Introduction to sociology: the world’s on fire (and other problems) (A)
SOCI1004-A
CPD-LG.01
12:30 - 14:20
Wednesday
2nd semester
Lecture venue
Lecture time
Offer semester
Welcome to the world of sociology! Sociology is an academic discipline that equips students with a distinctive way of seeing the relationship between individuals and society. C. Wright Mills understands this ability as "sociological imagination," which allows us to see how individual experiences and troubles are connected to larger social processes and structures.
In this junior-level course, we will first introduce students to some fundamental concepts, theories, and methodologies of sociology. Then, we will examine specific aspects of social life, such as families, gender, religion, deviance, and social stratification, and demonstrate how sociological ideas and tools can be applied to better understand our social lives and the social problems we face.
Understand some important sociological concepts, theories and research methods.
Apply sociological perspective and knowledge to analyze everyday lives and social issues.
Go beyond the taken-for-granted assumptions about society and understand the society critically
Tasks
Weighting
Tutorial attendance and participation
15%
Reading response
20%
Mini-project
35%
In-class test
30%
While there are many good sociology textbooks available in the market that can provide students with a solid introduction to the key themes and concepts of sociology, for the sake of convenience, we recommend John Macionis’ (2018) Sociology(Sixteenth edition, Global edition) as the main reference for our course. This introductory book provides a simple and comprehensive overview of the subject. An eBook version can be found at HKUL, and students can access it free of charge.
In addition, students will be assigned short journal articles and book chapters as weekly readings. These materials will be available as pdf files on Moodle.
Sociology textbooks:
Bauman, Z., & May, T. (2004). Thinking sociologically (2nd edition.). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Conley, D. (2020). You may ask yourself: an introduction to thinking like a sociologist (7th edition.). W.W. Norton.
Croteau, D., & Hoynes, W. (2020). Experience sociology (4th edition, International student edition.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Giddens, A., & Sutton, P. W. (2017). Sociology (8th edition.). Polity Press.
Haralambos, M., Holborn, M., Chapman, S., & Moore, S. (2013). Sociology: themes and perspectives (8th edition.). Collins.
Khan, S., Sharkey, P., & Sharp, G. (2023). A Sociology experiment. (3rd edition.). https://sociologyexperiment.com/
