Fall 2023: Social Inequality (SOC340)

Course Overview & Goals

This course invites you to describe and investigate the nature, causes, and consequences of social inequality in contemporary United States. Together we will explore where and how inequality is generated and sustained (often invisibly). We will evaluate contemporary explanations for systemic inequality and use a social science approach to evaluate their veracity.

The course invites you to think about your own location in the system of inequality as well as to think about trends in inequality in the context of broader societal structure, cultural understandings, and stereotyping, and historic patterns. Sometimes the course will challenge your personal place in society, especially when we evaluate the way you may have benefited from or been held back by structures of inequality, but the challenges come with reward because they will give you help you develop real-world applications to change these inequalities. I aim for the course material to have enduring value and apply to situations beyond the context in which we discuss them. After an introduction, the course is divided into two sections, each of which address a question.

 

Section 1: Locations of Inequality answers the question: “Where is inequality produced?” Here, students will learn how neighborhoods, schools, and the workplace produce inequality. For each location, they will have a chance to be “changemakers” who create strategies to combat what they view as challenges to equality in these locations.

Section 2: Experiencing Inequality answers the question: “What happens in society as a result of inequality?” and identifies societal impacts of inequality on income and wealth gaps, health, and poverty.