2024-2025 Academic Year
Chair
Alex Khasnabish, BA Honours (McMaster), MA (McMaster), PhD (McMaster), Professor
The Sociology/Anthropology Department offers a joint undergraduate program in Sociology and Anthropology. The department’s goals are as follows:
- to engage our students through a critical, social justice orientation to social processes, policies and structures, with a special emphasis on women
- to challenge our students in the process of making sense of the world, to understand the effects of social problems and to encourage them to make a difference by integrating theory and practice
- to provide our majors and honours students with qualitative and quantitative research skills that will be valuable in a variety of academic and non-academic contexts upon graduation
- to provide high quality courses to programs in allied disciplines and interdisciplinary programs at the Mount
These goals can be summarized in the slogan of our department: JUSTICE, EQUALITY, COMMUNITY AND CHANGE. Right from our first year introductory course, students will be exposed to both qualitative and quantitative methods and encouraged to apply them to issues that are meaningful in their lives. Majors and honours students will be given practical instruction on a variety of social research methodologies, data analysis techniques including the use of disciplinary standard software packages, and the production and dissemination of research results. SOAN majors also take courses in sociological and anthropological theory, giving them a chance to explore core ideas of the disciplines. While our program seeks to provide students with a solid grounding and broad exposure to these disciplines’ theories and practice, our approach is to downplay the artificial boundaries that separate Sociology and Anthropology. These boundaries are particularly unimportant in a world where the major issues are all at least partly global in nature. Beyond the core courses, majors have significant freedom to concentrate on various substantive areas through the selection of appropriate electives. Throughout these courses, our goal is to engage students in social issues, to provide tools so they can do their own analyses, and to empower them.
The Sociology/Anthropology Department also plays a significant role in providing required and/or elective courses to students in other academic programs at the University, including Child and Youth Study, Cultural Studies, Education, Family Studies and Gerontology, Peace and Conflict Studies, Political and Canadian Studies, Public Policy Studies, Public Relations and Women’s Studies.
The Sociology/Anthropology curriculum is designed to provide students with analytical, writing, research and presentation skills and to prepare majors for a variety of careers in social service, social policy and social research professions, and for graduate studies and other professional programs. Our program prepares students to be informed, active, and responsible participants in the increasingly complex social life of the modern world.
The Department of Sociology/Anthropology does not accept Challenge for Credit.
Students may count courses from a major, concentration and/or minor towards a second major, concentration and/or minor; however, students must complete a minimum of 50 percent of unique courses toward the second major, concentration and/or minor, unless otherwise stated in the Undergraduate Academic Calendar.