Sociology is the study of social structure. All human societies classify their members into categories that carry significant social meaning. These categories may be relatively simple, such as age and sex, in which case we speak of the age-sex structure of the population, or they may be complex, such as occupation or kinship. The social structure of a society is the aggregate of all meaningful social categories.

Sociologists who study the origins, evolution, and nature of social structures are generally called macro-sociologists, whereas those who consider how individuals or small groups behave within specific structural settings are called micro-sociologists. A structural setting is defined by the intersection of one or more social categories, which are often but not necessarily located in time and space.

A primary interest of most sociologists, including those in the Penn Department, is stratification, which considers hierarchical social structures that rank people with respect to access to some resource.

Particular emphases among Penn Sociologists are gender stratification (inequality between men and women), racial-ethnic stratification (inequality between different racial and ethnic groups), and urban inequality (processes of stratification that occur within cities). In addition, we focus on the sociology of culture, demography, economic sociology and medical sociology.

These and other topics are studied empirically using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, which are applied to test inductive or deductive generalizations, and through this testing build accurate theories to describe the operation of the social world.

Programs offered by the department exist on two levels:

Through this program, a student can obtain either a major or minor in Sociology through Penn's School of Arts & Sciences. The Undergraduate Advisory Board has reconvened. Soon, we will provide a link to their homepage and/or post information about meetings.

Ph.D. program within one of the Department's six clusters, or concentrations. Find out more about our students by visiting our Graduate Student Bio Page. Also available is an on-line references of courses offered by the Department along with syllabi when they are available.

Last Modified: 05-Mar-2008
For updates, comments please contact: saunderc@ssc.upenn.edu