SOCI 1101H: Introduction to Sociology: Unit 4: Social Institutions

Crash Course Sociology (10 minutes)

Crash Course Sociology (9 minutes)

Crash Course Sociology (10 minutes)

Crash Course Sociology (10 minutes)

A “real utopia” isn’t an oxymoron or a figment of the imagination. Erik Olin Wright writes, instead, that real world examples of functioning social alternatives can help us find ways to improve the human condition. When history provides an opportunity to effect such changes, a familiarity with real utopias will provide a roadmap.

This feature article explores how Danish authorities have worked to secure public health in cooperation with citizens, companies, and civil society organizations amid an unfolding pandemic.

In the global pandemic, there is a group of people who are not socially distancing: the precariously employed, the workers who live paycheck to paycheck and lack the flexibility to stay home. In this article, readers are encouraged to consider the many social factors that can impede people from staying home.

Are “hook up” apps leading to a new kind of dating culture on college campuses? Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are have a different impact on the lives of college students versus older daters. Many students are using these apps to circumvent the romantic gatekeeping that campus party culture has long dominated.

Socioeconomic success doesn’t yet mean social or sexual acceptance for Asian American men.

The decade-long debate over whether Americans are working longer hours is misleading. Indeed, while well-educated professionals are working more hours than they used to, others with less education are working fewer. And the people under the most pressure are not just overburdened at work. Increasingly, these single parents and two-income couples find themselves in a time squeeze between home and work.

Monica and Karen, two typical in-state students starting college at a mid-tier public university in the Midwest, encounter organizational arrangements best designed to serve affluent, out-of-state partiers who can afford to pay full freight. Sociologists Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong discuss how Monica and Karen’s stories reveal the great mismatch between the needs of most college students and what many four-year residential universities offer.

A four-year postsecondary degree offers opportunities for a higher income and upward economic mobility. However, postsecondary education—historically inaccessible to people of color and women—also plays a key role in reproducing and amplifying societal inequities by sorting students into specialized fields of study by race and gender, contributing to a segregated labor force. This report examines the link between postsecondary field of study and labor market segregation using an original quantitative analysis. This report presents four principles and corresponding recommendations that postsecondary institutions and policymakers can use to reduce racial and gender segregation across fields of study, increase degree attainment, and ultimately, ameliorate labor market segregation.