In  this  course  we  investigate  a  series  of  major  changes  that
have  significantly  altered  family  institutions,  inequality  and
poverty,  gender  relations,  the  economy  and  class  structure,
government  policy,  and  mass  opinion.  A  key  part  of  our  focus
is  on  the  United  States  in  the  historical  era  since  the
1960s.  But  to  fully  understand  how  and  why  American  society
has  (and  has  not)  changed,  we  consider  in  detail  the
important  lessons  provided  by  European  democracies  such  as
Sweden  and  the  Netherlands,  where  high  levels  of  economic
development  coexist  with  much  lower  levels  of  poverty  and
inequality.  This  will  enable  us  to  appreciate  better  the
remarkable  diversity  of  developed  democracies,  a  phenomenon
that  continues  to  be  poorly‐understood  in  the  media  and  in
most  political  discussions.

These  investigations  will  also  introduce  us  to  a  key  idea  of
the  course,  namely,  that  the  nature  and  possibilities  for
social  change  are  linked  to  principles  around  which  a  society
is  organized.  To  better  understand  this  phenomenon,  we
consider  leading  theories  of  social  and  political  change
advanced  by  scholars.  We  also  probe  the  mechanisms  underlying
contemporary  American  society  and  its  European  counterparts,
considering  the  likely  forms  of  social  change  in  the  near
future.