SOC 450 - Identity & Community

This course resources students to conduct individual research using a selected set of analytical perspectives on how to think about the identity (the social processes of the self) and community (the social processes of group belonging). Going beyond the most basic sociological categories used to categorize persons in social life (i.e. sex/gender, sexual orientation, class, nation, race/ethnicity), this course focuses on the processual character of identity formation and group dynamics, especially for considering how identities take shape in social interaction and how groups create, sustain, and/or fade away as sources for individual identity. Not only will we examine how the self is produced by group processes but also how structures shape and mediate between the self and others as well as how the social production of identities is bound up with power, privilege, and oppression. Beginning with classic theoretical frameworks from Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, WEB Du Bois, Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Ulrich Beck, this course will discuss concepts which have shown promise to be particularly helpful in understanding identity and group formation processes in order to position students to discover more particularistic sociological literature used to pursue their own individualized research project-forming a research question and analyzing concrete empirical data-centered on a particular, contemporary identity/community.

Satisfies Sociology major requirement.