Field Examinations                                                                                                                                                       

The Department requires every student to pass two Field Examinations before taking the Oral Qualifying Examination for the Ph.D. A student who fails a field examination may retake the examination only once. The emphasis here is on mastery and depth of understanding in two areas of specialized study.

Field examinations may be developed and administered by any group of three or more faculty members. Field examinations are demanding, rigorous, and address broad areas of sociological research and theory. Some field exam areas are rooted in the great traditions of sociological thought; others cover newly developing and innovative bodies of theory and research. All new field examinations, as well as any changes proposed in existing examinations, are reviewed and approved by the Graduate Curriculum and Advisement Committee (GCAC).

Examinations will be offered quarterly, on demand. They will be offered (or will begin, in the case of take home exams) on Friday of the first week of instruction each quarter, and on Friday of the second or third week after the official end of spring quarter. Please consult the annual exam schedule for exact dates posted on the departmental website and outside the Graduate Affairs Assistant office.  Students must sign up for examinations by informing the Graduate Affairs Assistant and the Field Examination Coordinator for that selected field no later than the first official day of the quarter in which the exam is to be taken. Some field exams require faculty approval of reading lists. These and related requirements should be completed before a student signs up to take that exam.

For the exam to be valid, examination questions must be submitted to the GAA for distribution to the examinees. Completed examinations must be returned to the GAA by the specified deadline for distribution to the faculty responsible for grading them. Examination results for each field examination are to be reported to the student, the student’s advisors, and the Graduate Affairs Advisor within four weeks from the beginning of the exam.

In the first week of the quarter following acceptance of a student’s Master’s Paper, the student must submit a study plan to the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) specifying two field examinations and a timetable for completing them. The DGS must approve each student’s proposed examinations. The DGS will assess whether the two proposed fields, considered in tandem, are rigorous, coherent, and broad; plans that involve fields with substantial overlap will not be approved. Any proposed revision of an approved field examination plan must be endorsed by the student’s adviser and approved by the DGS. Such proposals must be submitted to the DGS at least four weeks before the beginning of the quarter in which the student intends to take an exam not previously included in the field examination plan.

Detailed information about each Field Examination area is appended at the end of this document.

FIELD EXAMINATIONS OFFERED Spring 2009
(More exams could be added for fall)

Comparative Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism
Economic Sociology
Ethnographic Methodology
Ethnomethodology
International Migration
Political Sociology
Race/Ethnicity
Social Demography
Social Stratification and Social Mobility
Sociology of Culture
Sociology of the Family
Sociology of Gender
Urban and Suburban Sociology

COMPARATIVE ETHNICITY, RACE, AND NATIONALISM
[June, 2008]

Coordinator:  Rogers Brubaker

Participating Faculty:  César Ayala, Rogers Brubaker, Adrian Favell, David Lopez, Edward Telles, Roger Waldinger, Andreas Wimmer

Brief Description: This field examination addresses race, ethnicity, and nationalism in comparative and historical perspective.   It focuses not on the American experience but on the comparative analysis of variation across time, place, and context in the organization, conceptualization, experience, and politicization of "ethnicity," "nation," and "race." 

Critical Issues (a short sampling): The rationale, or lack of rationale, for distinguishing analytically between "ethnicity," "nation," and "race"; the distinctiveness, in comparative perspective, of the organization and understanding of "ethnicity," "nation," and "race" in the US; the manner in which the modern state, in different contexts, has shaped the organization and expression of claims based on "ethnicity," "nation," or "race"; the opposition (or pseudo opposition) between "primordialist" and "contextualist" or "constructivist" theories of "ethnicity," "nation," and "race"; the contribution, and limitations, of rational choice and other micro analytical approaches to the understanding of "ethnicity," "nation," and "race."

This field exam is designed for students with strong comparative interests; the overlap with the American focused race/ethnicity field exam or the immigration field exam should be minimal.  Students can take two of these related exams, provided they submit questions from the prior exam to the exam committee for the second exam, to ensure that there is no duplication.

Required courses: Soc 230A and either 230B or 230C.

Readings:  The list is organized on the assumption that ethnicity, nation(alism), and “race” belong to a broad family of forms of cultural understanding, social organization, and political contestation, all related to a perceived heterogeneity of cultural background, social belonging, and political destiny. "Ethnicity" is the broadest term, including much of what we study when we study "race" and nationhood and nationalism. Conformingly, many approaches to ethnicity will be found in the debates surrounding race and nation.
The core reading list, which all students will be responsible for, is structured accordingly: The section on ethnicity is organized by the main theoretical approaches that have oriented sociological research over the past decades. It contains articles on ethnicity and on race and nationhood. The following two sections on race and nationhood are dedicated to more specific discussions that are not central to the more encompassing debates on ethnicity. A separate list with further readings on each of the sub-sections of the required reading list can be consulted.

In addition to the core reading list, each student will choose a regional or thematic focus. Examples of the former include Eastern Europe, East Asia, or Latin America; examples of the latter include gender and ethnicity, nationalist and ethnic conflicts, indigenous peoples, language, or religion.  In consultation with his or her advisor and with the chair of the field examination committee, the student will be responsible for preparing a reading list for this regional or the thematic topic.  The reading list must be comparative; whether this involves comparison across countries, world regions, time periods, or some other unit of analysis will depend on the student's interests.

Examination format and procedure:  The examination is offered as a seven-day take-home examination.  Students will be required to write three essays of approximately 3000 words each.  Two of the essays will relate to the core reading list, one to the regional or thematic reading list.  Examples of questions relating to the core list can be found at the end of this document.  Questions based on the regional or thematic reading list will be drawn from a pool of three questions proposed by the student, in consultation with his or her advisor, and revised by the examination committee (see below under Deadlines).

If the exam is deemed not passing, the committee may require the exam to be re-taken on another occasion, or it may ask that individual answers be rewritten and resubmitted.

Deadlines:  The student must notify the Chair of the examination committee of his or her intention to take the exam no later than the second week of the quarter preceding the quarter in which the exam is to be taken.  If the exam is to be taken in fall quarter, notification must be given by July 1.  Also by this date, a draft regional or thematic reading list, together with a draft of a set of regional or thematic questions, must be prepared by the student, in consultation with his or her advisor, and submitted to the chair of the examination committee.  The committee may then request revisions to the reading list or to the set of questions, or it may itself revise the reading list or the set of questions.

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

(as of June 2009)
 
Participating Faculty:  Steven Clayman, John Heritage, Emanuel A. Schegloff 

Statement of the Field:  Conversation analysis is a field of inquiry addressed to talk and other forms of conduct in interaction studied through the detailed examination of naturally occurring instances or specimens of its occurrences. Talk-in-interaction is taken to be that primordial site of sociality in which much of what composes the life of a society and its institutions is realized. Although conversation has been the most intensively and extensively examined domain of talk-in-interaction, the field comprehends a broad range of settings and specialized genres of talk or speech-exchange systems, especially talk in work settings.

Course Requirements:  Appropriate preparation for this examination includes Sociology 244A-B (Conversational Structures I and II), Sociology 258 (Talk and Social Institutions), and Sociology 266 (Selected Problems in the Analysis of Conversation). In addition, extensive participation in intensive data analysis sessions in Sociology 289A is highly recommended.
 
Format:  The field exam will ordinarily have two parts: the first, a monitored on-campus examination, in which students will be asked to analyze and to discuss the bearing of the literature on one or more segments of data which they are seeing for the first time; the second, a take-home examination in which they are required to display analytic competence by developing a multi-faceted analysis of one or more data segments seen for the first time.  Seven days are allowed for completion of part 2. Grades will be Pass/Fail.
 
Students choosing this examination are ordinarily responsible for the larger domain of talk-in-interaction and some particular institutional context, as well as for related past and contemporary work in sociology and related disciplines. Students are required to have a mastery of the core readings in each of the major domains of conversational and interactional organization, as well as a more in-depth knowledge of the additional readings in at least three of these domains.  Students should have a working knowledge of the "Introductory" section of the "Talk and Interaction in Institutional Contexts" section of the reading list, together with at least one institutional subsection.

ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY
(as of 10/3/2008)
Participating Faculty: Ayala, Emigh, Halle, Lee, Mann, Milkman, Rossman (chair), Roy, Zucker

Statement of Critical Issues:
This examination is an overview of major debates in economic sociology, at both the macro and micro level. Broadly speaking, economic sociology studies the ways in which exchange and production are embedded within broader social structure. This concern with situating exchange within society as a whole places economic sociology at the boundary of sociology and economics. Some of economic sociology is directly engaged with our sister discipline whereas other aspects of economic sociology ask questions more distant from the core concerns of economics such as what types of exchange are considered legitimate and the historical and political development of exchange regimes.
Broadly speaking, economic sociology falls into three categories:
MACRO -- precapitalist economies and the development of capitalism; modernization, dependency, development and the world system; globalization
MICRO -- the organization of firms and markets including the family of theories known as organizational behavior
LABOR -- labor, work, and entrepreneurship; and class, stratification, and inequality.
Students will choose one field to specialize in while also learning the highlights of the other aspects of economic sociology.

Required Courses: There are no required courses for this field examination.
Recommended Courses: Sociology 260 is the cornerstone course for this exam and students are strongly encouraged to take it. Other recommended courses include 237 ("Comparative Social Analysis"), 254 ("Forms of Capital: Human, Cultural, and Social"), 259 ("Social Structure and Economic Change: Historical and Comparative Perspectives"), and special topics courses in economic sociology (For example, 265, "Organization Theory"; 285, "Sociology of Labor and Unionism").

Procedures:
The examination is generally given on the standard dates as set by the department.
The exam committee will be composed of three faculty members. These faculty will solicit the student's input in crafting a list of possible exam prompts.
The proposed format for the field examination is a take home examination of three essays. Students may choose between taking the examination over three days or over one week.
The grades will be the following: pass with distinction, pass, fail.

Readings
A student will choose one area to specialize in (macro, micro, or labor) and be responsible for all readings on that list. In addition, all students, regardless of specialty, must learn the highlights of the field, noted by asterisks.
Students have the option (but not expectation) of modifying this list to reflect their own substantive interests. Modified lists must be approved by the examination committee, which will be a three member subcommittee of the field examination committee that administers the examinations each year. Students taking a specialized field examination should contact the chair of the field examination at least one quarter before the quarter in which they wish to take the exam.

ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODOLOGY
[June 2008]

Coordinator:

Participating Faculty: Emerson, Halle, Hernandez-Leon, Katz, Kligman, Landecker, Lee, Timmermans, Zhou.

Statement of the Field:  Ethnography has a long and still evolving history in sociology.  Indeed, sociology in the U.S. was largely created through a series of ethnographic studies. Within a generation, methodological controversies had developed, both within ethnography and in comparisons with other forms of social research. Over the last twenty five years, ethnographic research has been the focus of some of the most probing self examinations in social science as a whole, featuring debates over reflexivity, human subjects' consent in narrow and broad senses of the issue, the importance of context for understanding individual acts and items of culture, social constructionism and relativism, and bias (gender, cultural, etc.) in research procedures and the conceptualization of data. Most recently, the sociological and anthropological traditions in ethnography have begun to overlap to the point of blurring the boundaries between the disciplines.

In addition to fostering a critical, historical and theoretical understanding of the methodology, an important goal of this field is the preparation of students to teach ethnographic methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Critical Issues:  The associated courses and the field exam in the ethnography field address historical, cross disciplinary, and reflexive issues about ethnographic methodology. Thus we ask such questions as the following:  What are the major stages and turning points in the history of ethnographic practice in sociology? How does the rationale for ethnographic research differ from that for research pursued by other methods? What criteria are and what criteria should be used to assess ethnographic texts and the qualities of ethnographic evidence? In what ways do the anthropological and sociological traditions in ethnography differ?  How does ethnography compare, in terms of methodological and substantive preferences, with other fields of qualitative social research, including cultural studies, conversation analysis, and case studies in historical sociology?

Required Courses: Soc. 217 ABC, plus at least one substantively focused graduate course directed by a faculty member associated with the Ethnographic Methodology Field Exam. 
 217A gives a comprehensive orientation to the field, providing an overview of ethnography that covers the development of ethnographic research, primarily in sociology but also in anthropology, identifying historical changes in methods and emergent controversies; 217BC is our "doing it" sequence in which students primarily conduct an ethnographic study in a particular substantive area.
 In the substantive course(s), students will develop bibliographies of ethnographies that cover a given institution (e.g., medicine, mass communication, social control institutions), social area (e.g., community studies, behavior in public) or topic (e.g., gender, ethnic relations).

Readings:  In addition to the core readings, each student is expected to develop a reading list around a sub genre (e.g., community studies, immigration, sociology of work) and at least one methodological issue (e.g., reflexivity, bias, validity). This reading list should be produced in the substantively focused course required for the field exam and supplemented by a brief exposition and appropriate readings for the methodological issue(s) of concern, then submitted for review by the two faculty members the student nominates as her or his field exam committee.  

Exam Procedures:  Students must nominate a two-person field exam committee from the affiliated ethnography faculty at least three months before the targeted exam sign-up and exam date.  Students planning to take the ethnography field exams will be required to conduct two literature reviews in close collaboration with faculty members. These literature reviews should be modeled after publications in the Annual Review of Sociology. The first literature review will be chosen by the student, the second suggested by faculty members based on the reading list.  This format enables students to explore the ethnographic literature and to develop a potential literature review for the thesis while gaining skill in writing a literature review. The literature reviews are due on the departmental field exam date. The following grades will be possible: Pass, Fail, Pass with Distinction.

ETHNOMETHODOLOGY FIELD EXAMINATION
[June 2008]

Coordinator for 2008-09: John C. Heritage

Participating Faculty: S. Clayman, H. Garfinkel, J. Heritage, E. Schegloff

Statement of the Field:  Ethnomethodology is a field of sociology which studies the commonsense resources, procedures and practices through which the members of a culture produce and recognize mutually intelligible objects, events and courses of action. Studies in the field are directed to the investigation of social processes underlying the construction of social phenomena ranging from factual knowledge, social organization, and attributes such as race and gender, through to the acquisition of skills and the management of memory. The Ethnomethodology field examination focuses on the perspectives, methods and issues involved in the conceptualization and study of these processes as empirical phenomena.

Recommended courses:  Appropriate preparation for this examination includes: Soc 222: Foundations of Ethnomethodological, Phenomenological and Observational Sociology; Soc 244ABC: Conversation Analysis; Soc 258: Talk and Social Institutions. Students preparing to take the field examination are encouraged to take a one quarter 597 reading course co-mentored by at least two of the Ethnomethodology faculty for guidance and development in studying the Core reading list and the development of a focus list. 

Procedures:  We will coordinate out teaching plans year by year.

Format:  The field exam ordinarily will have two parts.  The first will be the construction of a course syllabus on Ethnomethodology and two specimen lectures.  The second will be an examination requiring the student to bring ethnomethodological methods to bear on substantive areas of application, which may be embodied in an array of artifacts developed in concert with faculty in the context of a 597 reading course.  The format of the examination is developed in consultation with the two co-mentoring faculty and a third member appointed by the field exam faculty.  Proficiency can be demonstrated in one of several ways including: conventional examination; analytical literature review; empirical investigation; syllabus and outline of lectures for a course on Ethnomethodology.   Three days are allowed for completion of the Part 2 examination.  Grades will be Pass/Fail.

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
[June 2008]

Participating Faculty: Adrian Favell; Ruben Hernandez-Leon; Roger Waldinger; Min Zhou
 Convenor, Fall 2008:  Roger Waldinger
 Convenor, Winter, Spring 2009: Ruben Hernandez-Leon

Statement of the field:  This field is concerned with the causes and consequences of international migration, that is to say, the movement of peoples from one territorially defined, self-consciously delimited nation-state to another.   As such, the field of international migration studies in sociology is, perhaps, unique in its interdisciplinary and methodologically pluralist nature: stretching from the demography and economics of migration, through political science, geographical and mainstream sociological approaches, to the ethnography and oral history of migrants. Migration is also a crucial research site for exploring the possibility of doing sociology ‘beyond’ the bounded nation-state-society focus of most sociological research. And, while opening the door to a crucial dimension of globalization, the comparative study of migration and migrants in North America and Europe also offers opens up fresh perspectives on conceptions of nationhood, citizenship and the state.
Paralleling the two quarter, required course, the exam focuses on the following areas:

• Theories of international migration;
• Mechanisms of migration
• Policies and politics of rights, migration, citizenship;
• Integration, assimilation, and incorporation

Attending to the feedbacks linking sending and receiving places as well as the transformations experienced both by immigrants and receiving places, we aspire to a global orientation.  In practice, however, we mainly emphasize developments in the European and North American migration systems, with special historical contrasts and comparisons across the two sides of the Atlantic.

Required courses:  Sociology 236a and b, International Migration; at least two quarters of Soc 295 (the appropriate section for the migration working group).  We anticipate that these courses will be taught every year. It is highly recommended that students take the field exam immediately or shortly after completing the course, which draws from the same reading list as the exam.

Recommended courses:  Sociology 236c (research seminar in international migration); Sociology 230ab, Comparative Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism; Sociology 235, Theories of Ethnicity; Sociology 261, Ethnic Minorities.  In addition, student planning to do dissertation work in this area should consider courses in areas with which the study of international migration connects; in particular, we recommend courses in demography, stratification, political sociology, and economic sociology.

Format and Evaluation: The examination is offered as a seven-day take-home examination.  Students will be required to write three essays of approximately 3000 words each (plus bibliography) for a combined total of no more than 10,000 words.  Questions will be drawn from a pool of questions, periodically revised; the current pool of questions can be found at the end of this document.  Students are offered the choice of answering three questions chosen from the pool of questions or two questions from the pool, supplemented by a customized question, designed to prepare for a subsequent research project, as approved by the faculty.

Exams will be graded either Pass with distinction, Pass, or Fail  If the exam is deemed not passing, the committee may require the exam to be re-taken on another occasion, or it may ask that individual answers be rewritten and resubmitted.

Procedures: The faculty affiliated with the field will meet annually in the spring, to plan the following year’s activities, including election of the next field coordinator, and coordination of field offerings.

Reading list:  The reading list that follows matches the readings assigned in the most recent (2007-8) iterations of Sociology 236ab.  We anticipate considerable continuity from year to year, though we also expect that there will be change in themes as well as selections, reflecting both changes in the field and in the composition of the instructional staff.

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
[June 2008]

Coordinator:  Michael Mann (Fall), Maurice Zeitlin (Winter/Spring)

Participating Faculty: Adrian Favell, David Halle, Gail Kligman, Barbara Lal, Michael Mann, Bill Roy, Abigail Saguy, Andreas Wimmer, Maurice Zeitlin

Statement of the Field: This field exam is organized around a reading-list, in which the first section, foundations of political sociology, is required. There are eight further sections of which the candidate is required to read five. The eight are: theories of the state; the development of modern states with special focus on democratization; welfare states and neo-liberalism; citizenship, nation-building and nationalism; collective action; revolution; political categorizations – class, race, ethnicity and gender; and globalization and the nation-state.

Required Course: Sociology 233, Foundations of Political Sociology.  This is taught with the field exam in mind, and its reading-list overlaps considerably with the field exam list. Candidates are advised to find out when this course is next being offered before deciding when they wish to take the field exam.

Recommended Courses: Sociology 211A-B Comparative and Historical Methods; Sociology 230, Comparative Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism; Sociology 232, Class, Politics and Society; Sociology 237, Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis; Sociology 272, Topics in Political Sociology; plus relevant Sociology 285, Special Topics, offerings.

Exam procedures: The co-ordinator will be elected annually by a majority vote of affiliated faculty, administered by the outgoing coordinator. There will be two examiners, the co-ordinator as chair, and one other of the affiliated faculty, appointed by the coordinator.

Students are required to take a take-home exam. (papers or courses cannot substitute for this exam). It will be a three-day take-home exam. Students are required to answer three from a list of six questions, designed to cover the areas they have opted to cover. The student and his/her advisor will submit a list of topics being covered, plus suggested questions, to the coordinator 14 days before the date of the exam. There is no guarantee that these particular questions will be asked.  

The possible grades are pass or fail. The student is normally required to achieve a passing grade on all three questions. However, exceptional strength elsewhere can make up for a marginal fail on one question. If only one question is failed, and there is no compensating strength elsewhere, the student will be asked to retry the failing answer during the following four weeks. Two or three failing answers will require re-sitting an entire exam, containing new questions, the following quarter.       

RACE/ETHNICITY
[September 2008]  
 Participating Faculty:  Walter Allen, Ruben Hernandez-Leon, Darnell Hunt, David Lopez, Mignon Moore, Vilma Ortiz, Min Zhou
 
Statement of the Field: The race/ethnicity field exam focuses on two areas of enduring concern in sociology: the nature and persistence of ethnic and racial categories and groupings in contemporary societies, and how these structures relate to social stratification systems and political and economic dynamics. The field includes a variety of perspectives and concerns including race relations, racism, ethnic stratification, immigration, ethnic economies and ethnic politics. 
 
Race and ethnicity in the United States today is the central substantive concern, but the field is explicitly comparative, both because no theorizing in this area can be based on the experience of only one society, and also because we are committed to the proposition that the structures of any one society can be understood only with reference to other societies. The field is also historical in the sense that we believe that social structures and attitudes must be understood as historical developments, and we also believe that contemporary ethnic and racial structures need to be understood, if not totally explained, in the context of the spread of European colonialism and imperialism. The reading list includes works written from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including Marxist, Weberian, assimilationist, pluralist, rational choice, social biological and symbolic interactionist. It is also eclectic methodologically, including historical, ethnographic, quantitative and formal theoretical works.
 
Some of the concerns and reading of this field exam overlap with two other current department exam, Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism, and International Migration.  By agreement with the faculty committees for these exams, and as approved by the GCAC and Executive Committees, students taking the Race/Ethnicity Exam may also take either CEN or IM exams, with the understanding that the specific questions a student answers may not overlap.  For example, if a student is taking both R/E and CEN, s/he would not answer a comparative question on the R/E exam.  Field exam directors will be responsible for enforcing this understanding. 
 
Required courses: Soc. 235, Theories of Ethnicity; Soc. 261, Ethnic Minorities.  In the event both of these courses are not offered the same year, students should take 235 or 261 AND one of the recommended courses (see below).
 
Recommended courses: Soc. 230, Comparative Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism; Soc. 236B, International Migration. 
 
Procedures: Participating faculty will meet each spring to select a coordinator for the following year. The coordinator is charged with ensuring that required courses are offered each year.  We follow the Sociology Department uniform examination calendar.
 
The race/ethnicity exam is drawn from a standard list of 15 questions divided into 2 sections. Students prepare for 3 questions, agreed upon by the examinees and coordinator by the second week of the previous quarter.  The exam coordinator chooses 2 questions for the students to answer. Each question will come from a different section of the exam.  In addition to these two questions, students will answer a customized question preferably related to their research interest.  Students will submit a draft of the question and a bibliography, which will be subject to review and final approval by the field exam coordinator.  In total, students will answer three questions.
 
Students have one week to do the exam. Answers to the three questions should be 10 pages for each question. Grading is on a pass/fail basis.  The exam will be read by two participating faculty.   The exam will be offered once every quarter during the regular academic year, following the department’s calendar for field exams, except in the summer. 
 
Readings: Students should be familiar with all the works on the required list, to the extent that they can write intelligently about the principal issues addressed by the book or article, the author's theoretical and methodological orientations, how the work might be criticized or improved, and how it compares with others dealing with similar themes. Students are also expected to be equally familiar with some of the works on the supplementary list, and at least generally familiar with most of the supplementary list.

SOCIAL DEMOGRAPHY
[June 2008]

Participating Faculty:  Brand, Campbell, Frankenberg, Heuveline, Mare, Seltzer, Sweeney, Telles

Statement of the Field: Social Demography will examine key issues and debates related to the biological, economic, social, and environmental causes and consequences of trends and patterns in demographic behaviors such as fertility, marriage, divorce, migration, social stratification, health and mortality. Particular attention will be paid to the rapidly growing literature on the sources and implications of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic differentials in demographic behavior. Students will also be expected to be familiar with important and recent work on aging, the causes and consequences of population growth, and family and household structure and composition. Finally, students will have to demonstrate competence in event history analysis and basic and traditional demographic methods.

Courses:  To prepare for the exam, students will be required to take Soc. M213A, which covers basic demographic methods, and Soc. M213B, which covers event history methods.  Students preparing for the field exam are also required to take Soc. 226AB, which will consider important works related to social demography.

Students are strongly encouraged to take courses that introduce the quantitative methods that are most commonly used by social demographers.  Relevant courses include Soc. 210C or the equivalent, and 212AB or the equivalent, as well as whatever other special topics courses in advanced methods are offered.

In addition to these courses, students will also be expected to take graduate seminars related to social demography as they are offered by members of the department. Typically these seminars will be focused on specific subfields within social demography, and will allow for more detailed readings and discussions on certain issues. Students are also expected to attend colloquia at the California Center for Population Research and enroll in the appropriate section of Soc. 295 every quarter.  Students are further encouraged to take relevant courses in other departments.

Procedures:  Participating faculty will meet every year early in fall quarter. Every other year, they will elect a coordinator who will serve a two-year term and will be responsible for overseeing the details of the exams administered in those years. The associated faculty may also choose an executive to work with the coordinator. At this meeting, the associated faculty will also make whatever plans are necessary for teaching the required courses during the academic year beginning the following fall.

The field exams will normally consist of 3 to 5 essay questions. They will be open book and take home. Students will be allowed three days to complete them. The questions included in each administration of the exam will be decided on by a committee convened by the coordinator.  While students are encouraged to send suggested questions to the coordinator to be relayed to the committee, the committee will have final say, and may use all, some or none of the questions proposed by students.  Normally, the committee will include some or all of the faculty involved in the most recent offerings of 226AB and M213AB.  The two possible grades will be Pass and Fail.

Reading List: The exam questions will normally be based on the content from the most recent offerings of Soc. M213AB and 226AB.  Accordingly, the reading list for the exam consists of the required readings on the syllabi of the most recent offerings of Sociology 226AB and M213AB.  These syllabi are normally available at the class web sites, or can be requested from the instructor.  Students should also be familiar with recent publications in the leading journals of the field.  These journals include Population Studies, Population and Development Review, and Demography.  Students should also be familiar with relevant papers appearing in the leading sociology journals, such as American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology. Students will also be expected to be aware of and familiar with the contents of major reference works that provide demographic data, for example, the U.N. Demographic Yearbook, U.S. Census Publications, and so forth.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY
[June 2008]

Participating Faculty: Jennie Brand, Robert Mare, Judith Seltzer, Megan Sweeney

Statement of the field:  This field covers the modern research literature on social stratification and social mobility in the U.S. and abroad, as represented in journal articles and research monographs. It includes concepts, data, methods, and facts about: occupational and class structure; the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status; the effects of family, school, and labor market on socioeconomic achievement, careers, and inequality; earnings, income, and wealth distribution; poverty; subjective aspects of stratification, including socialization, the effects of work on personality, social distance, and class identification; social mobility; socioeconomic factors and marriage; and gender and ethnic stratification.

Required courses:  No course is required for this field exam. However it is strongly recommended that students take Sociology 239 (“Introduction to Research on Social Stratification and Mobility.”). This is a two-quarter course with in progress grading after the first quarter. It has been offered biennially for more than 15 years and will continue to be offered on this basis. Jennie Brand and Rob Mare are teaching the course during the 2007-08 academic year and plan to teach it again in 2009-10.

Format:  The exam will be a take-home written exam, consisting of 3-5 essay questions that are written by the examining committee. These questions will concern theoretical, empirical, and methodological questions in the subfield of social stratification. They may require that a student analyze empirical data or formulate a research design relevant to stratification research.

Students will be typically asked to limit their answers to a combined total of 25 double-spaced pages (plus additional pages for references, tables, or figures as required by specific questions). Students will be given approximately four days to complete the exam, which will typically be given over a long weekend.

Reading list:  None. The syllabus for Sociology 239 provides a list of key readings that students who take the field exam should have mastered. However, students should also be familiar with works that do not appear on this syllabus, including (but not restricted to) recently published articles on stratification in leading journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Research in Social Stratification and Mobility and recently published books and monographs. The Sociology 239 Syllabus is attached to this application. However, students should not confine their preparation for or answers to the field exam questions to the material covered on the Soc. 239 Syllabus.

SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE
[June 2008]

Participating Faculty: Clayman, Emigh, Halle, Hunt, Kligman, Prager, Rossman, Roy, Saguy, Zucker

The Field:  The domain of the Sociology of Culture Field Examination is social activity by which people negotiate meaning, express and interpret symbols, and construct the aesthetic dimension of societies.  It addresses both the cultural dimension that permeates all social life and the specialized institutions that specifically engage in symbolic expression.  The scope of study spans the broadly macrosociological comparison of entire societies to the more microsociological probing of small groups and individual minds.  While insisting that all inquiry is theoretically informed, the emphasis in this program is on empirically-based analysis using a variety of methods.  We also emphasize the continuity of culture to other sociological themes such as race, class, gender, institutions, interaction, language, power, and change.  The goal of the field exam is to equip the student with the background to conduct research and teach cultural sociology/sociology of culture.

Courses:  Sociology 245, “Cultural Sociology” and Sociology 246 “Sociology of Culture” are required.  It is recommended that students take the exam as soon after completing these courses as feasible.  “Cultural Sociology” generally concerns how meaning and symbols affect all social life.  “Sociology of Culture” generally concerns the production, distribution, and reception of mediated meaning and symbols, especially art, literature, music, drama, cinema, etc.  These courses are offered at least every other year and when possible every year.

Format:  The exam is offered according to the department’s schedule for field exams. It will be taken on one day between 9 am and 5 pm.  Not less than three weeks before the exam, the student’s faculty advisor will submit to the Examination Committee a two or three page  statement of interests written by the student and approved by his/her academic advisor.  This statement should summarize how the student’s research and teaching interests fit into the field and should span one of the topic headings in the reading list. The student in consultation with his/her advisor and the chair of the culture field exam may supplement the reading list. This statement of interest and the reading list in the subfield will provide the basis for the exam committee to construct a specialized question for the student.  It is understood that the specialized question is to be tailored to the student’s interests. The examination committee will also construct a general question that can be answered with the starred readings from all the subfields. These questions will concern the general development or state of the field and the relationship among different subfields. Both the general and specialty questions will be presented to the student on the day of the exam.  The student will answer both questions.  Thus the student is responsible for mastering the starred readings from all subfields and all readings from one subfield of his/her choice.

Readings:  Please see the online list (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/07F/soc245-1/Field_Examination_List.htm). There are 26 core readings requiring of all students and denoted by stars. In addition, each student chooses one specialty list and covers all readings on that list. These areas are cultural production; individual, self, and society; inequality; and meaning.

SOCIOLOGY OF THE FAMILY
[June 2008]

Coordinator: Megan Sweeney

Participating faculty: Zsuzsa Berend, Cameron Campbell, Elizabeth Frankenberg, Ana Maria Goldani, Patrick Heuveline, Gail Kligman, Robert Mare, Mignon Moore, Vilma Ortiz, Judith Seltzer, Megan Sweeney

Statement of the Field: As sociologists, we conceptualize the family as a social institution – meaning it involves a set of social roles (such as parent, partner, or child), with some shared understanding of expectations regarding how we should behave in these roles and what kinds of obligations are associated with them. As with any social institution, the family is malleable over time, across contexts, and can be difficult to define at its margins. Students taking the field exam are expected to be familiar with the wide variety of substantive topics and methodological approaches reflected in the work of family sociologists.

Required Courses: Students are required to take at least two courses from among the following: Sociology 205, Family and Social Change; Sociology 226B, Introduction to Theory and Major Empirical Research in Social Demography; Sociology 252, Selected Topics in Sociology of Gender; Sociology 257, Demography of Marriage Formation and Dissolution. The content of these courses will vary across instructors, as will their relevance to the Sociology of the Family field exam.

Readings: In addition to material on the core reading list, students are required to be familiar with major contemporary research on the family. Students should keep current with the major journals in which family sociologists publish their work, for example American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Family Issues, and Journal of Marriage and Family. Students are also expected to be familiar with research winning major awards in the field of Sociology of the Family, such as recipients of the American Sociological Association’s William J. Goode Book Award and the National Council on Family Relations’ Reuben Hill Award.

Procedures: The Sociology of the Family field exam is offered according to the standard departmental schedule. The exam committee is composed of two faculty members, to be determined in consultation with the student’s advisor. The exam format will normally include three to five questions provided by the faculty, although students are encouraged to suggest potential questions. Use of student-provided questions, either in original or modified form, is up to the discretion of the exam committee. Students taking the Sociology of the Family field exam are permitted to take field exams in any other area, but those who have taken (or plan to take) field exams in the areas of Sociology of Gender or Social Demography will be required to submit the questions previously answered on their first field exam to the committee for their second field exam. Substantially overlapping questions will not be permitted. Students have three days to complete the field exam, which is open book and take home. Possible grades on the field exam are pass with distinction, pass, fail.

SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER
[June 2008]

Coordinator: Mignon Moore (2008-2009)

Participating Faculty:  Hart, Kligman, Lee, Milkman, Moore, Ortiz, Saguy

Statement of the Field:  This field exam is concerned with gender inequality and the social processes producing and reproducing them. It includes both macrosociological and microsociological perspectives on these processes.  It also encompasses the growing scholarship on the intersection between race, class and gender. 

Critical Issues:  What are the processes through which gender is socially constructed?  How and why do gender arrangements vary over time and space?  Under what circumstances does gender difference produce gender inequality? What is the relationship between gender inequality and other forms of inequality, like those based on race and class?  To what extent can gender categories be considered "universal," and to what extent do race, class, age, sexual preference and other differences that cross-cut gender divisions make them problematic?  How is gender inequality and gender difference maintained and reproduced in modern society?  To what extent is gender a product of structural arrangements and to what extent is it produced in interaction?  What are the differences between liberal, radical, and socialist feminist theories of gender inequality?  To what extent can psychoanalytic theory be considered a theory of gender difference?  How has postmodernist epistemology challenged previous forms of feminist theory? How have early second wave feminist theories been transformed by the recent theoretical interventions of women of color and others emphasizing problems of exclusion in mainstream feminist thought?

Courses:  Students who choose to take this field exam are required to complete two graduate level courses offered by the affiliated faculty that concern gender issues.  The graduate course in feminist theory (Sociology M238) is particularly recommended.  Any course in the Sociology M252 (Selected Topics in the Sociology of Gender) series can also be used to fulfill the requirement. Courses taught in other departments can also be used for this requirement with the approval of the director of the field exam committee and the student’s faculty advisor.  Students are strongly encouraged to take more than two courses from these options. In addition, depending on class offerings, students may need to do a fair amount of independent reading to adequately prepare for the exam.

Procedures:  Participating faculty will meet each spring to select the coordinator.  The coordinator will be charged with the task of ensuring that at least one of the courses noted above are offered each year.

This field examination will be in the form of a take-home essay exam.  Students will have up to 7 days to complete the exam. Each exam will consist of three essay questions which will be limited to 15 pages each.  The following grades will be possible on the examination: Pass with Distinction, Pass, and Fail

Readings:  Students who choose to take this exam are expected to have a broad familiarity with feminist theory and the internal debates within it, and with major empirical works in the sociology of gender.   In regard to the former, each student is expected to master the list of core, required readings, although the list below is meant only as a general guide to key works.  In addition, each student is expected to design her or his own, customized course of study which both expands on the core list to include other general works and focuses on two empirical sub-areas within the sociology of gender.  These might include (but are not limited to): gender and work; gender and reproduction; gender and sexuality; gender, race, and class; gender and development; gender and health; gender and culture; men and masculinity.  Each student’s reading list must be approved by the field exam coordinator and by the student’s faculty advisor.  In addition, students are expected to be familiar with the work on gender by UCLA faculty members affiliated with the gender exam. To facilitate this, a list of readings by UCLA gender faculty is included after the core reading list.

URBAN AND SUBURBAN SOCIOLOGY
[renewed June 2008]

Participating Faculty:  Rebecca Emigh, Adrian Favell, David Halle, Ruben Hernandez-Leon, Jack Katz, Ivan Light, Edward Telles, Min Zhou

Statement of the field: This field comprises the major topics in urban and suburban sociology. The field, as we envisage it for teaching purposes, divides into two main, though overlapping, sections:

1.  Urbanization   historical and comparative perspectives including globalization.
This field comprises historical and cross country variations in urbanization. Topics include: the earliest origins of cities, preindustrial cities, historical urbanization, urban primacy, urban hierarchies, city/state relations, urban regimes, urban morphologies, immigration and racial/ethnic groups, the culture of urbanism, and globalization/global cities.

2. Urbanization and suburbanization in the United States.
This field comprises such master topics as the history and current status of American cities and the development of suburbanization. It also comprises a host of subtopics including the growth machine, streetcar suburbs, transportation, housing, urban and suburban politics, underclass debates, immigration, economics, crime, education, racial and ethnic groups, discrimination in the residential setting and so on.

GIS/Computer mapping.   Students will be encouraged to learn the techniques of Graphical Information Systems/computer mapping, which will usually be taught as part of Soc 297.  Students will learn the basics of G.I.S.  by analyzing U.S. census data, at the level of the census tract and other geographic boundaries, for the New York City and Los Angeles regions for 2000 and 1990. Students will also map other data sets, such as voting patterns for Presidential and local elections in the Los Angeles and New York City regions at the detailed level of the voting precinct, as well as at broader levels such as State Assembly Districts and U.S. Congressional Districts.

Required Course:  Soc 297 Urban and Suburban Sociology of the United States .

Procedures: The Committee will elect the Chair each year. The committee will meet each January to ensure that required and recommended courses are offered at appropriate intervals.  

Before signing up for the exam, students must nominate a two-person field exam committee from the affiliated faculty.

In consultation with the two members of the committee, students are to prepare and submit to the committee for its formal approval two "study lists.”
(1) A "core reading list" will include about 20 30 works drawn mostly from the “core list” below, that, in one way or the other, address some of the critical issues.

(2) A supplementary list. This is a list of works (books and articles), other than the works already on the core list, constituting the "literature" addressing critical issues on which the student wants to focus.

Students will then submit four proposed exam questions (two drawing on the core list and two drawing on the supplementary list) to their committee at least four weeks before the exam date. The student’s committee, in consultation with the field exam coordinator, will decide on the final form of the exam questions, which may or may not include those proposed by the student, but will certainly draw upon them.

Students will be given three exam questions. Students will receive the exam by 10 a.m. on the exam date and must return their answers within 72 hours. The total page limit is 10,000 words but students are encouraged to write more concisely than that.  The following  grades will be possible: Pass, Fail, Pass with Distinction.

Examinations will be offered on Friday of the first full week of instruction each quarter, and on Friday of the second or third week after the official end of spring quarter. Students must sign up for examinations by informing the Graduate Affairs Officer and the field examination coordinator for that selected field no later than the first official day of the quarter in which the exam is to be taken. At this point, students and faculty should have coordinated reading lists and topics and exam committees should be in place. The field exam coordinator will inform the Graduate Affairs Officer and the graduate student of the results within 3 weeks of the end of the exam.

Last update: March 17, 2009