Sage Video: Course Playlists - Sociology

Don’t know where to start? Explore our award-winning content through custom course playlists as well as some of our Editors' picks.

  • Ethnicity and Race Relations

    Professor Leslie Baker-Kimmons presents a basic overview of the social construction of race and ethnicity. She highlights the way prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination reinforce one another, and she describes the different theories that underlie prejudice. 
    American families come in all shapes and sizes, from single-parent households to multiple generations living under one roof. This documentary explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, and family, with a focus on immigrant families. 
    Dr. Andrew Jolivette provides an overview of the construction of racial identities in the United States. Racial attitudes and categorization have changed drastically between the pre-contact and modern eras of U.S. history. Jolivette closely examines multiracial identity, interracial marriage, and the 2000 U.S. Census. 

  • Sociology of Marriage and Family

    Valerie Jencks discusses her work as a marriage and family therapist and what the job entails. Family therapy emphasizes relationships and relationship systems, unlike other types of mental health treatment, which usually focus on the individual. Jencks explains how she got into the field and provides an example of a group therapy session. 
    Remarriage always come with challenges, but even more so when there are children involved. Adults in a new family have to make sense of their marriage and learn how to be a stepparent at the same time. Divorce, the children of divorce, and step parenting are examined. 
    Professor Donna Holland discusses aging out of foster care and provides examples from adults that went through the foster care program. She explains the roles of foster parents, the foster care drift, education outcomes for foster children and what former foster children recommend to people helping children in the foster care system. 

  • Sociology of the Criminal Justice System

    Delancey Street is a job training program for people who have been convicted of serious crimes. Men and women in the program explain how it helped them become functional members of society. Sociologists also discuss different types of deviance, paying attention to the war on drugs. 
    Dr. Steve Wakeman discusses the sociology of crime and deviance and why some people break rules. Wakeman argues that crime has no ontological reality, that crime itself does not really exist because crime is contingent upon a time and place. The field of sociology of crime and deviance is a large field of study, encompassing a wide range of theories that can be understood from many different perspectives. 
    Alan Saleh discusses how the Alternatives To Violence Project helps working class people stop patterns of violence in their lives. He explains strategies to help avoid violence and alternatives to acting in a violent way.

  • Social Problems

    Laura Ng describes her work as the director of Traffick Free, a Chicago nonprofit that works to fight human trafficking. She explains different types of human trafficking and how average people are complicit in trafficking. Ng also discusses how she entered social justice work, how her organization operates, and how the new Traffick Free drop-in center will benefit victims. 
    Dr. Niki Weller discusses the social construction of drug use as a social problem. Researching drug use in the United States helps explain what makes drug use a specific, social activity. Weller discusses a history of drug use in the United States, and she links drug toxicity, dependence, and crime to social problems. 
    Professor Earl Babbie describes how an unexpectedly large class, poor midterm grades, and student initiative taught him something new. His students found that often we hold each other back from our natural impulse to take care of social problems. 

  • Research Methods in Sociology/Social Science Data Research

    Dr. Barbie Clarke discusses the IKEA Play Report and the importance of play in children and adults. The study showed that families were not playing as much as before, and both parents and children wanted more play time together. The results prompted IKEA to launch the Say Yes to Play Campaign.
    Professor Daniel Chambliss describes his career in social science and the impact social research has outside of academia. He highlights debates on crime rates and single motherhood, and he discusses research he has done in athletic training, nursing, and college student learning. 
    Professor Russell K. Schutt discusses social research, how it differs from other scientific research, and the role it plays in society. He describes several of his research projects and highlights major ways research has impacted the workplace. 
    Dr. Edward Laumann discusses social networks, sexually transmitted infections, and the correlation between them. Social connectivity differs across populations, and those differences can help to explain the differential spread of STDs.