|
 |
Program Areas
The Eight Graduate Program Areas
Each
program area is headed by a director and a committee appointed by the department
chair upon the advice of the executive committee. Graduate students choose the
areas they are interested in and then specialize in one area in which they take
their preliminary examination. Michigan’s graduate program areas include:
Culture
and Knowledge
Faculty and students in the sociology of culture and knowledge program work
together to explore how ideologies, identities and ideas, forms of representation,
modes of legitimating knowledge and meaning constitute the social at all levels
of analysis. This program supports scholarship on the critical edges of cultural
analysis, spanning everything from everyday encounters to epochal social transformations
-- and the mechanisms that connect them. The faculty differ with respect to
theoretical perspective and methodological approach, but share a common interest
in the central problems of culture and knowledge. Some study knowledge production,
state formation, empires and social transitions of all sorts, across the world
and the centuries, while others focus on identity formation throughout the
lifecourse, as inflected by health, wealth, race, gender, nation and place.
The program sets out from a core course on cultural analysis, introducing students
to the key methods and frameworks organizing cultural analysis, and also includes
more substantively focused courses with theoretical, methodological and thematic
foci associated with the expertise of the faculty involved.
Click here for a listing of faculty
currently associated with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Economic
Sociology and Organizations
Dating back to the classic works of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, economic institutions
and behavior have been issues of core sociological concern. In recent years,
interest in this topic has surged and economic sociology has become one of the
most rapidly growing areas of the discipline. Economic sociology is based on
the idea that economic action is social action and economic institutions and
behavior are socially constructed and culturally and historically specific.
Economic sociologists study firms, production, labor and financial markets,
the interaction between the economy and the state, and economic transformations,
in both comparative and international perspective. Closely related to economic
sociology is the field of the sociology of organizations. As with economic sociology,
the sociology of organizations has deep classical roots and many of the foundational
works in the modern period of American sociology were conducted within this
field. The Economic Sociology and Organizations program at Michigan consists
of a core course in economic sociology, a course in macro-organizational theory,
a research seminar for advanced students and a series of changing topical courses
and seminars. Faculty and courses in the program also link with the areas of
Power, History, and Social Change; Culture and Knowledge; Race and Ethnicity,
Gender and Sexuality; and Social Demography, as well as the Organizational Behavior
program in the business school.
Click here for a listing of faculty currently associated
with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Gender and Sexuality
Some fifteen years ago, Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne lamented the “missing
feminist revolution” in the discipline of sociology. The area of gender
and sexuality has become -- paradoxically – increasingly institutionalized
and ever-more challenging since then. All major sociology departments must “cover” a
delimited area of “gender and sexuality,” and in this vein, Michigan
offers a core course in gender and sexuality and a series of research seminars
and topical classes for advanced graduate students. (Students may also take
a preliminary examination in the area if they choose.) At the same time, and
more ambitiously, Michigan’s program registers the fundamental ways in
which feminist and queer theories are changing how sociologists think about
many general sociological questions and problems. “Gender and Sexuality” is
both an academic specialty area, in other words, and an ongoing challenge to
sociology itself.
Faculty in the department and associated with this area have many strings
to their bows. We study the constitution of gender and sexuality per se in
bodies, psyches and social and cultural practices. We also study the ways in
which gender and sexuality articulate with race and class, and play out across
many substantive dimensions of social and cultural life, including: citizenship;
nation; work; states; schools; families; social movements; markets; business
organizations; transnational economic networks and forms of political association;
and the practices of everyday life. Some of us are historically-minded; others
more contemporary and our work ranges over the globe. We also deploy a wide
range of approaches and methods, including ethnography; survey methods; textual
analysis, in-depth interviews, and archival-historical research. The concentrated
strength in gender and sexuality in the department is complemented by institutional
and personal connections with the Women’s Studies Program (with which
we have a joint Ph.D. program) and the Institute for Research on Women and
Gender, among other relevant sites.
Click here for a listing of faculty
currently associated with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Health, Aging and Life Course
Not only are health and aging significant areas of intellectual inquiry, but
they are phenomena that pose problems in societies throughout the world. The
developed countries confront burgeoning health care costs and rapidly aging
populations. These challenges also confront some developing societies, while
others face continued problems of high fertility, mortality and morbidity.
Contemporary scholars have recognized that these ostensibly biological problems
have psychosocial, social structural and demographic bases. While often treated
separately, health and aging have become increasingly intertwined. The nature
and sources of health and illness vary at different stages of the life course.
As reduced mortality and morbidity have generated aging populations, the health
problems that attend many industrialized societies have changed. The aging
of the populations may also change the way we frame fundamental problems in
the society of health. For example, with the aging of populations in developed
societies, chronic rather than acute illness has become the norm. This suggests
that chronic illness and disability, once constructed as deviance, should be
treated as normal phenomena. Integrating health and aging may also enhance
the study of the latter. Therefore, the central problem in the sociology of
aging is how to maintain the health and effective functioning of people in
middle and later life.
Click here for a listing of faculty
currently associated with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Power,
History and Social Change
This program focuses on transformation of power, resources, and major societal
institutions in comparative and historical perspective. Some of the program’s
major emphases include social movements and revolutions and large-scale social
transformations signaled by terms such as colonialism/imperialism; class and
state formation; development, the rise of capitalism and the modern corporation;
and modernity/postmodernity. Cultural, social and political-economic change
are all central to the program’s mission and the study of changes in
class, race, nationalism, citizenship, gender, sexual orientation, and other
forms of power, inequality and identity. The program emphasizes the department’s
unusual strength in the study of global transformations, both historical and
contemporary. Program faculty includes specialists on Western and Eastern Europe,
Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. The process of change within American society
may also be a focus when viewed in a historical and comparative light. No other
sociology department in the United States offers this degree and range of geographic
and historical coverage. Program faculty use historical, narrative, ethnographic
and quantitative methods and data in their work; but all emphasize historical
time and comparison, either explicit or implicit. Many program faculty have
strong interests in neo-Weberian, feminist, neo-Marxist, post-Marxist, post–structuralist,
new institutionalist and other macrosociologial theories. Students wishing to
specialize in political sociology, social movements, comparative structure,
international political economy, and the sociology of development should
enroll in the Power, History and Social Change program.
Click here for a listing of faculty currently associated
with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
Faculty and students in the area of race, ethnicity, and immigration study a variety of issues
related to the historic and current nature of race, ethnic relations and immigration. We
are proud to build off Michigan's traditional and continuing strength in this
area, most particularly as represented in demographic and attitudinal studies
of race relations. Our current span of scholarly work examines the situations
of, and interactions among, the multiple identity groups in the United States.
This work is made more exciting by the fact that at this point in our national
history we are in the midst of another series of changing social, legal and
politico-economic constructions of these groups and their relations with one
another and with the larger society. Thus, social and political movements for
change, and counter-movements, occupy much of our attention. In addition, many
of our members study these issues in other nations and areas of the world, and
are interested in the ways that immigration affects and transforms social relations
for immigrants and for both their sending and receiving countries. In much of
this work we work with the intersectionality of race, class and gender relations.
The faculty in this area study a wide variety of social phenomena and particular
groups, and use a variety of research methods. We differ among us in theoretical
perspective and particular interests, but share a common principal interest
in the multi-level study of structure and agency, person and culture, stability
and change. A number of our faculty are themselves involved in applied work
that seeks to relate research to practical social and organizational problems.
Click here for a listing of faculty currently associated
with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Social Demography
Michigan’s social demography program is one of the most distinguished
in the world and has trained many of the leading scholars in sociology and demography.
Broadly defined as the study of population composition and change, social demography
encompasses a variety of substantive sub-areas. A traditional strength of the
social demography program at Michigan has been its attention to population structure
and dynamics in developing countries. In recent years it has expanded to include
the study of families and households; health and aging; and inequalities by
social class, race, ethnicity and gender. Thematically, an important focus of
the social demography program is how gender, age, race, family origin, historical
or cultural contexts shape individual lives and opportunities. Methodologically,
social demographers typically use quantitative research methods, including the
analysis of survey data, but are increasingly incorporating ethnographic and
other qualitative approaches into their research.
The primary objective of the social demography program is to train graduate
students to be outstanding researchers and educators. Specifically, the program
is designed to produce fully trained sociologists with broad knowledge in population
studies and highly skilled in statistical and demographic techniques, and who
can undertake independent research on a wide range of population topics. Housed
in both the sociology department and the Population Studies Center (a research
center within the Institute for Social Research), sociology graduate students
in the program are exposed to an interdisciplinary research environment with
participating students and faculty from departments of economics, public health
and anthropology. A key component of the program’s approach to graduate
training is an apprenticeship program in which student “trainees”
gain practical research experience under the supervision of a faculty member.
This apprenticeship is supplemented by a variety of other formal and informal
activities; these include a weekly "brown bag" seminar series as well
as a bimonthly Student Research Forum in which students discuss their research,
present their dissertation prospectus ideas, present work in progress, and practice
formal presentation of conference papers or job talks.
Recent dissertations by students in the social demography program include
studies of the effects of social and racial segregation on racial inequality
in labor market outcomes; changes in marriage timing in Japan; men’s contributions
to household labor; changes over recent decades in the effects of parenthood
on men’s and women’s labor market involvement; unmarried cohabitation;
the effects of father involvement on adolescent well-being; gender differences
in the education of scientists; the causes and consequences of educational inequality
in rural China; and racial and social class differences in childhood mortality.
Click here for a listing of faculty currently associated
with this research area.
[Back to Top]
Social Psychology
The University of Michigan has had a long tradition of distinguished scholarship
in social psychology that spans a full century, beginning with the pioneering
work of Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929). Today, the social psychology program
in sociology remains a leader in the field and ranks among the top social psychology
programs in the country.
Sociological social psychology focuses on the relationship between individuals
and social structures. The defining core of sociology is the study of social
structure and organization. But all social structures emerge out of interactions
among individuals. Thus, to fully understand the nature, causes and consequences
of social structures, we must also understand the relationship between these
structures and the individuals whose behavior constitutes them. The founders
of the discipline understood the importance of social psychology. Marx's concept
of alienation, Weber's Protestant Ethic and Durkheim's concept of anomie are
all ideas that concern the individual-society relationship. The relationship
between the individual and social structure has, therefore, been a core concern
of sociology since its inception.
Social psychology is one of the major approaches to studying the major substantive
areas in sociology, and Michigan's social psychology faculty use social psychological
concepts and theories to study a wide variety of substantive areas. These areas
include, for example, deviance, socialization, group dynamics, social interaction,
social influence, stratification, health, aging, race and ethnicity, and gender.
We study a wide variety of topics, including obedience and disobedience to authority
during the Holocaust; social factors and inequalities in health; how inner-city
African American men view the American dream; psychological consequences of
work and family roles; the quality of life of cancer survivors; life-and-death
decisions in medical settings, the development of gender and body image; and
race discrimination and health. We also use a wide range of research strategies
to study these phenomena, including surveys, observation, qualitative in-depth
interviews and historical-comparative approaches. Some of our faculty have strong
interdisciplinary connections with the Institute for Social Research, psychology,
public health and women's studies.
Click here for a listing of faculty currently associated
with this research area.
[Back to Top]
|
|
|
