BA (Hons) Politics, Philosophy & Economics

This module will introduce you to the key concepts and topics of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

The first part of the module will focus on microeconomics. Specifically, the module will analyse how markets work and what determines the prices and quantities of goods traded in the market. You'll discuss how consumers and firms behave in the market and concepts such as market structure, firm performance, strategic rivalry, and growth strategies will be introduced.

The second part of the module will introduce you to the core of macroeconomic topics. You'll explore concepts such as national income accounting, unemployment; inflation; international trade.

The explanation of microeconomic and macroeconomic topics will be supported by insights from recent history, key economic thinkers, and real-world examples.

This module aims to allow you to explain economic issues through the application of microeconomic and macroeconomic theories, and wherever possible will focus on current public debates and controversies.  

Specifically, the topics explored in this module aim to raise your understanding of the complexity of the economic environment in which individuals, financial institutions, firms and governments operate 

We will analyse some specific case studies in order to connect economic theories to contemporary social and business life. The case studies you examine will relate to a number of important economic and social issues such as business regulation, strategic decision-making by firms and other agents, informational problems and international trade.

This module will be concerned with the ways in which Western philosophy, ever since its beginnings in ancient Greece, has tried to think through the relationship between ethics and society, between ideas of the good and ways of organising collective life. It will introduce you to the ways in which philosophers, ancient and modern, have tried to think of the tension between passions, interests and virtues, as well as how they have framed the conflicts between individuals and collectives. We will also reflect on how attention to race, gender and social transformation impacts on our understanding of classical ethical problems.

This module is designed to introduce students to some of the major concepts, principles and theoretical debates in political philosophy by drawing on the thought of influential political philosophers from both the Anglo-American and Continental traditions. The module will introduce students to major theories that seek to provide moral and political justifications of the state in general and answer the question of 'who should rule' by drawing on the thought of thinkers such as Bentham, Kant and Rousseau. Students will also be introduced to a number of important political concepts such as liberty, rights and equality by looking at the contribution of thinkers such as Locke, J.S. Mill and Marx. Finally, students will be introduced to the famous debate between Rawls and Nozick that concerns the idea of justice.

This module gives you an introduction to some of the key questions of contemporary political economy, and offers some critical and cultural approaches to the major policy problems of today.

You'll explore the failure of elites to respond to recent crises, such as the financial crisis and environmental crises, and offers some ways of analyzing where power lies, the role of experts in contemporary economic policy, and how the notion of ‘neoliberalism’ helps us to understand the current state of political economy.

In this module, subtitled ‘Everything is a Text’, you will consider the value of different types of texts and ways of imparting knowledge and ideas. You will reflect upon your identities as learners and future professionals in the world, considering a range of contexts: the academic/educational context, personal settings and the eco-systems that you live and work in. These reflections will be used to inform your practices as academic learners.

You will explore academic literacies, different ways of knowing and consider what counts as ‘legitimate’ knowledge. You will engage with critical thinking, making arguments and establishing criteria to defend intellectual positions and these skills will be acknowledged as social practices that produce and reinforce meaning and frameworks of understanding and knowledge.

Furthermore, you will engage with a wide range of academic and non-academic material, individuals and environments in order to contribute to discussions regarding attitudes and assumptions about ideas and experience, including within labour markets, cultural hegemonies, distributions of power and the relationship between the individual and society. In this way, the social interactions, relationships and contexts that underpin academic literacies in higher education will be made explicit.

You will discuss these ideas with students and tutors from the different subjects at Goldsmiths, and learn to be part of the wider university community. You will also be able to submit an assignment which could be a written, graphically designed, audio, video, or negotiated project. You will get to choose the assessment that best shows what you can do.

This module, subtitled ‘Researching Our World & Lives’, builds on the conceptual and contextual foundations of Identity, Agency and Environment 1.

You will learn how to conduct academic research and will be offered the opportunity to broaden and deepen your understanding of the relationship between your own interests, skills, values, career and non-career aspirations, the concepts, theories and contexts of your discipline, and the world.

You will reflect upon your identities as researchers, and learn how the research skills you’ve acquired both within your studies and the world more generally can be related to problem-solving in a wide range of contexts. You will consider your agency as researchers, what you can and cannot research, the ethical issues involved, and think reflexively about your position as a researcher in a range of environments and eco-systems.

Formal conventions of academic research and writing will be integrated into your individualised contexts and goals, enabling the expression of ideas and perspectives that may challenge the status quo. The module will encourage creativity, activism, decision-making and the formation of judgements leading to action-planning in relation to research topics and types of evidence, and professional planning.

You will learn to critique your own subject disciplines. Interdisciplinary sharing of knowledge will ensure that assessment and learning practices provide you with the opportunity to develop new lines of thinking and knowing, within formative collaborative learning and research communities.

This module introduces you to key concepts and texts in modern European philosophy, taking the question of subjectivity as its guiding thread.

In its historical sequence, you'll explore some of the most influential understandings of the subject and the possibilities and limitations of knowledge produced by modern philosophy.  

Beginning with a critical exploration of the way in which René Descartes' 'Cogito ergo sum' (I think therefore I am) has been seen as the inauguration of modern philosophy, we will investigate different ways of posing the problem of the knowing subject: Spinoza’s affirmation of there being only one substance, the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume and the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant.  

In the latter part of the course, we then turn to some profound challenges to dominant models of knowledge and subjectivity, formulated in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century: Friedrich Nietzsche’s assault on the very notion of the subject, Sartre’s attempt of saving a notion of subjectivity from orthodox Marxisms’ dissolution of the subject into a vector of capitalist totality, Foucault’s rejection of an essential self in the name of its historical constitution and finally Luce Irigaray’s feminist turn against the masculinist subject of philosophy.  

Through close consideration of these philosophers, you'll be introduced to key notions and sub-fields in philosophy: epistemology, ontology, phenomenology, critique, and the distinction between the empirical and the transcendental – as well as the political and social repercussions of seemingly abstract philosophical debates. 

This module introduces you to key concepts and texts in philosophical aesthetics and the historical and critical role it plays in political philosophy. The first half of the module focuses on the sustained and intensive reading of (primarily) the first part of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment (pertaining to aesthetic judgment), key debates involved in the historical development of aesthetics as a science of sensation and judgments of taste, the ramifications for the theory of moral sentiments and the genesis of art criticism in early German Idealism, and contemporary interpretations of the significance of Kant's argument for human freedom and the autonomy of reason.

The second half of the module examines the aftermath of the revolution Kant introduced by focusing attention on various responses - and criticisms - that have arisen since the publication of the third Critique. Through close textual engagement, we will explore a variety of distinct views on the Kantian legacy, including the question of representation; civil imagination; technology and the aestheticization of politics; and race and the knowledge of freedom.

This module will introduce you to the sub-discipline of international or global political economy (IPE). You'll focus on the connections and interactions between domestic economic processes, policies, and international economic developments. You'll study the major theoretical traditions in IPE and the overarching debates concerning international collaboration, coordination and competition, before exploring the various issues and problems faced by international actors, such as those concerning trade, finance and the environment.

The module will draw attention to the potential (and contested) links between international developments/issues and domestic political and economic issues throughout, with the intention of encouraging you to develop a perspective on both the constraints the “international” poses upon domestic actors and the duties domestic actors have to the former.

This module introduces you to various attempts to clarify and understand the links between economic and political processes which come under the banner of ‘political economy’. As a whole, the module is intended to draw out the links between the broad “school”-level approaches (such as Marxism, economic sociology, methodological individualism and institutional economics) and contemporary issues and analyses (concerning questions of resource scarcity, predation, coordination failures and trust).

To this end, the module is split into two broad parts. The first part guides you through the main thematic approaches to political economy in order to examine the principle concepts theorists have used to understand and explain economic processes. The second part seeks to apply these concepts to contemporary economic issues and questions.

It seeks to both clarify and examine the various understandings of the market and the state which have shaped the direction of economic research, so that you can finish the module with a clear understanding of the various ideas, concerns and beliefs which motivate real-world political economic arguments.

This module will introduce to the key political and economic transformations that made the modern world. You'll start by exploring the emergence of capitalism, market society and the divergence between East and West.

You'll then explore Imperialism, and the place of slavery in American capitalist development. You'll examine how ‘the household’ was siphoned off and separated from ‘the economy’ and what that meant for the understandings of gender in political economy.

After this, you'll focus on the present day. When and why did the Great Acceleration of environmental decay begin? What is the US military-industrial complex? We then examine the emergence of Platform Capitalism today before finally exploring what possibilities exist for a different future. Our goal is to use history to understand the power relations behind the workings of the global economy.

Our academic departments are developing exciting elective ideas to allow you to broaden your education, either to develop vocationally orientated experiences or to learn more about contemporary society, culture and politics. You’ll be able to choose safe in the knowledge that these modules have been designed for non-subject specialists and to bring students from different disciplines together. For example, you may want to take introductions to areas such as Law, Education, the digital industries, the creative industries,think like a designer or understand the history and politics behind our current affairs.

Lots of students join Goldsmiths because they want to make a difference in society, to bring about positive change and develop skills and experiences which will allow them to access exciting careers. Goldsmiths’ Social Change module will allow you to do work on group projects with students from other departments to bring about change. You’ll be introduced to the UN’s Sustainable Development goals and core project management theories and practices allow you to work across a number of weeks towards a final Festival of Ideas where you’ll report work back to the academic and local community.

This module introduces the mathematical methods used in the analysis of modern economics. This module is suitable for students both with and without an A Level in Mathematics (or equivalent). Students will revise and apply the basic concepts from algebra and differential calculus to relevant economic problems. Furthermore they will learn partial derivatives and second partial derivatives of functions of two or more independent variables, constrained and unconstrained optimization. The students will be taught how to use these tools in economic applications.

A dissertation is an extended piece of research and writing on a subject of your own choosing. It should be a pleasurable process that allows you to explore in greater depth a question or problem, which lends itself to research and rigorous analysis You'll be responsible for undertaking the relevant reading, planning and organising of your research, but throughout the process you will receive advice and guidance from your supervisor.

A dissertation can take many forms depending on your research question. It may involve amongst many possibilities, an analysis of empirical data, debates around political ideologies, or the politics of contemporary culture. In all cases, you'll be expected to engage with the primary (where relevant) and secondary literature on your chosen subject. It is imperative that you attend the dissertation lectures and workshops to guide you in undertaking and completing your independent research project.

This module spans politics, philosophy and economics, meaning that you'll explore philosophic, political and economic themes in the framework of global cultural politics.

You'll learn about the political economy in an age of globalisation, and what kind of cultural and philosophic questions at stake.

This module introduces the quantitative methods used by economists in their empirical work. You will be technically trained in estimation theory, and introduced to broader questions regarding the use of these tools in applied analysis.

You study the basic properties of the normal distribution, and the difference between the normal and other types of probability distributions. You also learn hypothesis testing and the basic theory for linear regressions and the use of ordinary least squares in empirical analysis. Furthermore, you will learn about problems that may arise with this estimation method.

This is followed by two weeks of methodology on statistics for the social sciences, and a philosophical discussion on the appropriate use and limits of these techniques in analysing social phenomena.

In this module you’ll focus on the application of quantitative theory using data sets that were introduced in the Quantitative Economics module.

With the guidance from academic staff, you are expected to find and collect appropriate data from your own research question, and come up with statistical tests in order to test your hypothesis.

You will then compose a report that explains your findings and the reasons why you used this specific estimation tool. An integral part of your report is to consider the limitations of the statistical toolbox in analysing the specific data set, and more broadly, the limitations of statistical analysis in answering the policy or theoretical question you set out to investigate. Throughout this module you’ll be gaining experience in using computer packages to analyse real data. You’ll learn to use Excel and a second program (Stata), which will enable you to run regressions, do hypothesis testing, correlation analysis and, more generally, analyse raw data collected.

In preparing the report you’ll gain transferable skills in:

• finding, utilizing and downloading data from primary sources
• using computer programs to do data analysis
• developing a research question that can be investigated with the existing data set
• presenting findings in a report format