This course explores major traditions of research inquiry in the social sciences and familiarizes students with the cross-disciplinary character of contemporary social scientific research. Through discovery-based interrogations of foundational ideas and questions in the disciplinary fields of sociology, anthropology, political economy, and development studies, students will gain an appreciation of the ways social researchers across disciplines have sought to pose intriguing questions and explain specific social phenomena. Students will work on a project which requires them to identify selected social problems and formulate a theoretically informed research proposal.