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For the past six decades, Berkeley’s Sociology Department has consistently been ranked among the world’s top sociology departments. Our graduate program is ranked #1 in the latest U.S. News and World Report, and our undergrad degree is currently the best in the US according to College Factual and features on Grad Reports’ Best College List 2020.
News & Events
Prof. Einstein served graduate students as a model of prudence in remaining unfashionably true to the grand…
Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist Between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families
Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist Between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families
Ever since Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s controversial 1965 report on “The Negro Family,” the disadvantages of the single-parent household have been at the center of debates about racial inequality in the United States. In particular, absent fathers and single-parent homes are seen as fundamental to the “tangle of pathology” that supposedly underlies Black disadvantage. Redressing inequality thus requires interventions that promote marriage and shore up the two-parent family. Inherited Inequality is a decisive refutation of this narrative and a definiti...
Departmental Colloquium Series
Austin H. Vo "Translocal Leverage and Challenges to Empire in French Indochina and French West Africa"
Monday, November 9, 2026 - 2:00 pm - Monday, November 9, 2026 - 3:30 pm
Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Abstract: Why did political elites contest colonialism through a revolutionary path in Vietnam compared to an accommodationist one in Senegal? Drawing on original archival research in Vietnam, Senegal, and France, I examine how global economic shifts granted local economic intermediaries leverage as brokers between society, market, and state. This leverage generated uncertainty regarding political elites’ standing vis-à-vis the state to shape early challenges to colonialism. Using an actor-centric and relational approach, I show how and why accommodation was foreclosed in Vietnam yet prevailed in Senegal.