Sociology Department

In the Sociology Department at UC Santa Cruz, we want to shake things up. We challenge the basic precepts people bring to their understanding of society and culture. We are leaders in theoretically-oriented, empirically-grounded, and methodologically diverse social science. Across a range of quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive approaches, we remain committed to interdisciplinary collaboration and critically engaged research and teaching. Our approach reflects the vast complexities of the modern, interconnected world. In order to adequately understand large-scale social problems, we combine areas that are often viewed separately: politics and emotion, science and justice, nature and the city. We imagine social actors working together to create new and different possibilities. Our approach is both critical and interdisciplinary. We study macro-level social issues, examine social systems, and focus on how these problems are experienced and affect people’s everyday lives. **About us** Sociology considers how society is organized in relation to a vision of a just, liberatory, and equal society—a vision that may require fundamental social change. As such, our teaching aims to help students develop an understanding of the double aspect of society: the interrelationship between social order and social change. An equally important and necessarily implicated teaching goal is the development of an appreciation for disciplined inquiry, observation, and research. Our department’s research offers new insights on social groups, institutional structures, and social interaction, including the contexts of human action, like social institutions, systems of beliefs and values, and the patterns to which social relations conform. We focus our efforts within five broad [research areas](https://sociology.ucsc.edu/research/research-areas/): - political economies and ecologies - space, place, and mobility - culture, knowledge, and power - publics, policy, and law - world building, political imaginaries, and alternative futures. We invite you to learn more about our approach to [research](https://sociology.ucsc.edu/research/) and how these five major research focus areas inform our [academics](https://sociology.ucsc.edu/academics/). The Sociology Department also houses the interdisciplinary [Community Studies Program](https://communitystudies.wordpress.ucsc.edu/academics/ba-program/), which teaches strategies for social justice movements through extensive field study.