For 2020–21, we have made some changes to how the teaching and assessment of certain programmes are delivered. To check what changes affect this programme, please visit the Programme Changes page
You will take the following compulsory modules.
You will also take a compulsory practice-based module from a pool of options including the following, totalling either 15 or 30 credits.
Practice-based modules |
Module title |
Credits |
|
Counter-Mapping: The Politics of Space
Counter-Mapping: The Politics of Space
30 credits
There is nothing new to the concept that space is infused and structured according to dominant forms of power in society - be they nationalism, neo-liberalism, the state, or patriarchy - and that such articulations have corresponding representational forms in maps, charts, surveys, and censuses.
Far from being the neutral scientific endeavour it is often claimed to be, cartography has always tended to reinforce and replicate dominant spatial logics, erasing indigenous claims to land, ostracising minorities from the political landscape, and setting racial, gender and class hierarchies (quite literally) in stone, brick and asphalt. Increasingly, however, we are seeing a growing number of both artists and social movements coming to an awareness that our representations of space carry with them an intendant politics. Intent on redressing this imbalance, counter-mapping is the still somewhat speculative practice of harnessing dominant representational strategies in an effort to invert, subvert, and make clear what has been erased in an effort to seek political change.
From feminist re-mappings of the city according to safe and dangerous places, to indigenous narratives of ancestral wanderings; from students co-opting google maps to avoid police tactics of ‘kettling’, to artist Janet Cardiff’s memory walks; from local anarchist groups revealing locations of CCTV cameras in Camberwell Green, to W.G. Sebald’s literary re-mapping of East Anglia; this module not only studies emerging forms of counter-mapping, but encourages students to engage in their own practice of re-mapping, re-walking, and re-appropriating the cityscape.
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30 credits |
|
Designing politics (group project)
Designing politics (group project)
30 credits
Emergency pedagogies/group plans and prototypes
This is a module that flexibly adapts to the changing times. And we are living in such turbulent times. Each moment now seems to produce a state of the exception, that is, a moment when the ordinary rules that govern society are suspended in order to deal with an emergency. In the last 20 years, viral infections, the war on terror, the environmental crisis, artificial intelligence and a fear of the refugee have been just some of the major eruptions occasioning a suspension of certain rights. We need to learn to adapt to these changing times and draw on our collaborative spirit to do so. We need to develop practices that share our experiences, passions knowledge, and intellectual interests productively with others. Designing politics offers the space to do this - to think and work collaboratively and it is this that sits at the centre of this module’s pedagogy. This practice-based collaborative work is brought together under the title Emergency pedagogies/group plans and prototypes. The aim is to collaboratively produce plans and prototypes of ideas that speak to this moment as potentialities that can be realised in the future. Students will collaborate in small groups as well as with their teachers and, depending on the projects and circumstances, with other contributors as and when they are required This is all designed to support groups with developing fully planned, costed and potentially realisable projects. This will be done through:
- tutorials that help develop projects
- lectures and seminars on themes and interests arising out of projects
- Grant application writing workshop that moves them towards potentially realisable projects and
- a feedback panel that addresses each group project from a conceptual, material and practical realisable position
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30 credits |
|
Material encounters (Individual project)
Material encounters (Individual project)
15 credits
The growing prevalence of emergencies – through war, forced migration, climate change, environmental destruction, viral infection – as near everyday occurrences require us to engage with and learn from these events, not as extraordinary and aberrant, not as chaotic and out of control (until they are somehow fixed and returned to normal, made whole and improved on), but as spaces of improvisation, ingenuity, creativity and ultimately survival. We need to learn from these events as part of the pedagogical work we engage in for our future survival.
Within this context, the Material Encounters module focuses on identifying and developing a students’ individual practice through exploring how your interests, research and intuitions speak to a particular form, how and where this form belongs in the world and how it speaks to our current contemporaneity through the creation of plans and prototypes of ideas as potentialities that can be realised in the future. This work will be done through group seminars and individual tutorials that address each individual practice from a conceptual, material and practical-realisable position.
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15 credits |
Students make up their remaining 60 - 75 credits from the following list of options:
|
Module title |
Credits |
|
Comparative Political Thought
Comparative Political Thought
15 credits
This module seeks to introduce the main approaches, methods and debates in the emerging sub-discipline of comparative political thought. It explores central intellectual discussions over the nature of both ‘comparison’ and ‘thought’, whilst striving to develop an original and innovative approach to the field, moving towards a truly ‘global’ political thought. The module is designed for students who are interested in deepening their understanding of relevant non-Western canons and assess key areas of tension with Western political and legal thinking.
The first part of the module provides an introduction to key methodological and theoretical approaches to comparative political thought. This will be done by exploring relevant debates in this newly established discipline (e.g., Mignolo, Isin, Santos, etc.). We will then pursue a specialist insight in the non-West, looking at a variety of intellectual/philosophical canons. This part of the course highlights the practical relevance of non-Western texts and traditions for present-day issues and contemporary struggles across the globe, whilst addressing the emergence of new political imaginaries and conceptual tools that challenge conventional concepts in international law and politics.
|
15 credits |
|
Material encounters (Individual project)
Material encounters (Individual project)
15 credits
The growing prevalence of emergencies – through war, forced migration, climate change, environmental destruction, viral infection – as near everyday occurrences require us to engage with and learn from these events, not as extraordinary and aberrant, not as chaotic and out of control (until they are somehow fixed and returned to normal, made whole and improved on), but as spaces of improvisation, ingenuity, creativity and ultimately survival. We need to learn from these events as part of the pedagogical work we engage in for our future survival.
Within this context, the Material Encounters module focuses on identifying and developing a students’ individual practice through exploring how your interests, research and intuitions speak to a particular form, how and where this form belongs in the world and how it speaks to our current contemporaneity through the creation of plans and prototypes of ideas as potentialities that can be realised in the future. This work will be done through group seminars and individual tutorials that address each individual practice from a conceptual, material and practical-realisable position.
|
15 credits |
|
Islam, Revolution, and Empire
Islam, Revolution, and Empire
15 credits
This module will provide a critical grounding in contemporary debates around Islam and the political as well as delineate the plural and agonistic nature of Muslim political ideologies and practices over the course of the last century. Is Islam an inherently political religion as many Orientalists have contended? Why has this question been repeatedly posed through to the present? Is there such a thing as a “Muslim politics”? How has Muslim political activism found itself Othered and stigmatised in recent decades and why has such activism provoked questions over the legitimacy of political engagement by Muslims? How have Muslims been historically racialised and what connections can be drawn between the legacy of Orientalism, colonial racisms and contemporary Islamophobia? Furthermore, how might we complicate mainstream understandings of “fundamentalism” and “Islamic law” and the relationship between Muslim political practices, liberal citizenship, secularism, resistance and the impact of Western colonialism and/or imperialism in the Islamicate world?
Islam, Revolution & Empire will also introduce students to manifold contemporary political discourses and practices in the Islamicate world – from the seemingly interminable debate over Islamic feminism, women’s agency and the veil, to anti-colonial Islam(s), Islamic liberation theology and black internationalism, Kurdish anarchism and democratic confederalism and Arab and Iranian socialisms. The module aims to help students rethink the relationship between “Islam” and the political, as well as how Islam has been marshalled as a political category, and found itself challenged and critiqued for disparate ends, and thereby nuance their understanding of the relationship between politics, revolution and religion in the “Muslim world” and the imperial metropole itself. The module will problematize such categories as “fundamentalism”, “political Islam”, “extremist versus moderate”, the figure of “the radical”, and a wider lexicon which has proliferated in the wake of September 11, 2001 and the inauguration of the “War on Terror”; a lexicon and hegemonic “common sense” that continues to dominate politicians and media discussions of Muslims and politics at both home and the broader Islamicate world.
|
15 credits |
|
Counter-Mapping: The Politics of Space
Counter-Mapping: The Politics of Space
30 credits
There is nothing new to the concept that space is infused and structured according to dominant forms of power in society - be they nationalism, neo-liberalism, the state, or patriarchy - and that such articulations have corresponding representational forms in maps, charts, surveys, and censuses.
Far from being the neutral scientific endeavour it is often claimed to be, cartography has always tended to reinforce and replicate dominant spatial logics, erasing indigenous claims to land, ostracising minorities from the political landscape, and setting racial, gender and class hierarchies (quite literally) in stone, brick and asphalt. Increasingly, however, we are seeing a growing number of both artists and social movements coming to an awareness that our representations of space carry with them an intendant politics. Intent on redressing this imbalance, counter-mapping is the still somewhat speculative practice of harnessing dominant representational strategies in an effort to invert, subvert, and make clear what has been erased in an effort to seek political change.
From feminist re-mappings of the city according to safe and dangerous places, to indigenous narratives of ancestral wanderings; from students co-opting google maps to avoid police tactics of ‘kettling’, to artist Janet Cardiff’s memory walks; from local anarchist groups revealing locations of CCTV cameras in Camberwell Green, to W.G. Sebald’s literary re-mapping of East Anglia; this module not only studies emerging forms of counter-mapping, but encourages students to engage in their own practice of re-mapping, re-walking, and re-appropriating the cityscape.
|
30 credits |
|
Art, War, Terror
Art, War, Terror
15 Credits
The central goal of this module is to examine and reflect upon the nature, function and operation of art and popular culture in times of war and conflict. Focusing largely on contemporary and 20th century visual production, the module draws on a selection of artworks and visual examples to critically address the following key questions:
1. What is the role of the artist/artwork in times of war and crisis? 2. Can war and terror be thought of as ‘aesthetic’ or even ‘sublime’? 3. What political, cultural and moral implications are at stake in the representation and mediation of suffering? 4. ‘War art’ or ‘war porn’? 5. What is the nature of the relationship between art, terror and terrorism? 6. What role do art and images play in the relay of historical violence and in a broader politics of memory? 7. Can the experience of pain be woven into the fabric of the image? 8. What do images have to do, if anything with bare life? 9. How is the status of the ‘real’ affected by its documentation? 10. How do art, images and monuments of war and conflict, shape as well as preserve memories of war and conflict?
Looking at key contemporary and ‘historical’ artworks and events, this module cuts across historical trajectories in order to examine both the representation of violence and the violence of representation. It investigates the various roles of art and visual culture in relation to the two World Wars, the Cold War, the cultural and ideological battles of the 1960s and 70s, the ‘armchair’ wars, the so-called ‘war on terror’ and many other conflicts in recent years. Using Agamben, Baudrillard, Virilio, Butler and others, it considers the impact of military surveillance techniques on culture, both in terms of art practices and more broadly, as experienced in everyday culture. It reflects on artists’ enduring fascination with war and terror and shows how art can be understood as a form of politics, knowledge and experience.
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15 Credits |
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Memory and Justice in Post-Conflict Societies
Memory and Justice in Post-Conflict Societies
30 credits
This module focuses on how societies emerging from different types of conflict (such as war, genocide, ethnic violence and grave human rights abuses) engage in the process of coming to terms with their past. It examines official mechanisms of ‘transitional justice’ such as trials and truth commissions, as well as cultural forms of remembrance and local community practices.
By exploring the complex relationship between conflict, memory and justice in various cross-cultural settings, it seeks to provide an understanding of the ways in which such processes can promote or hinder reconciliation and the rebuilding of social and inter-communal ties.
The module will also assess the role of external factors (particularly through the creation of international war crimes tribunals) in terms of how they have affected such internal processes of facing the past. Various case studies, including Germany, Japan, Serbia, South Africa, and Rwanda will inform the theoretical discussions and provide a comparative perspective.
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30 credits |
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Decolonising Knowledge: Debates in Human Science
Decolonising Knowledge: Debates in Human Science
30 credits
This module aims to raise questions about whether the concepts and categories through which we usually study the ’international' or ’global' are adequate to the task. It critically examines categories of the social sciences and humanities that are usually simply presupposed and ’applied', and which, despite their Western or European origins, are assumed to be ’universal'. It does this by closely examining some of the most important theoretical writings of the post-WWII period, focusing upon books and debates which had repercussions far beyond their immediate disciplinary boundaries, including books by Kuhn, MacIntyre, Foucault, Said, and others.
Students explore the claim(s) that far from being objective and universal, our knowledge is shaped by culture, history and politics. In seminars we ask, can different ’conceptual schemes', ’paradigms' or ’traditions' be compared to see which one is better, or are they incommensurable? Do theories and explanations triumph over rival theories because they are ’better'- or for other reasons? Does knowledge serve to unmask power, or is it always caught up with and complicit with power?
This module requires students not simply to advance their knowledge of politics, but to explore the politics of knowledge, and to do so, in particular, by enquiring into whether the categories and concepts of the social sciences are genuinely international and universal, or merely modern/Western and parochial.
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30 credits |
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Global Capitalism: Theory and History
Global Capitalism: Theory and History
30 credits
This module combines a variety of approaches from history, sociology, and political economy in the study of the global political economy. Its focus will be on the connection between global economic integration and domestic socio-economic transformation in the making of the contemporary world order. Further, we will examine how theories have shaped policies in the context of increasing integration of the global economy.
In the first segment of the module, we will examine some of the major scholarly contributions to political and economic theory and thought. We will further develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework incorporating political economy and world history that will greatly aid us in the subsequent analysis of the global political economy.
The second segment of the module will trace the historical development, structure, and function of the global political economy. The theoretical framework will include a brief introduction to the national income accounting and the balance of payments, the determination of exchange rates, and different exchange rate regimes. Further, we will employ this theory to better understand the historical evolution of the International Monetary System and the role of the International Financial Institutions in the global political economy.
The last segment of the module examines the origins and nature of global trade integration with a particular emphasis on the experience of developing countries in the global economy. Key topics include the debate on trade and development, trade liberalisation, the structure and function of the International Trading System, trade policies and development strategies, political economy of Foreign Direct Investment and the impact of Transnational Corporations.
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30 credits |
|
The United States in the World Economy
The United States in the World Economy
15 credits
This module combines a variety of approaches from history, sociology, economics, and political economy in the study of the political economy of the United States (US), and its unique position in the world economy. While tracing the historical development of the US in the world economy, the module examines major events and forces that have shaped the global political economy from the late 19th century to the present day. Particular attention will be paid to the long-term development trends of the US/world economy, the growth of institutions and markets, industrialization/deindustrialization, the internationalization of production and finance, the financialization of the US economy, and the impact of governmental economic policies. In this context, we will discuss the historical roots of US hegemony and its structural impact on the global economy. Finally, we will try to reach some general conclusions about the current condition and prospects for the US position in the world economy.
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15 credits |
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Politics of Human Rights
Politics of Human Rights
15 credits
This MA level module explores the contemporary politics of human rights. Drawing on political philosophy, legal theory and international relations approaches, the module will examine the complex issues raised by human rights, and some of the difficulties and challenges in applying human rights in the contemporary world – the violence and human rights violations committed by state and non-state actors, wars and conflicts around the world, and the current global refugee crisis. It will also explore some of the important critiques of human rights from Marxist and postcolonial perspectives.
Students will be introduced to the major theoretical frameworks for understanding state compliance with human rights obligations using both historical and comparative approaches to the topic. We will focus on particular case examples and general cross-national comparisons in the effort to understand why states commit violations.
The module will explore the influence of political and economic conditions such as regime type, conflict, economic development in the protection or violation of human rights, the impact of human agency and decisions and the role of states, international legal instruments and NGOs in the promotion of human rights. Finally, it will examine questions of intervention, the development of accountability mechanisms and the management of the blame for human rights violations.
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15 credits |
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Psychopolitics
Psychopolitics
15 credits
The workings of power, authority and freedom have implications as much for our subjective, or psychic, organisation as they do for institutions and programmes of government. Psychoanalytic theory looks to the unconscious motivations of human behaviour and the strange, often perverse effects these can have on social relations. Ideas of leadership, cultural identity or personal choice, for example, involve identifications that often distort one’s sense of self and delimit its autonomy. Secret desires for subjugation to the powerful or the willful denial of suffering (in oneself or in others) are central themes of psychoanalysis.
‘Psychopolitics’ thus comprises the fantasies, obsessions, obscene desires and precarious repressions that structure political reality and supply it objects for intimate investment. This module explores how we study politics from a psychoanalytical perspective. It focuses primarily on key texts by Freud and Lacan – as well as by other thinkers – to develop a vocabulary of psychopolitical analysis to apply to the study of contemporary events.
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15 credits |
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Theories of International Relations
Theories of International Relations
30 credits
This module provides a survey of the classical, critical and newly emerging theories of international relations, namely: realism/neorealism, liberalism/neoliberalism, Marxism, constructivism, post-modernism, feminism, post-colonialism, the aesthetic turn in IR and theories of justice.
You will approach each of these theories through the concept of power, seeking to explain the radical shifts that have occurred both in our understanding of power as well as the role that it plays in international politics in the last century. The module combines its examination of theory with debates on contemporary case-studies that serve to showcase the link between theory and practice.
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30 credits |
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The Political Economy of the Anthropocene
The Political Economy of the Anthropocene
30 credits
This course explores a series of key contemporary issues of environment and development. We start by examining what it means to say we are living in the age of the ‘Anthropocene’. We then examine different perspectives for thinking about the environment in political economy terms of who wins, who loses, how and why. We then take this historical and conceptual grounding to the world, exploring the environmental politics of a range of key issues energy, climate change, energy food, water, waste and the uneven impacts of global environmental decay.
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30 credits |
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Finance and Power
Finance and Power
15 credits
This module explores the political economy of money, debt and finance in the contemporary world. It fosters an understanding of finance as a contested site of social struggles and power that shapes capitalist relations and policymaker actions. It examines key theoretical debates on the place of finance and its relation to the real economy. It then takes these debates and applies them across different empirical areas: housing, personal debt, corporate governance, environmental finance, and shadow banking.
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15 credits |
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Experts and Economies
Experts and Economies
15 credits
Economic policy and regulation are shaped by experts and cultures of expertise. This has been true at an international level for over a century, never more so than with the design of the Bretton Woods system of international monetary regulation. Today, the question of technocratic government in contexts such as the European Union is a divisive and urgent one. This module turns critical, empirical and theoretical attention on the role of experts in economies, in national, international and neo-colonial contexts. It combines history of economics and philosophy with political sociology of institutions and policy, to consider how knowledge and expertise are crucial to the governance, regulation and representation of economic activity and economic space.
Topics to be addressed include: the political "boundary work" of economics as a discipline, and its consequences; the neo-colonial power of economists in the global political economy; neoliberal expertise and technocracy; the politics of international measures and standards; and resistance to economic expertise and populism.
Students will be introduced to some key ideas on the politics of knowledge from Marion Fourcade, Anne-Marie Djelic, Michel Foucault, Philip Mirowski, Timothy Mitchell, Michel Callon, and Steven Shapin, among others.
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15 credits |
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Islam, Revolution, and Empire
Islam, Revolution, and Empire
15 credits
This module will provide a critical grounding in contemporary debates around Islam and the political as well as delineate the plural and agonistic nature of Muslim political ideologies and practices over the course of the last century. Is Islam an inherently political religion as many Orientalists have contended? Why has this question been repeatedly posed through to the present? Is there such a thing as a “Muslim politics”? How has Muslim political activism found itself Othered and stigmatised in recent decades and why has such activism provoked questions over the legitimacy of political engagement by Muslims? How have Muslims been historically racialised and what connections can be drawn between the legacy of Orientalism, colonial racisms and contemporary Islamophobia? Furthermore, how might we complicate mainstream understandings of “fundamentalism” and “Islamic law” and the relationship between Muslim political practices, liberal citizenship, secularism, resistance and the impact of Western colonialism and/or imperialism in the Islamicate world?
Islam, Revolution & Empire will also introduce students to manifold contemporary political discourses and practices in the Islamicate world – from the seemingly interminable debate over Islamic feminism, women’s agency and the veil, to anti-colonial Islam(s), Islamic liberation theology and black internationalism, Kurdish anarchism and democratic confederalism and Arab and Iranian socialisms. The module aims to help students rethink the relationship between “Islam” and the political, as well as how Islam has been marshalled as a political category, and found itself challenged and critiqued for disparate ends, and thereby nuance their understanding of the relationship between politics, revolution and religion in the “Muslim world” and the imperial metropole itself. The module will problematize such categories as “fundamentalism”, “political Islam”, “extremist versus moderate”, the figure of “the radical”, and a wider lexicon which has proliferated in the wake of September 11, 2001 and the inauguration of the “War on Terror”; a lexicon and hegemonic “common sense” that continues to dominate politicians and media discussions of Muslims and politics at both home and the broader Islamicate world.
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15 credits |
Students may choose up to 30 credits of approved options from other departments at Goldsmiths.
You are required to undertake project-based work in accordance with your own political and aesthetic interests. The purpose of this project-work is to find ways of ‘doing’ politics which employ ‘artistic’ strategies and interventions in their realisation.
Projects have a student-centred material focus, complementing the theoretical emphasis of core and optional modules, and will seek to raise awareness of particular issues and draw attention to their position in the public arena. They may be written, broadcast, performed, curated, made, or involve any other kind of appropriately documented submission.
Training in digital and genetic media will be provided where necessary. Project training is monitored and co-ordinated by the artist-in-residence in the Department of Politics – who will oversee students’ individual needs while ensuring that there is continuity of support and opportunities to identify and build upon individual strengths and weaknesses.
Assessment consists of coursework, extended essays, reports, presentations, practice based projects or essays/logs, group projects, reflective essays, and seen and unseen written examinations.
Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.