This is an advanced course that introduces students to a range of classical and contemporary sociological theory.

The course will cover topics on psychological constructs affecting decision making (e.g., IQ, memory, motivation, emotion), decision-making processes (e.g., information search, risk perception), decision-making contexts (e.g., constraints, culture), and applications of behavioral decision making related to consumption (e.g., environment, technology, consumer decision making).

Traditionally studied by political scientists, the state has increasingly come to be
regarded as an object of anthropological study. Ethnographic perspectives on the state seek to open up the state to critical scrutiny, dislodging it as a monolithic conceptual or territorial apparatus. These studies allow us to think of the state beyond governmentality or bureaucracy, to engaging with the multiple ways in which state ‘effects’ shape our engagement with it. How does the ‘idea’ of the state constrain the way in which we ‘think’ the state? What are the ethnographic sites through which the state emerges as an object of study, e.g., bureaucracy, law, sexuality, marriage, citizenship, borders etc? The course will consist of seminars designed around a set of readings, which will be discussed in detail each week.

This course will introduce students to key concepts and theories in political philosophy,
such as justice, democracy, citizenship, secularism, sovereignty, equality, rights, and freedom. The approach will sometimes be historical, involving an intense engagement with the work of a particular thinker or philosophical tradition; at other times is will be thematic, taking up a particular notion such as secularism and addressing it from many different points of view. The emphasis will be on a close and rigorous reading of these texts, while also addressing questions about their contemporary relevance. The lecture outline is for ONE possible course on key texts in the Western liberal tradition.

This course will introduce students to advanced topics in Policy Studies as decided by the instructor.

The course material will include the following topics: evolution of industrial society, industry and industrialization, class and work in modern industrial societies, alienation and embourgeoisement, labour management relations and labour reforms, family in industrial society, formal and informal sector, technology and new economy, industry, industrial resources and new social movement, post-industrial society.