Video and Multimedia

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Video:

  • 1.1 Explore Sociology
    Description: This brief video explains the discipline of sociology and how it can be used to analyze any topic and/or issue. 
     
  • 1.2 The Sociological Imagination
    Description: This video examines the concepts related to the sociological imagination, which is a term coined by sociologist C. Wright Mills.  Utilizing the sociological imaginations allows us to connect our personal lives to the bigger societal picture and connect our own biography with historical events.
     
  • 1.3 A Social Theory of War
    Description: Professor Sharma, an assistant professor of political science at Yale, explains his social theory of war.  This theory is based on the idea that there are two different types of war: one based on rulership and one based on wars He also discusses how this leads to an understanding of how wars can differ in their amount of violence that takes place.

Audio:

  • 1.1 Examining Social Groups
    Description: Host Ira Glass plays tape of two women who ended up as frenemies.They kept trying to be friends, but couldn't help themselves from fighting. Ira then speaks with psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad who has run scientific studies to answer the question: Why don't we simply end these troubling kinds of friendships? Holt-Lunstad's research also shows that these relationships are much more common than you might think.
     
  • 1.2 Financial Crisis
    Description: This special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s?
     
  • 1.3 Analyzing Outsourcing
    Description: This podcast is a discussion with Shehzad Nadeem, author of Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing Is Changing the Way Indians Understand Themselves. He discusses what it’s like to work at a call center in India, what Indians think about outsourcing, and the social and cultural challenges faced by both labor and management in outsourcing firms.

​Web Resources:

  • 1.1 Occupational Outlook Handbook-Sociologists
    Description: This website examines the median income for sociologists and explains what sociologists do.  This website also explains the job outlook for sociologists.
     
  • 1.2 Sociology in a Changing World
    Description: This article discusses the fallout that has taken place in response to turn China into an urban nation. Local governments have demolished tens of millions of homes over the past decade. Homeowners have often fought back, blocking heavy machinery and battling officials.  In recent years, resistance has taken a disturbing turn: Since 2009, at least 53 people across China have lit themselves on fire to protest the destruction of their homes, according to human rights and news reports.
     
  • 1.3 Domestic Violence
    Description: This article from Contexts examines 6 recent sociological findings as it pertains to domestic violence.  This article highlights how sociologists study a social problem, specifically domestic violence, and which factors they consider when investigating a social problem.
     
  • 1.4 The Sociology of Gifts for Mother’s and Father’s Day
    Description: This article from Pacific Standard Magazine discusses the gifts that are traditionally given on Mother’s and Father’s Day and how these gifts reflect the traditional societal roles that we associate with both mothers and fathers in our society.  Sociologists are interested in studying how the roles mothers and fathers play in our society can change over time.