Comparative Social Inquiry

COMPARATIVE SOCIAL INQUIRY: YEAR 1

Image of a building — National Gallery Singapore, Singapore by Matt Briney from Unsplash

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