Option Courses
All MA programmes in the Department of Sociology comprise of core courses and optional courses. Please see details below of option courses available within the Department for 2011/12:
SO71042B - NAVIGATING URBAN LIFE
CONVENOR - CAROLINE KNOWLES
COURSE TYPE - CORE FOR MA WCUL/PUC + OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED - FRIDAYS - AUTUMN 2011
ASSESSMENT - 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course addresses significant issues in the contemporary organisation of urban landscapes, urban life and connections between cities as well as the interface between human and architectural fabric. Drawing on specific empirical examples in based in China, Hong Kong, the US, London and parts of mainland Europe this course examines key debates in urban sociology and research. There is a strong focus on visual apprehension of cities and ways of accessing and researching cities through photography. The following sessions have been offered in previous years:
• A tour of 'urban theory' from the Chicago School to the present day. This sets up the conceptual basis for the session following which, although empirically focused on specific cities, illuminate different conceptual frameworks for understanding urbanism.
•Whose City? This examines debates concerned with the social production of space and rights to the city. An examination of ghetto urbanism in the US through Wacquant, Bourdieu, Bourgeois and the research through which this kind of urban knowledge is generated.
•Pastness and Urban Landscape. This examines discrepant and linear notions of time/interpretations of pastness, collective memory, and how pasts are inscribed within urban landscapes. We will draw mainly on visually-led investigation of Hong Kong and London to explore these themes.
•Post-Colonial Cities. This session examines the intersections between globalisation and colonialism in Hong Kong and in the lives of ‘skilled’ migrants from the global North. It makes extensive use of photographic narratives of Hong Kong as an iconic city landscape and the use of environmental portraiture to capture migrants’ relationships to the city.
•Globalisation, Migration and Urban Life. Drawing on visual empirical research on mosques and African churches in London this session examines the impact of recent and current migration on commerce, religion and city landscape. It sets this in broader debates about globalisation and cities developed from the previous session.
• Material Cultures and Multiple Globalisations. This session draws on some of the more ordinary trajectories of commodities and collaborations composing the global world through small trade between China/Hong Kong and Africa, and Europe and Africa.
•Mega-Cities and Non-City Zones. This session is set in China. It examines architecture, the generic city, land speculation and the dynamics between mega-cities and economic and technical development zones through some of the lives that are lived in them.
•Urban Regeneration. This session examines the politics, debates, conceptualisation and social divisions generated and sustained in urban renewal projects. Who benefits from these projects? How do they reconstruct cities? We will draw specifically on Olympic-related redevelopments in Athens, London, and Beijing.
•Architectural and Planning Politics. This session examines ways in which political and military decisions are embedded in architecture and planning. It draws on Weizman’s Hollow Land and asks questions about whether this involves a radical re-conceptualisation of space.
• Mobilities. This session is concerned with movement and routes as well as the infrastructure and technologies of mobility such as bridges, roads, airports, stations, tunnels, trains, motor transport, and shipping. It asks critical questions about whether these approaches to space generate information about social morphology or social life more generally.
SO71051A - WHAT IS CULTURE? KEY THEORETICAL INTERVENTIONS
CONVENOR - MONICA SASSATELLI
COURSE TYPE - CORE FOR MA CCA + OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED - FRIDAYS – AUTUMN 2011
ASSESSMENT - 5-6K WORD ESSAY
In this course we will be exploring the following questions: How should we think about the notion of ‘culture’? What does it mean to argue that something is ‘cultural’? What is the relationship between forms of power and culture? In what sense is culture performative? How should we think about the notion of critique in relation to culture? This core course introduces students to key theoretical thinkers, locating them within their different intellectual trajectories and illustrating their arguments with reference to specific cultural objects, events or debates. Particular attention is paid to the philosophical, political and ethical implications of a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of culture, cultural processes and cultural politics in the contemporary world. The course aims to give students a sense of the development of the study of culture through a critical, detailed introduction to some of the key thinkers within it.
This is a core course for MA Creative and Critical Analysis but it is available to be taken by students on any MA programme in the Sociology department.
SO71054B - MODELLING SOCIAL DATA I
CONVENOR - AIDAN KELLY
COURSE TYPE - CORE FOR MA SR + OPTION (30 CATS) ONLY FOR MA BRAND STUDENTS
SCHEDULED - THURSDAYS - AUTUMN 2011
ASSESSMENT - 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course provides advanced level training in social statistics and the role of statistical analysis in theoretically informed quantitative social research. The initial part of the course introduces the methods and procedures of quantitative social research, including the formulation of research questions, use of previous research, the role of hypotheses models and model building, operationalisation of concepts and study design. A key focus is on the social survey, using the example of the General Household Survey. Close attention is paid to criteria of causal inference, internal and external validity and reliability. In covering bivariate analysis, a central concern is the distinction between the measurement of association and the assessment of confidence in findings (internal and external validity). The logic and criteria for choice of measures of association is covered. This analysis is then extended to multivariate cross-tabulations and the elaboration paradigm preparing for the more advanced multivariate techniques based on log-linear modelling. The course also basic descriptive and inferential statistics (levels of measurement, univariate analysis, statistical significance and confidence intervals). The learning objectives of this course are delivered through a combination of lectures, class workshop exercises and separately organised computer laboratory classes. The course does not make advanced level mathematical demands, but students will be expected to spend independent time practising and using SPSS following the instructions in the lab guides provided.
SO71062B - MODELLING SOCIAL DATA II
CONVENOR - AIDAN KELLY
COURSE TYPE - CORE FOR MA SR + OPTION (30 CATS) ONLY FOR MA BRAND STUDENTS
SCHEDULED - THURSDAYS - SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT - 2 X 2-3K WORD ESSAYS
This course will further develop your skills in quantitative and qualitative data analysis using widely available software. The content will be taught in conjunction with training in the use of two packages that are world industry-30 in social research: SPSS and NVIVO. The emphasis is on learning how to use these packages with real data sets such as the NHS formula funding data set and data from focus groups discussing new men’s magazines (such as Loaded and FHM). The course is offered in four blocks. First, building on your existing knowledge of SPSS and social statistics (see note at end) this section will cover the use of multiple regression analysis to explore causal models relating to data used to allocate health services resources (London area subset). The next block is concerned with assumption testing in regression analysis. The fourth block is concerned with using NVIVO. ‘Grounded theory’ and content analysis provide approaches to the analysis of qualitative data derived from interviews, focus groups, field notes, transcripts or texts. This will involve: developing analytic strategies and theoretical themes to search through coded data; developing coding schemes, entering codes and managing theory, and methods memo files in Nvivo.
SO71068A - POLITICS, IDENTITY & THE LAW
CONVENOR - KIRSTEN CAMPBELL
COURSE TYPE - OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED - FRIDAYS – SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT - 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course explores contemporary debates concerning the relationship between identity and the law. It examines theories of the identity and the law, and explores key approaches, such as queer, feminist and critical race theory. The course critically analyses these approaches to identity and the law by applying these theories to case studies such as the legal construction of ethnicity and gender in immigration; hate speech and crimes; equal opportunities law; human rights and international criminal law. By the end of the course, you will have a thorough and critical knowledge of key theories of the legal construction of identity. You will gain a thorough knowledge of theories of politics, identity and the law. You will be encouraged critically analyse these key debates in relationship to contemporary issues in the area of legal identity. The course does not assume that you have any prior knowledge of law or socio-legal research, but will develop your skills in these areas.
SO71070A & SO71070B - THROUGH THE LENS PART A & PART B
PLEASE NOTE THAT PART A IS OPEN TO ALL MA STUDENTS BUT PART B IS ONLY OPEN TO SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS
CONVENOR: PAUL HALLIDAY
COURSE TYPE: CORE FOR MA PUC + OPTION – (30 CATS PER COURSE)
SCHEDULED: THURSDAYS - AUTUMN & SPRING 2011/2
ASSESSMENT: 1 X 5-6K WORD ESSAY FOR EACH TERM
This course is taken as a full unit (Autumn and Spring terms) by MA Photography and Urban Cultures students. It may be taken as two half unit options in the Autumn and Spring terms by MA students in the Sociology department; the Autumn term course is a prerequisite for the Spring term course, but may be taken as a single course. The first term focuses on debates around ‘critiques of the real’, globalisation and the city, and the visual representation of place and space. The second term focuses on urban identities, culture and the construction of self through portraiture and the family album.
This course aims to introduce students to contemporary examples of photographic practice and the representation of city life. Much has been written about the way the photographic lens operates to survey and govern the definition of what is ‘real’. This course will evaluate these perspectives critically. Does the lens only look one-way? This raises the question posed most eloquently by John Berger, namely, when a photograph is taken “who is looking at who?”
This course offers students a range of critical perspectives on photographic practice from within sociology, geography, anthropology, cultural studies and visual arts theory. It also includes discussions of the work of contemporary media practitioners and photographic artists and examines key issues in relation to visual ethnography, the place of photography in news media and fine art practice. Participants will be introduced to a number of theoretical and practical approaches relating to urban photography, and encouraged to develop a visual ethnography about an aspect of urban culture or space. The course is of particular relevance to students wishing to use photography within a research context.
You will be expected to complete the set reading assignments each week and to participate in class discussions.
SO71072B/74B -THEORY, CONCEPTS AND METHODS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH I & II
CONVENOR: MARSHA ROSENGARTEN
COURSE TYPE: CORE MA SR + OPTION (30 CATS) ONLY FOR MA BRAND STUDENTS
SCHEDULED: THURSDAYS - AUTUMN & SPRING 2011/2
ASSESSMENT: 1 X 5-6K WORD ESSAY FOR EACH TERM
This course provides advanced training in sociological theory in the context of sociological research design and a range of established and innovative social research methods especially those associated with ‘qualitative’ traditions. It is delivered by a team of active researchers with highly recognized specialist expertise in using the methods they will be teaching you. Each workshop is devoted to learning and practicing particular research methods in the context of related epistemology and the analysis of resulting data. Workshops are student-centred and require your active participation in exercises inside and sometimes outside of the workshop situation as a vital part of your training. The course is divided into three blocks. The first block begins with an introduction to some of the key theoretical approaches that inform contemporary social research design, involving both qualitative and quantitative methods. The remainder of the first block deals with questions of validity, reliability, sampling strategies, access to research settings, formulating researchable questions and combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The second, long, block teaches you a range of research methods – genealogical and textual analysis, modelling social data, ethnography, new media and so on – in the context of their practical application, their underpinning in sociological theory and the forms of analysis that might be built upon them. This is followed by a third block which provides training in the politics and social relations of social research and the new media possibilities for presenting and publicizing social research.
SO71078A - RACE POLITICS & ETHICS
CONVENOR: BRETT ST LOUIS
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAYS – SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT: 5—6K WORD ESSAY
This course covers the continued controversy surrounding the conceptual and practical status of race as advanced within ‘postracial’ critiques. The first section of the course focuses on the analytical, political, and ethical basis of postracial advocacy for jettisoning the racial concept altogether. The second section critically considers the dilemma facing postracial critiques framed within two questions: 1, Can race be dispensed with when it is perceived as socially real and has tangible material consequences? 2, Is this concern simply an example of the circular logic of race-thinking that reifies race and distorts the social processes that reproduce racial stratification and racism as intrinsically racial? The course will evaluate this problematic through considering the analytical, ethical and political coherence of postracial attempts to erase race and tackle its pernicious social effects as well as assessing the continued affective appeal of symbolic racial identification and the practical demands of antiracist political projects.
SO71087A - INTRODUCTION TO FEMINIST THEORY & CULTURE
CONVENOR: YASMIN GUNARATNAM
COURSE TYPE: CORE FOR MA GMC + OPTION 30 CATS
SCHEDULED FRIDAYS - AUTUMN 2011
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course introduces key debates and developments in feminist theory, cultural theory and in particular feminist cultural theory. It introduces both early debates which defined these fields and contemporary developments and departures. This core course does not attempt to map the field of gender scholarship chronologically, nor can it be exhaustive, but instead extrapolates a number of themes around which some of the most influential and defining work has emerged. Students will be introduced to social constructivist and post-structuralist perspectives; debates on feminism, ethnicity and the critique of universalism; key questions in relation to feminism, biology and reproductive technology; debates on family, kinship, and psycho-analysis; the emergence of post-colonial feminism; debates on gender and promotional culture to debates on post-feminist popular culture. Students will also be introduced to the emergence of queer theory and debates regarding the relationship between queer theory and feminist theory.
SO71088A - GENDER AFFECT AND THE BODY
CONVENOR: YASMIN GUNARATNAM
COURSE TYPE: CORE FOR MA GMC + OPTION 30 CATS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAYS - SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course examines the place of affect and the body in feminist theory and feminist practice. It will first examine and engage the place of the body within the field of arts, culture and representation; feminist theatre practice; gender, passing and ethnicity, in feminist writing; and in feminist film theory. Secondly it examines and critically engages the field of emotion, the politics of ‘happiness’, contemporary feminist scholarship on affect, and also the politics of science, technology and transformation in women’s/human bodies. Third it will consider the issues which arise from old and new flows of migration and other kinds of bodily movement; and finally examine the role and value of narrative in feminist writing. This course therefore offers instruction in cutting edge issues in contemporary feminist cultural theory.
SO71093A - REMAKING URBAN LIFE FROM DAKAR TO GUANGZHOU
CONVENOR: ALEX RHYS-TAYLOR
COURSE TYPE: CORE FOR MA WCUL + OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED: THURSDAYS - SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
From Dakar to Guangzhou to Recife we are faced with cities that defy the sense of urbanity and urbaneness that lies at the root of the “urban” and the city as the cauldron of civilization (even as it seethes with the excess of economy). Instead the city becomes an anti-city, an “un-urban” assemblage that serves as multiple sites and portals, a disjunction more than a destination. Within this context the question arises of how core assumptions about urbanization and core practices of actors are transforming in ways that escape much academic research into cities. This applies as well to spaces that are not “spaces-formerly-known-as-cities” but technically non-cities, such as refugee camps and special economic zones that similarly challenge assumptions and practices.
What do cities look like which do not necessarily look like cities as they have been conventionally understood? How are core assumptions about urbanization themselves “urbanized”—subjected to a thickening of intersected ideas, preoccupations and discourses—by examining cities that are an exception to the usual sense of cities? What do various actors, from states to local organizations to transnational networks do to stretch, take apart, and reassemble ways of urban life in ways that are not conventionally rural, urban, peri-urban, regional, and so forth?
If many cities experience an intertwining of various agendas, extractions, interventions, infrastructure, individual calculations and livelihood practices, how are such meshworks perceived and navigated by those who find themselves both entrapped but also able to to use these neighbourhoods and districts as platforms for their own mobility—however constrained it might be? If the multiplication of divides, borders, jurisdictions and enclaves is a feature of late modern colonial occupation, how are their particular instantiations lived through by those subjects of “occupation”—e.g. the urban poor—in ways that the imposed architectures of control cannot fully specify or predict?
SO71096A - MAPPING CAPITALISM
CONVENOR: ALBERTO TOSCANO
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 15 CATS
SCHEDULED: THURSDAYS – AUTUMN TERM 2011 AFTER READING WEEK
ASSESSMENT: 2-3K WORD ESSAY
Taking its cue from Fredric Jameson’s concept of ‘cognitive mapping’, this course explores contemporary efforts to provide social and political ‘cartographies’ of capitalist society, with particular attention to the intersection between social theory and narrative aesthetic forms (both literary and visual). Beginning from Jameson’s inquiry into the possibility of visual and theoretical orientation within capitalism as a complex totality, and his understanding of ‘conspiracy theory’ as the failure of such an endeavour, the course will investigate different approaches to ‘mapping capitalism’: Franco Moretti’s use of maps in the study of the social content of the nineteenth-century novel; the analysis of commodity-chains and containerization, as explored in the photographic work of Allan Sekula; the attempt in recent cinema and television to track the conflicts in capitalist economies; the thematisation of landscape as a site of power relations and social transformations; the network as a sociological tool, a political reality, and an aesthetic object. Throughout, we will try to think of how a 'cartographic turn' in contemporary theory, art and political activism challenges our presuppositions about the relationship between social inquiry and aesthetics.
SO73002B - INVENTIVE METHODS FOR RESEARCHING THE CITY
CONVENOR: ALEX RHYS-TAYLOR
COURSE TYPE: CORE FOR MA WCUL + OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHDEDULED: FRIDAYS - SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course focuses on how analyses of urban life constitute an arena for new forms of research. As such, the course primarily deals with methods for engaging and analyzing life worlds where narrowing and expansion, ambiguity and precision, dissipation and concrescence, embodiment and digitalization, movement and stasis are all intensified. So instead of the research process being enacted on one scale versus another, one defined group versus another, one sector versus another, or one process versus another, it increasingly must look at the spaces and times in-between, and how different zones are modulated in their relationships with each other. Our main emphasis therefore is on how to broaden the possibilities of research to study the contemporary city.
SO73006A - CONSUMER CITIZENSHIP AND VISUAL CULTURES
CONVENOR: PAM ODIH
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAYS - SPRING TERM 2012
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course examines visual culture and the proliferation of neo-liberal philosophies of consumer citizenship. In the milieu from which universal rights are disappearing, consumer citizenship imposes a moral obligation on subjects to make provision for themselves and their families well into the future. The logical implication here is that autonomous consumers come to adopt a certain entrepreneurial form of practical relationship to their selves. Enterprise is represented here as playing a vital translating role, promising to align general political-ethical principles, with the goals of industry and the self–regulating activities of individuals. Within this politico-ethical environment, consumers are constituted as both objects of enterprise and instruments of enterprise as they make ‘entrepreneurs’ of themselves, seeking to maximize their ‘quality of life’ through the artful assembly of a ‘life-style’ put together through the world of goods’. The course is divided into four main sections. Part One examines ‘reflexive modernity’ and the linking of postmodern visual culture with citizenship as part of the development of the consumer citizen. Part Two traces market reforms of public sector service provision and their articulation through advertising practice. Part Three examines political consumerism, embodiment and body praxis. Part Four raises pertinent questions about citizenship, Fair Trade and environmentalism in the global media age.
SO71110A - ABSTRACTION AND CHANGE I: PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL THOUGHT FROM KANT TO MARX
(THIS COURSE IS A PRE-REQUISITIE FOR ABSTRACTION & CHANGE II)
CONVENOR: ALBERTO TOSCANO
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 15 CATS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAYS – AUTUMN 2011 – BEFORE READING WEEK
ASSESSMENT: 2-3K WORD ESSAY
This course (in conjunction with Abstraction and Change II, to be taught in the second half of the term) explores how some of the crucial concepts and figures in European philosophy continue to shape and challenge our understanding of social change, from cosmopolitanism to recognition, from dialectics to value. At the core of the course will be an interrogation of the relationship between the philosophy’s approach to the activity of abstraction and the ways in which social thought has tackled the idea that we live in societies increasingly driven and shaped by ‘real abstractions’ (the nation, the state, ‘humanity’, money, capital…).
SO71111A - ABSTRACTION AND CHANGE II: PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL THOUGHT FROM NIETZSCHE TO SARTRE
(ABSTRACTION & CHANGE I IS A PREREQUISITE FOR THIS COURSE)
CONVENOR: ALBERTO TOSCANO
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAYS – AUTUMN 2011
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
This course (following from Abstraction and Change I, to be taught in the first half of the term) explores how some of the crucial concepts and figures in European philosophy continue to shape and challenge our understanding of social change, from nihilism to critique, from vitalism to subjectivity. At the core of the course will be an interrogation of the relationship between the philosophy’s approach to the activity of abstraction and the ways in which social thought has tackled the idea that we live in societies increasingly driven and shaped by ‘real abstractions’ (revolution, the state, ‘life’, money, capital…).
SO71108A - URBAN CULTURAL POLICY, PLACE BRANDING AND PUBLIC SPHERE
CONVENOR: MONICA SASSATELLI
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 30 CATS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAY – SPRING 2012
ASSESSMENT: 5-6K WORD ESSAY
Cultural policy, especially at local level, has been called on to play an increasing set of functions in recent decades. Cities, in particular post-industrial cities in the West, have seen in ‘culture’ a lever for regeneration, one that could be harnessed by targeted policies. However, all the main concepts at play – city, culture and policy – have been subjected to increasing scrutiny in social theory and research: expansion but also problematisation of the notion of culture; diversification and renewed centrality of the city as physical, social and political context; reformulation of cultural policy beyond regulations and policy process towards wider issues of governmentality, democracy and participation.
The course will present recent theoretical advances as well as empirical findings on these topics, focusing on key themes such as culture-led regeneration, place branding, cultural taste, and others relevant to the understanding of contemporary cities. These key themes will also be explored through a case study approach, aimed both at providing a space for in-depth investigation, and inspiration for students to identify and select contemporary cases to be developed for their final essay.
SO71103A - THE DIGITAL IMAGE
CONVENOR: DAVID OSWELL
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 15 CATS – PRIORITY GIVEN TO MA DS STUDENTS
SCHEDULED: THURSDAY SPRING 2011 – BEFORE READING WEEK
ASSESSMENT: 2-3K WORD ESSAY
The course explores the digital image in the context of cultural and sociological theories, discussions and debates about the image. In particular the course explores questions about the (dis)enchantment of the image in an age of ubiquity, about the relation between image and text, about the vitality or liveness of images in digital culture, about the problems and possibilities of imagining large number, and finally about the problems that digital images raise regarding ethics.
SO71104A - DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE AND REGULATION
CONVENOR: DAVID OSWELL
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 15 CATS – PRIORITY GIVEN TO MA DS STUDENTS
SCHEDULED: THURSDAY SPRING 2011 – AFTER READING WEEK
ASSESSMENT: 2-3K WORD ESSAY
The course will pursue the idea that particular digital architectures afford particular forms of social order. It will do so in the context of quite practical discussions and debates about digital media policy and regulation. We will initially consider some of the originary myths of cyberspace regarding the decline of national control and the impossibility of regulation. We will then consider a series of questions and issues concerning technology, law and society as principle forms of figuration of digital order. And finally we pursue these questions and issues with regard to the complex spaces and materialities of digital regularities and regulation.
SO71105A - HACK & REMIX: PERSPECTIVES ON FREE SOFTWARE CULTURES
CONVENOR: BRIAN ALLEYNE
COURSE TYPE: OPTION – 15 CATS - PRIORITY GIVEN TO MA DS STUDENTS
SCHEDULED: FRIDAYS – SPRING 2011 BEFORE READING WEEK
ASSESSMENT: 2-3K WORD ESSAY
Digital information and communication technologies have articulated and continue to articulate profound social, economic, and political change across the globe. Social and cultural theory has engaged these developments. There is on-going debate among social scientists as to the character and trajectory of network society, but most writers agree that in network society the information content is an ever increasing proportion of the commodity's exchange value, and that information-rich commodities are a key element of contemporary knowledge society. Often that information content consists in software, which is one of a number of key technological drivers of post-industrial society. This course considers the socio-cultural and political transformation being brought about by the spread of Free Software with its distinct conceptions of value, property and social relations. The course will draw on material from the worlds of hacking, hacktivism, and Free Culture.
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