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HSS1006 Introduction to Sociology: Home

Course Description

This course offers fundamental sociological knowledge and perspectives to Year 1 non-sociological students of the School of Humanities and Social Science. The course starts with a panoramic overview on Sociology and the concept of "Sociological Imagination". It then introduces students to the basic empirical data collection methods for proposing and conducting mini-sociological studies on their own. Practice of doing mini-sociological studies and the related discussion are to be conducted later in the course. The course then discusses with students how sociologists query our everyday life, by using six diversified and profound topics. Within the discussion on discursive everyday life, the key Sociological concepts and theories will be introduced and examined. Along with the topic-based lectures, the teacher will continuously conduct the sociological discussion with students on how we can live better with each other in this differentiated and ever-changing world, with reflexive field observation to communities in Shenzhen over the whole course.

Recommended Books

Sociology

There are 23 chapters in this book, each dealing with a specific topic, such as criminality, politics, poverty, gender, environment etc. There are some recurring themes across the whole book, three of which reflect key issues shaping contemporary sociology and another three which characterize the approach to the subjects covered. The first three central themes are social change, globalizing of social life, social inequality such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, ageing, social class and disability. The other three central themes are micro-macro link, comparative-historical stance, and relationship between the social and the personal.

江村经济——中国农民的生活

本书是1939年Routledge出版社出版的Peasant Life in China一书的中译本。此书以中国人传统的生活为背景,展现了传统文化在西方影响下的变迁。本书描述了中国农民的消费、生产、分配和交易等体系,是根据对中国东部、太湖东南岸开弦弓村的实地考察写成的。旨在说明这一经济体系与特定地理环境的关系,以及与这个社区的社会结构的关系。也说明这个正在变化着的乡村经济的动力和问题。贯穿此书的两个主题是:土地的利用和农户家庭中再生产的过程。

第二性

波伏娃在本书中发出了“女人是什么”的提问,并做出了女人相对于绝对主体的男人是“他者”的观察。卷I探究了女人被界定为他者的原因,卷II按女人的观点描绘固有的世界,以期探明女人在竭力打破非本质的处境的过程中遇到的问题。波伏娃采用的观点是存在主义的道德观——女性并非试图将男人拖入内在性的领域,而是想摆脱两性关系的束缚,追求超越性以确立自己并实现自由。波伏娃认为,女性不应被动地等待男性赋予女性超越性的机会,而应主动创造新的处境。

疯癫与文明

本书是福柯的博士论文,从知识考古学的角度研究了西方文明对疯癫的态度。福柯将疯癫作为理性的对立进行描述,阐释和颂扬疯癫中富有想象力和诗意的部分,而批判所谓的理性精神中隐秘的残忍。他的目标是通过揭示理性的问题来警醒人们对理性的盲目追随,并为疯癫式的非理性的意义正名。福柯将西方社会对疯癫的态度划分了三个时期,分别是文艺复兴时期对疯癫的智慧与知识的审美,古典时代对疯癫的禁闭与排斥,以及现代社会对疯癫的精神病性质的确认。

消费社会

本书描写了当今社会生活中的主导性消费现象。鲍德里亚认为消费者与物的关系不再是人与物品的使用功能之间的关系,它已经转变为人与作为全套的物的有序消费对象的被强暴关系了。此外,今天的消费领域已经成为一个富有结构的社会领域,这个特定的有序结构是阶层区划,需求本身同样也被建构成系列等级。鲍德里亚还讨论了广告在消费控制中的作用,宣称广告意味着伪事件的统治,并断言生产社会已经被消费社会取代。

Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace

This book intends to illustrate the making of the new Chinese worker-subject emerging in the contemporary period, to deal with the production of social desire, to discuss the imperatives and techniques of the production machine in producing the docile, disciplined yet productive, dagongmei, to discuss how dagongmei is crafted and then inscribed on rural female bodies, to discuss the power, discourses, and processes of sexualizing bodies in the workplace, to examine the notion of the scream and dream of workplace life, and to reflect on this volume as a political project and as the practice of a minor genre of resistance in China.

中国女工:新兴打工者主体的形成

打工妹这个新型打工者主体的形成是本书的中心主题。本书描述倒带中国新型打工者主体的形成过程,阐述社会性欲望的生产,尤其是驱使年轻的农村女性离家外出打工的欲望,探讨生产机器资创造社会性身体的过程中的需求和技术,探讨打工妹这种新的社会身份认同是如何在这些农村女性的身体上被建构和确定下来的,讨论工厂中的权力、论述以及身体的性化过程,呈现有身体的疼痛、尖叫以及梦魇所构成的工厂生活画面,并尝试在中国创立一种抗争的次元体。

Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan

This book is based on fieldwork on interviewing Taiwan employers and housework employees. In addition to analyzing the interaction between employers and employees, it touches on the transformation of Taiwan's ethnic politics, class structure and gender relations. This book not only explores the upward class mobility of the mistresses’ family and the maids brought about by the phenomenon of housework employees, but also points out the racial and class inequality caused by such phenomenon. It describes how housework employees are constructed as the “other” from the perspectives of state control and public voice. The book also describes the situation and status of maids and mistresses in their family life.

跨国灰姑娘:当东南亚帮佣遇上台湾新富家庭

本书通过对台湾雇主和家务移工进行的田野调查形成,除分析劳雇双方的互动关系,也触及台湾族群政治、阶级形构与性别关系的转变。本书探讨了家务移工现象所带来的“女主人”的家庭与“女佣”的向上的阶级流动,但也指出了家务移工产生的种族与阶级的不平等,从国家管制与大众论述两个层面描述了家务移工是如何被建构为种族和阶级的他者。本书还描述了“女佣”与“女主人”在各自家庭生活中的处境和地位,以及父权社会强行赋予他们的女性特质的延续。

我的凉山兄弟:毒品、艾滋与流动青年

本书呈现了在四川西南地区的诺苏人在半个世纪中所经历的从部落社会跃入社会主义集体公社制再翻转到市场改革的过程,以及当代中国现代化历程对诺苏人的冲击影响。本书详述1956年和1978年这两个凉山历史上的关键年代,描述诺苏年轻人的流动迁徙,以及如何造成海洛因和艾滋双重疫情,分析利姆的社群领袖如何应对这些新型的社会危机,讨论国家对于毒品与艾滋的防治介入缘何以失败告终,并论述国家的介入失误导致了利姆乡的艾滋污名现象。

Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chung King Mansions, Hong Kong

This book is prefaced with a “Prelude” constituted by a “Note on Hong Kong.” The book is then structured into five chapters: Place, People, Goods, Laws, and Future. At the end of the book, Mathews puts forward the key concept, neoliberalism, to explain the underlying ideological force that drives and shapes the development in Chungking Mansions. Mathews understands neoliberalism to emphasize the market as the arbiter of value, freedom from state regulation, and the drive for money-making. Hong Kong exemplifies neoliberalism, which makes possible Chungking Mansions as “a ghetto of middle-class striving” that enables people from the world’s peripheries to make a better life.

香港重庆大厦:世界中心的边缘地带

本书除前言外共有五个章节:地点、人群、商品、法律、未来。重庆大厦的居民主要来自世界上的落后地区,本书因此提出了“低端全球化”的概念。在书的末尾,作者又提出了新自由主义的关键概念,以解释驱动和形成重庆大厦中的发展的深层次的意识形态的力量。作者认为新自由主义强调了市场作为不受国家管制的价值与自由的独裁者,以及作为赚钱的驱动力。香港是新自由主义的例证,这使得重庆大厦作为使这些来自边缘地区的人们获得更好生活的中产阶级拼搏的贫民窟成为可能。

Global Cities, Local Streets

This book reports on the rapidly expanding field of global urban studies through a unique pairing of six teams of urban researchers from around the world. Altogether eight essays are collected in this book. Beginning with an examination of the ecosystem of local shopping streets, then the book turns to present shopping streets from each city- New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Berlin, Toronto, and Tokyo- how they have changed over years, and how they illustrate globalization embedded in local communities. The book eventually ends with an examination of the local shopping streets in the context of globalization. This book is ideal for courses in urbanization, consumption, and globalization.

Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of space, power, and social networks within China’s floating population

This book traces the transformations of space, power relations, and social networks within the Wenzhou migrant community in Beijing. The book traces the historical commercial culture of the Wenzhou migrants which nourish their current economic practices, as well as their migration passages and social networks. It examines the process of privatization of space and power in Zhejiangcun, the interplay between changing gender and domestic relations and spatial reorganization of Wenzhou migrant households, as well as crime and criminality in the community. Government’s strategies to discipline the migrants, and the conflict between the governments and Wenzhou migrants and local residents due to the privatization of space and power, are also examined.

Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum

This book studies Cornerville, a slum in the United States, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Italian immigrants and their children. Part One describes the personalities and records conversions and observations of the group life of the corner boys and college boys- men between twenty and thirty years of age living between 1937 and 1940 in the community. Part Two deals with the life-stories of the racketeer and the politician in the community and traces their influence upon the social structure of the community and the lives of individuals. Part Three concludes with an observation of the gang and the individual, the social structure, and the problem of the community.

Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach

This book is structured to guide readers through the process of designing a qualitative study. While Chapter One is an introduction to setting a model for qualitative research design, Chapters Two to Six go over the components of this model, which are goals, conceptual framework, research questions, methods, and validity. (Maxwell suggests that this organization is only a conceptual and presentational device, not a procedure to follow in designing an actual study.) Chapter Seven discusses the implications of this model of design for developing research proposals, and provides a map and guidelines for how to get from design to proposal.

Recommended Databases