SPOL 210

Social Inequality

For academic year

2025

This course engages with critical theories of social inequality and the approaches that can be taken to address inequalities, locally and internationally. The course equips students with the conceptual tools necessary for understanding inequalities as interconnected and multifaceted. Through diverse theories, policy analysis and case studies, students will learn to understand and analyse the dynamics of power and gain critical insight on current social inequality issues. This course is also able to be taken towards a minor in SPOL.

Course overview

Points

20

Prerequisites

(40 points from PUBL 113, ECON 130 or Part A of the BA Schedule) or GLBL 101

Restrictions

SPOL 306 in 2013-2022

Taught by

The School of Social & Cultural Studies

Wellington Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Course content

CRN 37406 is for online students, CRN 35074 is for students who will be coming to campus. Click the CRN and see Teaching Format for more information

Course learning objectives

Students who pass this course will be able to:

1 Describe theories of inequality and the problems of defining social inequality

2 Explain conceptual issues relating to class, gender, race and ethnicity

3 Summarise debates about how different facets of social inequality are or are not inter-related

4 Use the concepts of intersectionality, class, gender, race and ethnicity in the analysis of social inequality in Aotearoa and beyond to generate critical and political insight on current social inequality issues