Hi my name is Eric Slater I'm the chair
of Sociology and Anthropology at
Manhattanville College and I'm going to
talk to you for a little bit about the
discipline of Sociology and what we do
in our department. Sociology prepares
students for a wide variety of careers
ranging from social work to education to
work in the nonprofit sector with
community organizations to the legal
field as well as policy making and on
occasion even Marketing as well if I
were to summarize the field of sociology
with one word it would be inequality
sociologists are concerned with a
variety of inequalities class
inequalities gender inequalities, racial
and ethnic inequalities international
inequalities the existence of
inequalities is well known to everybody
but the exact nature of those
inequalities and more importantly how we
understand and explain those
inequalities is what distinguishes
Sociology from other fields and
approaches we offer a wide range of
courses we have courses in race and
ethnicity, courses on Gender and Global
perspective courses, on Environmental
Sociology, courses on cities like New
York City, World Cities, courses on
Globalization, on Indigenous Peoples on
subcultures and a range of other topics
as well. In a sociology class for example
class that I teach on the sociology of
New York City if we examine a topic such
as homelessness we first begin with
people's perceptions of the problem of
homelessness many people have an image
of a homeless person in New York City
of a single man older pushing a shopping
cart around the street and this does
capture
an important aspect of the problem of
homelessness but it is only one and it
is a bit misleading as well and point of
fact the majority of homeless people in
New York City are single mothers and
their children and they are filling the
shelters in the cities for some time now
now from a sociological perspective we
try to understand both the experience of
homelessness in terms of what led a
person to find themselves in that
situation but more importantly we try to
understand the structural factors behind
homelessness so whereas if you
approached it from an individual you
might look for certain deficiencies or
lack of opportunities and resources that
led them to become homeless from the
structural point of view we examine
questions of the housing market, the
power of real estate, we look at the
provision or lack of affordable housing
and the different forces within the city
that help us to account for such a
problem now there are many many problems
that sociologists study and homelessness
is just one example and there's quite a
bit of opportunity in our department to
study those that are of interest to our
students we study these not to simply be
aware or to despair that they exist but
we study them in the hope that we can
come up with realistic solutions and so
another very important aspect of the
curriculum in our department is the
study of what we call social movements
social movements form when people decide
that problems can only be solved through
collective action through organization
through protest and the social movements
and the effects that they have on
society are a very important part of
what we study in our department.
If these sorts of things interest you
social problems, social inequalities, the
environmental crisis problems of world,
inequality problems, inequality in
your neighborhood and the like sociology
will interest you deeply and maybe
you'll find yourself a home we welcome
you we would love to see you in the fall
and we'll have lots to talk about and
look forward to meeting you all someday
take care if you have any questions
about the sociology and anthropology
department feel free to shoot me an
email at Eric.Slater@mville.edu
and have a great day
