This course is designed to make the students familiar with the main topics and discussions in the field of historical sociology. Firstly, the history of the historical sociology is focused to see how the relation between the disciplines of history and sociology has evolved and what kind of discussions have been made about theory and methodology. Another aim of the course is to study some major works in the field to see different approaches and concerns by some major scholars. Here, the issues of civilization, state, revolution, citizenship, and capitalist development are especially explored in order to understand the historical foundations of contemporary societies. Besides these topics, attention will also be paid to theoretical debates on understanding the origins, continuity, and change of social institutions.

• Sociology | Curriculum | Prerequisites / Conditions Graph

This course explores sociologically and anthropologically the concepts of postcolonialism, racism and cosmopolitanism with a view as to highlight how they relate to each other theoretically and historically. The course defines postcolonialism as both a critical reflection on the colonial era and as a school of thought, which traces current day remnants of colonial ordering around the world in terms of race, class and gender relations. Towards arriving at a critical study of history as well as class and power relations, the course offers an introduction to Subaltern Studies. Students will be encouraged to think reflexively on historical creations of concepts such as “self” and “other,” especially in relation to the concepts of Europe, Eurocentrism, Orientalism and Occidentalism. The course also problematizes race as a category used to legitimize social inequality through the racialization of difference. The final weeks of inquiry will turn to cosmopolitanism as a way of understanding belonging and ethics within the framework of the contemporary conjuncture. By the end of the semester, the students will have acquired the tools necessary to employ the interrelated themes of this course in conversation with other sociological theory as well as in relation to current day political debates.

As the course is a part of Economic Geography, it starts with a review on the history of world civilizations, characteristics of civilization and development of society (hunter-gatherers, agricultural society, industrial revolution, etc). The course continues with the essentials of geography with respect to the concepts of travels and tourism, sustainability, and links the theory to the introduction of major tourism attractions in Turkey and worldwide regions, based on written and visual materials.

This course aims to present special interest tourism and its relationship with mass tourism through an analysis of factors that have enabled a wide diversity of special interest tourism products to emerge.