Culture and Power

Course Code
SOC 3056
Credits
3
Department
Ian Mullins
Assistant Professor
Students in this course will explore the interplay between particular forms of culture and power over time as it relates to the production and spread of expert knowledge. They will follow a lineage of “utilitarian” thought that developed in late eighteenth century England and has since become central to the cultural impulses and ideology of American psychologists, medical researchers, economists, data scientists, and tech entrepreneurs. Through the course materials, they will learn about how relatively small and privileged groups of economic elites and knowledge experts turned their notions of human nature, social relationships, and what it means to live a “good life” into the reality within which many other people must live