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Note lecture slides, teaching materials and communication with students will be through Aula Global
Programme

Objectives:

 

  1. to give students a good knowledge of the academic literature and debates about social stratification in advanced contemporary societies;

  2. to give empirically-based knowledge of the ways in which social structures vary across contemporary advanced societies;

  3. to enable students to understand how contemporary stratification theories can be tested against the empirical evidence;

  4.  to introduce students to theories of social change by looking at changes in the social structures of advanced industrial societies;

  5. to enable students to understand how social scientists make sense of the complexity  of social phenomena by combining theory and empirical research;

  6. to understand the role played by labour-markets, households and welfare states in the production/reproduction of inequality;

  7. to introduce students to the complexities of measuring (class, income, gender and ethnic) inequality

  8. to introduce students to some key concepts and debates in the study of social behaviour, including the role of preferences vs. constraints, biological vs. environmental influences, socialization vs. agency;

  9. to understand the differences between micro, meso and macro levels of analysis;

  10. to understand the difference between demand and supply-side theories of gender and ethnic stratification;

 

Competences to be achieved in the subject:

 

  1. Ability to analyse and synthesize different approaches to the study of inequality

  2. Familiarity with the basic conceptual framework of social stratification research

  3. Ability to identify the main arguments of a scientific text

  4. Critical thinking

  5. Ability to present orally in English

  6. Cooperation and communication with fellow students

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