COMPARATIVE SOCIAL INQUIRY: YEAR 1
Human beings are inherently social. We exist in families, tribes, cities and nations, work in organisations, and interact through networks. We are simultaneously the product and shapers of these norms and institutions. This course investigates these connections and raises awareness of social forces that determine how we live. By the end of the course, students should be in a better position to question why societies are the way they are and to consider how to bring about desired social change.
Course Information
Comparative Social Inquiry begins by asking the question “How did you get into Yale-NUS?” as a way of inviting students to consider the role of social forces in shaping life outcomes. From there, we proceed to explore a series of topics that together provide a picture of how societies are organized – and why. These include power, markets, family, social class, race, gender, religion and the state.
Sample Reading List
- Blass, Thomas. 2002. “The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About Obedience to Authority.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology
- Feng, Xiaotian, Dudley L. Poston, and Xiaotao Wang. 2017. “China’s One-Child Policy and the Changing Family.” In Handbook on the Family and Marriage in China, edited by Xiaowei Zang and Lucy Xia Zhao
- Jayachandran, Seema. 2015. “The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries.” Annual Review of Economics
- Hirschman, Charles. 1987. “The Meaning and Measurement of Ethnicity in Malaysia: An Analysis of Census Classifications.” The Journal of Asian Studies
- Walker, Melanie. 2005. “Race is Nowhere and Race is Everywhere: Narratives from Black and White South African University Students in Post‐Apartheid South Africa.” British Journal of Sociology of Education
- Steele, Claude. 2010. “In the Air Between Us: Stereotypes, Identity, and Achievement.” In Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, edited by Hazel Marcus and Paula Moya
- Chidester, David. 2013. “Colonialism and Religion.” Critical Research on Religion
- Ibrahim, Nur Amali. 2018. “Accounting for the Soul: Improvisational Islam in Democratic Indonesia.” Anthropological Quarterly
- Atkinson, Will. 2015. Class: Key Concepts.
- Nelson, Margaret K. and Rebecca Schutz. 2007. “Day Care Differences and the Reproduction of Social Class.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
- Fisman, Ray and Tim Sullivan. 2016. “Why People Love Markets: R.A. Radford’s Stiff Upper Lip and the Economic Organization of POW Camps,” in The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them and They Shape Us
- Wirth, Louis. 1938. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology
- Gehl, Jahn and Birgitte Svarre. 2013. “Who, What, Where?,” in How to Study Public Life
- Chua, Beng-Huat. 1997. “Nostalgia for the kampung,” in Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore
Featured Teaching Faculty
Contributing Faculty
- Kate Sanger
- Yew Wei Lit
- Zhang Chen
