Social Analysis

Let’s break this down, shall we?

SOCIAL: Okay, looking good so far. Social things are usually fun. Dances, cocktail parties, getting to know people. Hmm, maybe this is the Core where I get to learn about interpersonal relationships. Maybe it’s the Core where I’ll find my one true love!

ANALYSIS: Fuck.

Turn that frown upside down, dear reader. Social Analysis isn’t the sexiest of Core categories, but it ain’t the dreariest either. (Hello, Moral Reasoning.) Besides, many of you won’t have to worry about it to begin with. Social Analysis 10 = Ec 10 = Harvard’s most popular freshman class. For those who foresee a high-flying life in finance—or for those who have no idea what they want to do with their lives and hey, economics could be interesting, right? right?—this is the easiest shopping choice you’ll ever make. One year of Adam Smith and N. Gregory Mankiw (guess which one worked in the Bush administration!) and you’ll be able to justify all manner of evil. It’s practical, painless, and potentially profitable. Best of all, you’ll be done with Social Analysis, right off the first-year bat. BAM!

But for that rare Harvard student with a soul, the punishment for avoiding the freshman year Ec 10 route is having to take a Social Analysis somewhere down the line. But never fear! There are several perfectly amenable options to knock off this core without dropping a sweat—and maybe even learning a few things while you’re at it.

So what’s Social Analysis all about? This core tries to provide an introduction to the research methodology and tools of the social sciences. Most of these courses will offer you a watered-down version of a discipline whose department you barely knew existed: linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, public health, et al. Readings can range from dull-as-dust political science graphs to fascinating social theory that will change the way you look at life. Take a cue from uber-popular psychology professor Tal Ben-Shahar and look at this Core from a positive perspective: you get to gab about how society works and, worst case scenario, you’re stuck in a boring but easy class. Could be worse. (Ahem…Moral Reasoning.)

For the guttiest gut this side of Nickelodeon’s much-missed “GUTS!”, turn to Professor James L. Watson’s awesomely bad survey, “Food and Culture.” It’s Anthro-lite, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Pro: You talk about food, all the time. Con: No food is actually distributed at lecture, so you leave hungry. (Though sometimes section presentations are spiced up with delicious cookies or chips.) Pro: You touch on some thought-provoking material and receive a fascinating introduction to schools of cultural theory, a field that has interdisciplinary applications in literature, history, and the rest of the humanities. Con: The lectures can frequently be content-free. You sit there for 45 minutes, periodically dozing off (last spring the course met at 10 a.m. in Yenching, which is a killer walk for the lazy), and when you stumble out into the light, you realize you’ve taken about five sentences of notes. Yup: Watson literally said nothing.

Basically he shows slides of his farm in Iowa. But the TFs can be cute and a lot of fun—high marks go to Joon, a laid-back West Point grad who showed Conan O’Brien clips in class—and the term paper topic is wiiide-open. One senior wrote about marijuana and food in stoner movies like “Half-Baked.” Fun fact: getting high before writing these papers can be helpful.

If you’d prefer a more edifying, less edible experience, check out “Culture, Illness, and Healing: An Introduction to Medical Anthropology,” a theory-intensive class popular with pre-meds. Yeah, sounds tough, but we hear you learn a hell of a lot. Plus, if you’re a humanities major, you have a couple of advantages: first, pre-meds can’t write for shit. Second, your philosophy lectures and History & Literature tutorials prep you just fine for the theory that Professor Arthur Kleinman throws down. Lit-critters, this is a fine complement to those depressing “Writing About Illness” seminars.

For those who prefer Adam Duritz to Adam Smith, there’s Professor Stephen Marglin’s Social Analysis 72, which offers a “critical approach” to econ. Basically, you get a full year’s Ec survey in one semester, but with a liberal twist. That’s a lot of ground to cover, but enrollees say it’s worth the work, and you get to hear Marglin point out why Mankiw and the rest of his conservative colleagues are full of it. In this course, you can keep it real—and keep a backup in case that job at Goldman is too tempting to turn down come senior spring.

What else? Social Analysis 66, “Race, Ethnicity, and Politics in the United States” has decently interesting subject matter, but the syllabus gets bogged down in numbers-based poli-sci essays. Social Analysis 34, “Knowledge of Language” seems like a cool introduction to linguistics, which is a really underrated field; theories of language can teach you a lot about life. Social Analysis 43, “Psychological Trauma” is another “cool subject, boring reading” combination. And there’s some wonky stuff like Professor of Sociology Theda Skocpol’s “American Society and Public Policy,” (Social Analysis 54) which all you gov-types will love.