SOCL.F23

In less than 6 months, a new virus spotted over 7,500 miles away utterly reshaped the ways we interact here in Philadelphia? How could a ship that ran aground in Egypt lead to thousands of workers being laid off in Wayne, Michigan? How is energy production in the US connected to the increasing number of tiger attacks in mangrove forests in Bangladesh? And how did K-pop become so popular in Brazil?

The answers to these questions require us to think outside of the national boxes in which we do much of our sociological investigation, and instead examine the ties of politics, culture, economy, and ecology that link people across the globe.

When we talk about society, we often imagine classes, networks, organizations, and interlocking systems. When we look for them, we find people talking, gesturing, smiling, frowning–in short, interacting. How do we make sense of these interactions as observers? How do the participants make sense of each other? What happens when interactions fail? Or succeed for that matter? How do some of these interactions come to constitute medical consultations, congressional hearings, job interviews, family dinners, or prayer meetings? What do the boundary-making practices of race, class, and gender look like in practice? In other words, how can an understanding of conversation help us understand what society is where and when it happens? In this course, we will explore these and other questions using readings from a range of micro-sociological traditions and a variety of audio and video materials.