Sociology Options

These courses are based on staff research interests and may vary from year to year.

In Year 2, Options are assessed either by two 1,750-word essays or one 3,500-word essay; in Year 3, they are assessed by one 4,500-word essay. To give an example of the sort of courses you can expect, we have included a list of typical courses offered in the past.

Year 2 Options

Sexuality (15 credits)
Through this course you will be able to develop a historical perspective and critical analysis of how sexuality has come to function as a mode of normalisation and regulation, a promise of liberation, an acclaimed site of pleasure and/or desire as well as a centre piece in debates on censorship and representation. The course will introduce you to the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault, queer and some feminist theories. During the course you will be encouraged and assisted to develop your own analysis of how cultural notions of pleasure and desire as well as ‘normal’ and ‘not normal’ may affect understandings of ourselves and others.

Emotions and Social Life (15 credits)
What does sociology have to say about the subject of emotions? How does social life shape not only emotional experience, but also how we think about emotions and set about studying them? This course introduces the complexities involved in the study of ‘emotions’ and the relevance of emotions to the study of social life, by focusing on a selected number of themes each year. While looking at the emerging field of the sociology of emotions, the course places sociological theories in the broader context of inter- and trans-disciplinary debates by drawing on historical, philosophical, psychological and biological work.

Nationalism, Fundamentalism, Cosmopolitanism (15 credits)
This course explores sociological theories of nationalism, fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism by looking at case studies drawn from conflicts that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The course aims for a balance of theory and case study. In this way it anchors discussions of social theory to the actualities of particular social and historical situations.

Leisure, Culture and Society (15 credits)
‘Leisure is free time’. But is it? We need only think about the annual subscription to gymnasiums to recognise that leisure-time really isn’t ‘free-time’. ‘Leisure is a marker for time away from work’. But we need only think of the time of the harried vacation to know that the clock-time of work never ceases to operate. In critical theory, leisure-time is defined as functionally dependent on the labour market system. Indeed leisure is revealed as big business, as leisure-time becomes ever more central to consumer culture. This course examines the interconnections between leisure, culture and society.

The Body: Social Theory and Social Practice (15 credits)
This course explores a selection of approaches to the sociological study of the body, as well as substantive problem-areas where the body has become an important focus of research. You address the contrast between traditions that approach the body as an object (the body we have), those that approach the body as a subject (the body we are), and those that address the body in terms of performativity (the body we become).

Social Change and Political Action (15 credits)
What is politics? For many people, the answer is simple: politics, as the management and organisation of the public good, is the province of government and parties. Its occurrences and machinations are played out, more or less openly, in parliaments, bureaucracies, elections, as well as in our newspapers and on our television and computer screens. Sociologists and social theorists have tended to adopt broader definitions of politics. While the first part of the course is primarily concerned with establishing a firm grasp of the fundamental approaches to the political sociology of democratic societies, the second introduces debates – over planning, ethnic cleansing, neoliberal ‘de-democratization’ – that will allow us to think through the relevance of the classical categories of political sociology to the study of contemporary societies. Assessment: one 3,500-word essay.

Migration, Globalisation and Citizenship (15 credits)
This course synthesises some of the most important concepts in relation to the movement of people. You will examine the key debates in migration theory and their relevance to the movement of refugees and economic migrants. The impact of historic, social, economic and political factors on the migratory process will be considered. Globalisation and its relation to the movement of peoples will be explored. The course will draw on case studies from Europe. The impact of racism, citizenship rights, transnational communities, social networks and the migration experience will be considered in relation to theories of integration and migrant settlement. The course covers historical, theoretical and empirical concerns relating to migration, globalisation and citizenship and their interaction with integration and settlement.

Culture in Context (15 credits)
The course provides an understanding of the relations between state, society and culture in the context of a cultural studies tradition. It also seeks to apply, develop and question this tradition in relation to an increasingly networked society.

Year 3 Options

Animals and Society (15 credits)
This option is concerned with the role of animals in modern western societies. The course begins with an overview of the key western philosophical debates about the nature of the animal, and the contrast between the animal and the human. Historical changes in the ways in which animals have been represented, in animals’ symbolic role, and in the relations between humans and animals will then be presented. Here, the changing role of animals in representing particular virtues and vices, animals’ changing economic function, and the shifting interpersonal relations between humans and animals will be explored over the course of classical and medieval periods, the enlightenment and modernity, and into late modernity.

Visual Explorations of the Social World (15 credits)
This course is designed as an introduction – at an appropriate conceptual level - to the exploration of sociological issues and themes with the camera lens. It combines a basic level training in photography with an intellectual training in spatial analysis and its application in interpreting specific aspects of the urban landscape in areas with which you are familiar. You will be expected to spend time practicing combining the analytic and photographic skills you learn through photographic assignments on which you report back. This will be supported by laboratory
workshop sessions.

Knowledge, Science and Nature (15 credits)
This course explores how scientific knowledge has been tied up with the control and domination of nature and the ways in which feminism and ecology have served to validate different forms of knowledge.

Race, Racism and Social Theory (15 credits)
This examines some of the conceptual and political problems that have clustered around sociological analysis of ‘race’ and racism. It is comparative in focus and encompasses both historical and theoretical material. It introduces some of the major sociological paradigms of ‘race relations’ analysis and relates them to a variety of examples.

Cultural Politics and Globalisation (15 credits)
This discusses ways of theorising the relationship between culture, identity and globalisation. In particular it attempts to evaluate recent debates around cultural syncretism and hybridity. The course demonstrates the advantage of viewing culture within a global matrix. Musical cultures and commercial advertising are used to exemplify these processes including a discussion of the development of Hispanic R&B in Los Angeles, Jazz in the culture of Nazi Germany, Afro-Asian fusions in the English Midlands and soul music in Britain and the United States.

Global Development and Underdevelopment (15 credits)
Globalisations is both a dominant discourse of powerful actors on the world scene, as well as the main target for one of the most vibrant new social movements. This course aims to develop a critical and historical understanding of the issues which inform contemporary debates on globalisation.

A Sociology of Objects (15 credits)
Tracing the movement of objects, Arjun Appadurai claims, helps identify the processual aspects of social life, illuminating not simply small-scale shifts in each object’s meaning but also broader transformations in social organisation itself. This course aims to explore what a sociology of objects reveals about the social world. It considers how consideration of objects can lead to sociological understanding of imperialism, modernity and globalisation, as well as the study of everyday life.

Vision, Truth and Knowledge (15 credits)
This Option addresses the relations between vision, visuality and the production of ‘truth’ and knowledge in Western societies. It also explores the relation between visual technologies and power, examining different ways that vision and visuality contribute to the production and reproduction of both group and personal identities across a range of domains.

Childhood Matters: Society, Theory and Culture (15 credits)
This approaches childhood as a socio-historically constructed concept, with material, technological and political dimensions and consequences. Through a mixture of theoretical readings and issue-based discussions, you explore the regulated constitution of childhood and its changing parameters. Some of the substantive areas explored include: changing household patterns from the child’s perspective, child sexual abuse, infancy and foetal life, children’s literature.

Law, Identity and Ethics (15 credits)
This course explores key theories of the relationship between identity and the law. It considers accounts of identity and law by examining key debates in legal and social theory from Kant to critical race theory. It critically analyses classical and contemporary questions concerning subjects, law and justice.

Citizenship and Human Rights (15 credits)
This course is concerned with the historical development of citizenship and human rights, especially in relation to the nation-state and the international states system. It is also concerned with the value of human rights, explored through consideration of any or all of the following topics: Are human rights cosmopolitan? Is there a human rights movement? Does the enforcement of human rights increase democracy? Are human rights structured so that they necessarily privilege certain groups as ‘human’?