal goals, but are strongly constrained and facilitated by the relationships in which we are embedded. From the moment of birth we are enclosed in a network of kin to the moment of death, those who gather to mourn us cast a shadow of the network we accumulated throughout our lives. From family, friends, romantic partners, work colleagues, and even enemies – our lives are shaped by connections to others. This insight was present from the beginning of sociology, but the tools and methods to show exactly how and when networks matter, have been developed relatively recently. With the introduction of computing into social science and the advent of “big data” the field of social network analysis has been growing nearly exponentially. It has become a major theoretical perspective and a well-regarded methodological approach in the social sciences generally and sociology in particular. To this end students will be acquainted with the major concepts and findings as well as trained in the major theories and techniques of social network analysis. Part of each class will be a hands-on lab where students will learn network analysis on a variety of datasets including their own Facebook (or other social media) networks. However, this is not a class on online/social media networks exclusively and will consider many different kinds of social networks.

SOCG305 Sociology of Economic Life

This course introduces how sociology provides an alternative perspective for the study of economic behaviors, economic institutions and the economy. Sociologists argue that economic life is just as “social” as, for example, family and community life. Economic life is in fact part of our social life and is being constantly shaped, facilitated, altered, and impeded by social relations, institutions and cultures. Accordingly, rather than to see economic behaviors and economic institutions the same across cultures and societies, sociologists argue that they will be socially constructed differently in different societies. Sociologists do not work from the assumption that individuals are rational, self-interested and forward looking, but instead seek to understand regularities in human behavior as an emergent property of individual actions shaped by their social and historical context. Through this sociological perspective on economic behaviour, we will look at how “economic choices”, “market”, “capitalism”, “firm” and “economic development” can be reinterpreted from an alternative perspective. Our starting point for revisiting these fundamental concepts will be some of the classic authors like Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Adam Smith whose insights are not restricted to a single social science discipline. We will address current issues such as the global financial crisis, the economies of virtual worlds, and the relationship of meritocracy and inequality. We will also undertake a

SOCG 306 Sociology Study Mission: Understanding Urban China (Offered in AY 2016 - 2017 T2)

This course critically explores the process of urbanization in contemporary China. Uniting theory and practice, this advanced course combines critical discussions based on academic readings with field trip experience. Urbanization, in the era of post-Fordism, is far more than just a process of physical growth of an area with high population density. It is neither just something resulting from migration of rural non-agricultural population to the urban. Instead urban space has become both the medium and product of the interplay between capital, power and social class. City is now a ‘site’ for accumulation of capital which is essential for economic growth. Urbanization now has to be considered as the creation, expansion, reconstruction, and transformation of cities for the political and economic purposes. “Production of urban space” becomes the quintessential activity for any municipal government. This course attempts to apply this political economy perspective to analyze the recent urbanization trends in China. Along with the macro-level political economy perspective, we will also look at city and urban setting as a “place”. A place is a social product coming out from a macro-micro level interaction.

SOCG307 Public Management in Developing Countries

Singapore is that rare country which has moved from third world to first in a single lifetime, but most developing countries struggle for much longer without comparable achievement.

This course will explore how public management shapes development outcomes in the Global South. Governance reforms have proved particularly difficult to carry out successfully, but they are considered crucial to improving development outcomes. The topics studied will include corruption; state-society relations; international development assistance; infrastructure development; and natural resources. We will draw on academic literatures from political sociology, the anthropology of the state, and public administration. The course will build a theoretical framework, but also draw on historical accounts of successes and failures in development.

SOCG 310 Social Innovation: Tools for Social Change (Course Pre-requisite: SOCG 218 Social Problems in Asia)

Social innovation is about finding new and innovative ways to provide solutions for pressing and unmet social needs, typically through collaboration with people from different background - people with different disciplinary knowledge and all relevant stakeholders. Social innovation is about ‘creativity’, ‘interdisciplinary’, ‘collaboration’, ‘effectiveness’, ‘change making’, and most of the time is ‘community-based’. Besides learning fundamental concepts and skill set of social innovation, local and regional practitioners will be invited to share their social innovation experiences with the class. Students will form into groups and will work with NGOs to provide solutions for unfulfilled social needs. This course will be supported by the Lien Centre for Social Innovation.