Description: This course provides a broad overview of sociology and how it applies to everyday life. Major theoretical perspectives and concepts are presented, including sociological imagination, culture, deviance, inequality, social change, and social structure. Students also explore the influence of social class and social institutions, such as churches, education, healthcare, government, economy, and environment.  
Course Objectives: 

  • understand the four major sociological perspectives (Functionalist, Conflict, Symbolic Interaction, and Feminist thought), their theoretical components and their historical evolution. 

  • learn how humans develop social consciousness, thinking skills, self-concepts and moral codes. 

  • distinguish the basis of different types of societies, can order and sequence the socialization processes and cognitive developments over a life span and can connect evolving institutional participation, roles and moral codes to specific ages and social experiences over a life time 

  • associate the different historical experiences, values, norms, and belief systems with specific cultures nationally and globally. 
  • understand the basic historical data, sociological processes and concepts, and contemporary issues concerning the social construction of race, ethnicity, gender, social status, economic class, and learn how these change over time.Â