SDG Detail

SOCI3070 - Social Inequality

None

Project description

The organisational and institutional dynamics of modern societies are powerful generators of social inequality and yet they equally generate resources through which inequalities can be identified and challenged. This unit explores the social mechanisms that drive inequalities and surveys the impact of socio-economic inequality on a wide range of areas of social life (gender, culture, employment, and the economy). The unit considers how sociological theory can explain the emergence and persistence of social inequalities, the normative conflicts and struggles that inequalities produce, and the ways social institutions overcome, respond or merely adapt to inequality. We conclude the unit by looking at whether democratic societies can survive widening socio-economic inequalities and how we might explain the improvement in some types of inequality and discrimination and the curious persistence of others.

Year 2022

Location Australia

Organization Macquarie University

Project aims

Project outcome

1. demonstrate an advanced understanding of the foundations, generative mechanisms and multi-dimensional nature of social inequality 2. demonstrate an understanding of the technical and sociological measurement of inequality 3. demonstrate an ability to interpret debates and policy, political and social-movement responses to inequality