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The general Sociology minor provides students with the most flexibility in designing their program. Students may select courses of interest from the departmental offerings with the help of the minors coordinator. Requirements include an approved sequence of at least four courses in Sociology, all of which need to be 200 level or higher.
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Students must take four of the following courses: SO 225 Drugs and Society |
SO 285 Sociology of Sports |
Students in The Sociology of Diversity and (In)Equality minor explore problems associated with diversity and equality in today's society. A broad social and historical overview will be combined with focused studies of the interactional practices involved in creating and maintaining the differences that continue to separate people by race, gender, sexuality and class.
Understanding diversity involves the investigation of social practices people use to create the boundries of small situations as well as define the edges between groups and societies. Without realizing it, people reproduce patterns of social action that create the problems that most of those same people are trying to overcome. Reflection on these practices and understanding of where they come from can lead to significant changes in mutual understandings between groups. Students will be given materials and taught to investigate for themselves the ways in which inequality is made real in everyday life.
The minor is also designed to highlight the importance of equality in modern situated interactions. As people in today's increasingly globalized world are brought together they are also forced to rely more on trust in public situations to achieve understanding with one another. Understanding diversity involves understanding how people go about the construction of social order and group membership through their everyday activities. This includes understanding the ordinary work of social and institutional membership in addition to the work of ethnic group membership, cultural competency, gender, and the social processes involved in these as occasioned activities.
Students receiving a minor in The Sociology of Diversity and (In)Equality will acquire the conceptual and methodological skills to understand diversity and inequality, including ethnomethodological, workplace studies, social construction, ethnographic, and conversation analytic approaches to the analysis of interaction in a variety of societal and workplace settings.
Courses satisfying the requirements for The Sociology of Diversity and (In)Equality minor must be drawn from Arts & Sciences electives and/or unrestricted electives only. Courses may not be used for both the general education required course and the minor.
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1. Students must take two of the following courses:
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2. Students must take two of the following elective SO 241 Diversity, Minorities and Social Change |
Workplace studies is the sociological investigation of how people construct social order and group membership through their everyday activities in the workplace. Students receiving a minor in Workplace Studies will learn how to use the research methods of ethnographic investigation and interaction analysis and will understand how the organization of the workplace and society are accomplished.
Workplace Studies minors examine the intricacies of how work is actually done on a daily basis with a particular emphasis on how technology and work practices are designed, used, or implemented. Studies of workplace practices have been conducted across a variety of work settings, including globally distributed work teams, software design, manufacturing firms, global financial markets, law offices, court rooms, medical settings, air traffic control towers, train control stations, laboratories, museums, and many others. The aim of these studies is to understand the everyday activities that occur in workplace settings as people interact with one another, with technology, and with other artifacts in the workplace in the course of conducting their work. Such studies have led to breakthroughs in terms of our understanding of how work is done. For example, software designers, by focusing on the actual ways in which tasks are performed rather than formal descriptions of work, are able to design programs more adequately suited to support the activities of users.
Courses satisfying the requirements for the Workplace Studies minor must be drawn from Arts & Sciences and/or unrestricted elective only. Courses may not be used for both the general education required courses and the minor. Courses from other departments may be substituted for one of the elective courses. Such substitutions must be approved by the Minor Advisor.
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1. Students must take three of the following courses: SO 242 Social Problems
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2. Students must take one of the following courses: SO 241 Diversity, Minorities and Social Change |
For more information about the Sociology Minors at Bentley University please contact:
Tim Anderson
Minors Coordinator and Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Morison Hall Room 149E
781.891.2730
tanderson@bentley.edu