This course introduces the sociological perspective, which interprets social behaviour and group relations through study of the intersection between social phenomena and personal life. The course examines the basic themes, concepts, and theories that frame the sociological approach to understanding the world, asking how social circumstances influence the way we know ourselves, how sociologists gather data and evidence to portray an accurate picture of social reality, and how sociological thinking helps to remedy social problems. The course provides a broad foundation for further study and research in this area.

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 098

Transfers to:

UBC SOCI 1st (3); ALEX SOCI 100 (3) & ALEX SOCI 103 (3) = UBC SOCI 100 (6)
SFU SA 150 (3), B-Soc
UVIC SOCI 100A (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 1XX (3)
TRU SOCI 1110 (3)

The study of Canada as a developed, ethnically diverse, and multicultural society, with special attention to the adaptation experiences of its Asian immigrant groups and their descendants (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian) and to the struggles of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The course will examine what it means to be Canadian and the contradictions that sometimes entails. Although highlighting a uniquely Canadian perspective, the course provides a foundation for further sociological study and research.

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 098

Transfers to:

UBC SOCI 1st (3); ALEX SOCI 100 (3) & ALEX SOCI 103 (3) = UBC SOCI 100 (6)
SFU SA 1XX (3), B-Soc
UVIC SOCI 103 (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 1XX (3)
TRU SOCI 1210 (3)

How do social scientists know what they know? How do we know this information is reliable? This course offers an introduction to the design and practice of social research that provides the skills to ask and answer questions about the everyday and changing social world. Various concepts, research strategies, and techniques are surveyed that enable exploration of the pressing issues of social life. A broad range of qualitative and quantitative methods are presented that include survey research, interviewing, descriptive and inferential statistics, participant observation and ethnography. Students will consider the ethical questions that arise in doing social research, as well as the political implications of its results

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103

Transfers to:

UBC SOC 217 (3)
SFU SOCI 255 (3), Q
UVIC SOCI 211 (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2720 (3)

An introduction to the study of crime, criminality and corrections in the context of contemporary Canadian society. The course aims to explain the shifting causes and consequences of crime, including the changing profile of its victims and perpetrators, and to promote critical thinking about official responses to crime.

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103

Transfers to:

UBC SOCI 250 (3)
SFU SA 1XX (3), SOCI
UVIC SOCI 2XX (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2500 (3)

Social movements are an important means by which ordinary people in civil society organize to shape public policy and bring about social change. Such movements typically represent attempts by the normally powerless to challenge entrenched institutions and dominant groups that block social transformation. This course will examine some current and historical movements in which people have joined together to struggle for and sometimes conversely against social change. Examples of activist collective behaviour will be drawn from various places and times, focusing largely on contemporary movements within North America.

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103

Transfers to:

UBC SOCI 2nd (3)
SFU SA 2XX (3)
UVIC SOCI 316
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2XXX (3)

What are the patterns, meanings, and rituals in popular culture that shape our lives and serve as a mirror of society? This course will show how the study of popular culture is a window into sociological thinking and an ideal topic for sociological analysis. Through the medium of popular culture (art, music, film, fiction, fashion, television, and the mass media) societal actors both reproduce and resist dominant values propagated by the culture industries in society. By thinking deeply about the ostensibly trivial, and by taking our popular pleasures seriously, the sociological imagination can unveil how we routinely maintain and sometimes challenge powerful social forces such as social inequality. In essence, the course will explore the domain of the popular in order to highlight the political and social debates it mobilizes.

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103

Transfers to:

UBC SOCI 2nd (3)
SFU SA 2XX (3), SOCI
UVIC SOCI 2XX (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2170 (3)

“Globalization” — a buzzword that emerged in the 1990s— has made for an increasingly fluid and interdependent world; but the new forms of connectivity have had uneven impacts on different regions and localities. This course offers a critical examination of the economic, social, cultural, technological, and political aspects of globalization as it has evolved in recent decades. Issues of global governance, corporate accountability, and global justice will be among those surveyed in probing the paradoxes of globalization and imagining the changes required for creating a more equitable society and an ecologically sustainable world.

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103

Transfers to:

UBC-V SOCI 2nd (3)
SFU SA 2XX (3)
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2XXX (3)

A study of the seminal ideas of five of the pre-eminent social theorists of the 19th and early 20th centuries (August Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georg Simmel) and their impact on the formation of the discipline of Sociology. This focus will be supplemented by discussion of some of the latter-day variants of these classical theories that uphold the relevance of fundamental questions regarding social change, power relations, human nature, inequality and social collectivity

Prerequisite(s):

ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103

Transfers to:

UBC SOCI 2nd (3)
SFU SA 250 (3)
UVIC SOCI 210 (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2XXX (3)