Sociology

Class, power, and inequality; law and society (including drugs, crime and “deviance”); race, ethnicity, and gender issues; and ways of seeing—these are among the topics addressed by Sarah Lawrence students and professors in sociology courses. Increasingly, social issues need to be and are examined in relationship to developments in global politics and economics. Students investigate the ways in which social structures and institutions affect individual experience and shape competing definitions of social situations, issues, and identities. Courses tend to emphasize the relationship between the qualitative and the quantitative, between theoretical and applied practice, and the complexities of social relations rather than relying on simplistic interpretations, while encouraging student research in diverse areas. Through reading, writing, and discussion, students are encouraged to develop a multidimensional and nuanced understanding of social forces. Many students in sociology have enriched their theoretical and empirical work through linking it thematically with study in other disciplines—and through fieldwork.