Governance Research Cluster

The Governance Cluster brings together faculty and graduate students in the Department of Sociology who are interested in the structures, processes and beliefs that shape collective decision-making and action across changing local, national and global political contexts.

Governance as distinct from government, then, addresses both formal aspects of government as well as the informal social and political expectations that accompany the application of authority. The aim of the cluster is to enhance intra- and inter-disciplinary scholarship that is united by concerns about issues of "governance" in order to stimulate new research, theories and empirical projects.

The cluster offers three graduate seminars: one on "Governance" as a broad umbrella concept that covers a wide range of collective decision-making concerns; one on "Neoliberalism" as an emergent governance regime; and one on “Social and Political Ecology” and therefore competing conceptions of environmental governance.
 

  • Cluster-related seminars and courses
  • SOC 295 – Gender and Race in Organizations (seminar)
    SOC 280 – Organizations and Institutions (seminar)
    STS 180 – Topics in Science and Technology Studies: Science and Power in California (seminar)
    SOC 215 – Economy, Policy and Society (seminar)
    SOC 295 – The Welfare State (seminar)
    SOC 295 – Categories, Boundaries and Identities (seminar)
    SOC 295 – History and Political Economy of Neoliberalism (seminar)

    Please read the course descriptions for more information.