BA (Hons) Sociology with Criminology

This module aims to introduce you to the ‘sociological imagination’. What is distinctive about Sociology? With a focus on knowledge and power, the module looks at how Sociology has developed, with an emphasis on the study of relations between individuals and groups in modern industrial societies.

This module will:
•introduce students to key sociological approaches to social divisions and differences
•foster students’ knowledge and understanding of the development of sociological thinking through the study of classical and contemporary accounts of social power, identity and inequality
enable students to analyse and contrast differing approaches to the study of core sociological topics, including class, gender, race, religion and nation

This module introduces you to a suite of established and emerging research methods for sociological inquiry and intervention. Drawing the long-standing traditions of sociological research in the department, you’ll study the worlds we live in and the tools that can be used to change them.

Teaching will be carried out thematically, and you’ll be encouraged to collaborate with fellow students around your areas of interest. This is a practical module and encourages you to get ‘messy’ with methods and data from the start of your degree.

The module considers the growth and development of criminological theories and methodologies - from the late nineteenth century to the present day - by looking at forms of representation, policing, constraint, and the government of people and things. These theories and methodologies will be located within the context of the city and the nation.

Lectures will introduce the main themes of the module by considering the birth of criminology and its relationship to the nation state, and examine different critical perspectives on crime and deviance.

The module considers the growth and development of criminological theories and methodologies - from the late nineteenth century to the present day - by looking at forms of representation, policing, constraint, and the government of people and things.

These theories and methodologies will be located within the context of the city and the nation. Lectures will reflect on the role of the state regarding its power to punish, control and responsibility to protect its citizens, and consider some of the conceptual issues associated with transnational and global crimes.

This module is concerned with the relations between culture and social processes. It provides you with an introduction to why culture matters for sociologists by examining two core sociological approaches to the analysis and critique of culture: symbolic interactionism and British Cultural Studies.   

Lectures outline various sociological perspectives and debates on culture and meaning-making. You'll learn through the use of substantive examples of macro-social phenomena, as well as exploring micro-sociological analyses of the role of culture in social interaction (eg British Asian youth cultures). The module also introduces you to the importance of social location in meaning-making, including discussion of how certain types of sociological perspectives have historically been marginalised. 

Through seminar activities and assessment, you'll be taught how to critically evaluate different debates, construct an evidenced argument, and to accurately and consistently reference different types of sources.

This module is concerned with the complex relationship between culture and social processes, and how this informs meaning-making. Through a focus on two particular approaches to the study of culture – the Critical Theory and semiotics – you'll consider how culture is produced and consumed through different social processes and institutions.  

Lectures explore key perspectives and debates on culture in twentieth-century social thought, including the ‘culture industry’, ideology, and culture as ‘text’.

You'll learn through the use of substantive examples of macro-social phenomena (eg consumption) and different media objects (eg cinema and advertising), as well as exploring examples of contemporary cultural phenomena (eg digital meme culture).

Critical appraisal of different theoretical perspectives – for example, via decolonial and feminist analyses – help you to evaluate debates and apply these to the study of contemporary cultural phenomena. Seminar activities and assessment further support the development of your ability to construct critical and evidenced sociological arguments. 

In this module, our approach to the ‘sociological imagination’ is to understand Sociology as a discipline that has its own history. That history has influenced how we do Sociology today. It has given us different approaches, perspectives and different methods. These didn’t arrive all at once, but arose at different times, often in response to social events or changes in philosophical thinking.

New perspectives and questions have arisen that have taken Sociology in new directions. We have to gain a sense of the history of our discipline in order to see where Sociology came from and how that history has changed. Those changes in approach have shaped the Sociology we study today, and we have to understand as much as we can about it in order to understand our own inheritances. But we also have to read this history critically, because it doesn’t have to determine how we do Sociology in the future.

The module takes its lead from Jock Young’s call to the criminological imagination and his critique of a criminology based on a realist, positivist and often quantitative conception of evidenceorthodox criminology.

‘Crime’ animates politics and everyday conversation; it’s the stuff of the news, dramas and films. But much of academic criminology produces abstracted or empirical study. By contrast ‘cultural criminology’, seeks to make sense of the lived cultures and phenomenological experiences of crime.

In this module, you'll examine of how crime and the criminological are refracted through a rich and diverse field of media and cultural forms, devices and practices. You'll learn that crime has been ‘imagined’ in a wide range of ways. You'll explore a series of examples and cases in order to provide depth and empirical focus. You'll also gain a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding what the criminological imagination might mean and how we might bring to the fore its critical analytical force. 

This module introduces you to a suite of established and emerging research methods for sociological inquiry and intervention. Drawing the long-standing traditions of sociological research in the department, you’ll study the worlds we live in and the tools that can be used to change them.

Teaching will be carried out thematically, and you’ll be encouraged to collaborate with fellow students around your areas of interest. This is a practical module and encourages you to get ‘messy’ with methods and data from the start of your degree.

This module considers a number of issues broadly concerning crime: both acts themselves and also the legal, penal, civil society and policing frameworks which address them and which frame them.  You'll explore longstanding philosophical and social theoretical questions about the relationship between crime, the law, justice and rights. You'll specifically look at the actualisation of ideas, theory, principles and discourse into practice and lived experience. 

You'll learn from guest speakers who will talk about their experience and their research concerning how things actually happen, in relation to theories and ideas about how things are said to happen. 

You'll examine the space between law’s conceptualisation of itself as being neutral, above and outside society, and a social critique of that conceptualisation which focuses on all the ways in which law falls short of its own ideals.  Law is understood as a relationship between concepts and their actualizations by social actors; a relationship between the conceptual and the material. 

You'll consider the institutions of criminal justice systems, e.g. police, judiciary, legal defence and prosecution, legal support, sentencing, and prison.

In this module, you'll explore the management, regulation, oversight, accountability – in short, governance – of everyday life. Our everyday lives seem increasingly subject to governance with an explosion of rules, guides, technologies, and forms of scrutiny to which we are subjected. Developing an understanding of these pervasive forms of governance requires a focus on the ordinary, everyday ways of acting and relating to each other, and the ways in which we are held to account through these mundane activities. 

Yet we also need to pay attention to the objects, technologies and political structures required to give governance an effect. In particular, making sense of governance needs a move beyond law or structured regulation to understand how governance is mediated through social, political and material relations involving ordinary, everyday activities, objects, and technologies. 

We'll being by considering the history of the governance of everyday lives, exploring how our contemporary situation has emerged and looking at what questions this has raised. We'll ask how - as sociologists - we can usefully go about studying and critically engaging with everyday governance? And how can we communicate our analysis of governance to different types of audiences?

Weekly topics based on staff research specialisms bring to life the everyday nature of governance in different areas, such as: health, environment, rights, education, crime, religion, migration, consumption and data.

By focusing on contemporary local and global examples of everyday governance, we examine how these practices are held together, how they occasionally fall apart, and how they have different kinds of effects for different communities. We conclude by questioning the future of everyday governance and where we might go next. 

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.

In this module, you'll gain workplace learning experience designed to enhance your studies by bringing theory and real-life practice together. You'll develop practical skills and provide research opportunities within an organisation. You'll expand your networks and provide valuable insights into potential work environments for when you graduate, as well as the space and guidance to reflect on what it means to apply sociology to the world of work.

As part of your assessment for this module, you'll complete a research report. Your course lecturer will assist you in identifying the focus of your research and in applying relevant theory elsewhere, as appropriate. While individual placements vary, all students will conduct, to varying degrees, a small-scale ethnography of the organisation within which they are placed, which will include how the concept of culture is relevant to it, and both its micro, internal goings-on and the macro and policy context in which it operates.

The minimum 10-day placement takes place in May-June with related teaching and support hours spread across the summer and autumn term. Assessment takes place in the autumn term.

Please note: we will endeavor to source placements from across a wide range of areas but cannot guarantee specific placements. You should be flexible and appreciate that any broadly-related experience can be valuable.

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.

We’re living in a time of global climate crisis. How might we, as sociologists, and as people living in this world, make sense of climate change and ecological collapse?  What are our responsibilities? How are we complicit?  How can we make sense of the histories which led to this moment and how might we imagine our futures? How do we stay hopeful?  

In this module, we'll think about how we got here and where we are going.  We'll explore the environmental crisis as a multiple, interconnected issue with a long history, and highly differentiated and unequal impacts.

The module takes a decolonial and anti-racist perspective to environmental issues, embedding work by indigenous, racialized and global south scholars across each week of the term, to help us reframe debates and theories. We also look at different kinds of fictional writing about the environment.  In this way, we want to explore how the global climate crisis represents a challenge to ways of knowing and ways of living and necessitates us thinking in different and more connected ways.

Most people in the world are religious and religion is a significant social force across societies. Research within the Sociology of Religion shows that while a few years ago many sociologists and criminologists thought religion’s influence was decreasing, especially in the ‘west’, this view has changed with the realisation of religion’s continuing, and in some cases increasing, significance.

Religious individuals and institutions both protect and harm individuals: where are the boundaries marking acceptable or unacceptable religious practice? New questions arise concerning the legal rights and responsibilities of religious actors, the shifting boundaries between public and private, the roles of those who police and enforce individual and collective rights and the type and quantity of religious laws and rules. What is meant by religious equality, and how does this impact on human rights and social justice? Do religious people have the ‘right’ to follow their religion’s teaching if it affects the rights of other people, and who decides?  

What is considered to be ‘criminal’ activity changes over time and place, as does the nature of law and other forms of regulation. Most literature on religion and crime speaks to the normative, taken-for-grantedness that religious people are ‘good’. Such assumptions ignore the way religion actually ‘works’ on the ground. Globally, terrorism, conflicts and war crimes are often driven by ethno-religious claims and aspirations. Those in positions of religious power and authority sometimes abuse their roles and the people who follow them. How does the law, and religion, construct certain behaviours as either deviant or permitted, and how is that changing and why? 

The activity of such diverse arenas as sharia courts, secular courts and the United Nations are explored to show how religion is regulated and represented. Finally, the role of religion in the care of criminals is explored, starting with early prison reform and more contemporary initiatives such as prison chaplaincy.  

Using theories and cases from around the world, with an emphasis on the UK and Europe, this module helps students of sociology, law, criminology and sociology of religion to understand the critical relationships between religion, crime and law.  

This module will also prepare you for future study of contemporary religion, law and crime and for careers where understanding diversity and complexity will be strong employability assets. 

The module considers crimes against humanity, and the meaning of key concepts such as:

• Humanity
• State
• Universal jurisdiction
• Individual responsibility

You'll explore what kinds of behaviour constitute crimes against humanity, and how, why and by whom such crimes are committed.

You'll examine what kinds of international legal instruments and institutions have arisen to designate crimes against humanity as such in order to try to prevent or punish them.

You'll compare legal practices of representing such crimes with other practices, in particular memoirs and films. We'll employ concepts to understand case studies and it will employ case studies to shed light on concepts; it will in this way develop a materialist sociological methodology, rooted in empirical study, in order to understand the world. 

The module builds on material already introduced in the first year, and will provide additional perspectives for the historical analysis of modernity. There is a growing consensus in contemporary scholarship on stressing the interdependence and complexity of the processes which contributed to the distinctiveness of modern societies, rather than assigning primacy to any one factor or process – be it economic, political, cultural or social.

This module places an emphasis on historical reflexivity: it will seek to illustrate how historical processes, however multiple and complex, are not simply 'given' as historical objects but reflect the adoption of particular perspectives that are themselves historically specific.

In this module, you'll critically interrogate the apparent connections between gender, ‘race’ and crime. You'll explore how popular stereotypes of gender and race have informed popular ideas about crime, criminological theory, and criminal justice responses to ‘offenders’. You'll learn to read and critically evaluate research on gender, ‘race’ and crime. We'll examine case studies from a range of different national contexts in the Global North and South.  

Sample topics include:

• Criminal justice responses to Indigenous communities in settler colonial societies
• The construction of particular racialized groups as ‘sexually threatening’
• The connection between women’s ‘emancipation’ and their offending
• The connection between ‘masculinities’ and men’s offending 
• Women’s involvement in gangs
• The criminalization of sexual and gender minorities.

In this module, you'l examine sociological explanations for why people break the law, harm others or otherwise ‘deviate’ from socially accepted behaviour.

You'll learn to read and critically interrogate primary research texts, including well-known and emerging theories. In particular, we'll focus on explanations relating to social class, poverty, culture and sub-culture.

Throughout the module, you'll pay close attention to the methodological and ethical issues involved in researching harmful behaviours.  

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. 

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.  

The module will begin by considering some of the perspectives on collective action provided by social history, considering issues such as the role of ‘disruptive power’ in insurrections and the role of class, race and gender in generating intersectional types of struggles. It will then consider some of the salient theoretical debates on the sources and subjects of transformative political action, from debates about the ‘racialised’ and ‘gendered’ Other in relation to the French revolution and the Declaration of Human Rights, to discussions on the place of violence in anti-colonial and liberation movements.

Throughout, attention will be placed on the relevance of concepts in political sociology to the study of contemporary movements for political change - from labour movements to recent anti-racism struggles, from feminism and the new women’s protests, to activism in the age of the Internet and social media. The module will both provide an analytical toolbox for approaching the sociological study of politics and serve as an introduction to some of the most important positions in political sociology. 

‘Leisure is free time'. But is it?

We need only think about the annual subscription to gyms 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 module examines the interconnections between leisure, culture and society.

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. In the scale of things, London is a medium-sized city compared to the mega-cities such as those in SE Asia, on the Indian Subcontinent and in South America. These are cities with large-scale rural to urban migration and they grow at a fast pace and through informal practices in which people improvise on formal structures with electricity hookups and ad hoc buildings sometimes called ‘slums’. In these terms, London is a more formal or regulated city as well as only moderately large. London is a very interesting city with a colonial heritage and multi-racial population accrued through migration. It is a global financial centre and lies at a confluence of migration streams with a constant in and out flow of people.  

Time, space and rhythm are overarching themes running through this module and the key to understanding what cities are and how they work. In addition to time, space and rhythm cities are layered by the ways in which power runs through them. Social inequalities, class, ethnicity, renewal and rebuilding are all sociological concerns that manifest themselves in cities. Cities are shaped as much by the people who live in them as the architects and planners who draw up the urban substance that builders make. Cities are never finished, they are always emerging and mutating just as they are never at rest but increasingly twenty-four-hour commercial enterprises. 

This is a visual urban sociology module conducted on the streets of London rather than in a Goldsmiths’ classroom. This is a different way of learning and it involves using your senses, especially observation, as you move through the city. This is knowledge acquisition on the move.

The module begins by discussing theories of culture that have been advanced in sociology and social/cultural anthropology. Then we move on to look at the intellectual roots of the sociology of culture before turning to the special contributions of cultural studies. Jeffrey Alexander’s ground-breaking work in cultural sociology comes up next; we give consideration to how cultural sociology differs from more established approaches in the sociology of culture and in cultural studies, while itself being informed by these and by social/cultural anthropology.

We then turn to discourse – language in use – and consider its roots in linguistics and in literary studies; we next explore discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. Narrative is a special type of discourse and we examine how it has been used in social research. Network/information society is the background against which any contemporary social science must operate, and we discuss some of the key ideas that have been advanced in the wake of Castells’ path-breaking work. We then turn our attention to the cultural practices of gamers, hackers and ‘prosumers’. The final substantive session situates the preceding lectures in the context of globalisation.

This module aims to develop the introduction to sociological theory that you received in the first year, whilst also preparing you to engage with critiques and the most current developments in the third year. It will help you to develop your understanding of sociological analysis through considering its origins in the classical tradition as well as discussing contemporary issues.

In the first half of the module, we explore five key thinkers and their central concerns as a way of exploring distinct approaches to social analysis. In the second half of the module, we explore five key concepts as a way of thinking through how social theory is put to work as a tool to understand and illuminate the social world.

Throughout these lectures we will explore different assumptions about the nature of social order and different approaches to practice. Throughout the module, we examine the way in which different kinds of sociological explanation are grounded in different assumptions about the way the social world works.

On completing this module, you should have a good understanding of the theoretical positions that form the point of departure of current debates in social theory and in sociological research. You will have practiced thinking in different ways and will be able to make more informed choices about the tools and concepts you use to think about the central issues in sociological analysis.

With migration frequently presented as a situation of ‘crisis’, this module considers broader contexts and longer histories of migration to and within Europe and will consider the academic field of migration as an interdisciplinary field of study.

Exploring contemporary literature from writers and theorists working in a European context, the module will present you with starting points from which to consider migration using core sociological concepts, particularly of place, ‘race’ and power.

The module will follow a migration pathway, with focus points considered through lenses of leaving, moving, arriving and staying.  

• Leaving - We'll examine those legal frameworks and international agreements relevant to migration, and explore the uneasy distinction between so-called forced migration and economic migration.   
• Moving - We'll consider borders and immigration controls, border theories, and the differentiated legal statutes of migrating people as linked to colonial and postcolonial relationships.   
• Arriving - We'll reflect on notions of displacement, exile, integration strategies and policies, representations of migrants and racism, and examples of activism with and by migrants. 
• Staying – We'll look at migration and cities, and focus on the experiences of young migrants in particular.

We’re living in a time of global climate crisis. How might we, as sociologists, and as people living in this world, make sense of climate change and ecological collapse? What are our responsibilities? How are we complicit? How can we make sense of the histories which led to this moment and how might we imagine our futures? How do we stay hopeful?

In this module, we'll think together about how we got here and where we are going. We will explore the environmental crisis as a multiple, interconnected issue which has a long history, and highly differentiated and unequal impacts. The module takes a decolonial and anti-racist perspective to environmental issues, embedding work by indigenous, racialized and global south scholars across each week of the term, to help us reframe debates and theories. We also look at different kinds of fictional writing about the environment. In this way, we want to explore how the global climate crisis represents a challenge to ways of knowing and to ways of living and necessitates us thinking in different and more connected ways.

A dissertation is not a long essay, but your own structured, sociological or sociologically-informed investigation or research of an interesting problem or issue.

Writing an extended piece of work on a subject of your own choosing is usually a pleasurable and interesting process; it is also a challenging process that requires careful thought and planning. Many of the dissertations produced by single and joint honours students have been of an exceptionally high standard and have demonstrated considerable creativity, imagination and hard work.

In doing the dissertation, you'll be taking charge of setting your own topic, creating your own space, undertaking the relevant reading, and planning and organising your research; however, you are also listening and responding to the advice and guidance of your tutor and other staff. Both these processes are essential to the successful completion of a good dissertation.

Citizenship was an achievement of working-class movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe and Scandinavia).  But citizenship has continuously been challenged in different ways as itself creating injustice and inequalities – especially in terms of race and gender, and now in terms of nationality in the age of migration and with issues of empire and decolonising becoming more prominent.

In addition, citizenship is now bought and sold – how does this contribute to old and new inequalities?  Does citizenship offer tools to enable individuals and groups to address systemic inequalities today?  What are the limitations of citizenship?  How do they differ according to social interests and identities?  Do human rights offer better tools and how can their significance be analysed and assessed? 

In this module, you'll examine the emergence of modern ideas of ‘race’ and forms of racism as well as the social and political forces that have shaped their development. We'll consider how racial ideas are conceptualized and justified through separate and interrelated forms of biological, social, and cultural description and explanation.

You'll explore the history of racial ideas from the Enlightenment and Romantic periods through to contemporary debates. We'll consider the historical formations of ‘race’ and racism in relation to Atlantic slavery and emancipation in the Caribbean and North America, classical scientific racism, and anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

The module also engages a range of critical issues: the rise of ethnicity as an alternative category to ‘race’; ‘racial’ epidemiology and public health; feminist approaches to the ‘intersections’ between ‘race’, class and gender; ‘differentialist’ forms of ‘new’ or ‘cultural’ racism; and eliminativist perspectives arguing that race ought to be eliminated altogether as a category and concept.

We'll also examine the conceptual work performed by racial ideas as well as their analytical coherence, political functions, and social effects. The module will emphasize a critical approach to the understanding of ‘race’ and encourage students to evaluate the social implications of racial ideas.

In this module, you'll explore the key theories of the relationship between identity and the law.  What is the relationship between legal and social identity?  How do we consider this relationship in terms of questions of justice? 

You'll examine contemporary debates concerning identity and law, from critical race feminism to deconstruction. You'll engage in a critical analysis of a range of key approaches to understanding identity, law, and justice. You'll apply these different approaches to case studies such as:

• Sexual assault
• Refugee law
• Human rights
• Terrorism
• International crimes

The first section of the course explores different accounts of law and identity and the second section explores debates concerning justice and identity.

In this module, you'll take a critical and sociological perspective to the study of crime and control in a globalised world. Globalisation is understood as an unequal process with historical roots in colonialism and empire.

Likewise, criminological theory has had a close relationship to colonialism. Criminologists now recognise that many of our theories, developed during colonialism and empire, are not relevant outside of the global north, and may even be harmful. As a result, contemporary criminologists need to learn to think globally in comprehending and researching transnational and global forms of crime.  

You'll examine a variety of contemporary and historic topics, including:

• Colonialism and criminal justice
• The contemporary war on drugs
• Organised crime
• Violence against women in a globalised world
• The relationship between criminal justice and bordering practices

This module has a non-standard assessment. Drawing on topics covered in this module, students write a blog post, factsheet, or film review for a non-academic audience as well as a structured reflection and bibliographic exercise.

In this wide-ranging module, you'll look at the shifting nexus of relationships between contemporary criminality, social control and the city. You'll take a critical and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research and theory from sociology, urban studies, cultural geography and philosophy, as well as criminology.

Topics to be covered include (but are by no means limited to):

• The 2011 riots
• Pirate radio
• Graffiti writing
• The militarised policing of protest
• Facial recognition and “algorithmic surveillance”
• Shoplifting
• The social media spectacle of illegal “urban exploration”
• Anti-homeless spikes; and the Grenfell Tower fire.

You'll also the opportunity to submit course material in a range of creative formats.

The concept of ‘crimes of the powerful’ responds to long-standing criticisms that criminology focuses on petty crimes and offenders whilst neglecting crimes committed by powerful corporations, states and organisations.

In this module, we'll take a wide-ranging interdisciplinary approach drawing on research and theory from criminology, sociology, socio-legal studies, law, human rights, politics and international relations to discuss diverse issues such as war, state crime, corporate and white-collar crime. You'll learn why crimes of the powerful have generally proven difficult to legislate or punish.

This module will engage with issues of privacy, surveillance and security. Recent years have seen a huge growth in demands for: certainty in the verification of identity; accountability of individual and organisational activity; and mechanisms designed to accumulate knowledge of what individuals and groups may do in the near future. The module will provide you with a background to the historical development of surveillance and the mobilizing of notions of security through specific political regimes.

You'll investigate contemporary issues in privacy, surveillance and security including: the rise of CCTV and the visualization of order, airports and spaces of disciplined consumption, the management of everyday life and claims regarding the death of privacy. Finally, we'll investigate the possibility of addressing tensions between privacy, surveillance and security issues.

In particular, we'll focus on technologies as solutions, market-based mechanisms and the valuation of privacy, and the variety of interventions, engagements and accountabilities with regard to surveillance that has been developed in recent years.

Documentary and docufiction film is increasingly seen as an accessible and lively way for members of the public to engage with aspects of contemporary life – and especially issues to do with social justice.

In the university, it also seems especially appropriate to ‘decolonising the curriculum’ because of the way film graphically brings contexts and issues into focus with which we may have no familiarity in everyday life.  Documentary has indexical qualities that make it especially attractive in both these respects.

At the same time, however, documentary film is always also narrative and metaphorical.  In this module, we'll approach films both as graphically exemplifying social issues and as raising issues of representation and the ‘politics of location’ in terms of framing particular narratives and images, representing ‘Otherness’, exemplifying global tendencies etc.

The module aims to introduce you to a range of contemporary debates, which relate broadly to the sociological analysis of identity, memory and emotion. Through an examination of themes such as normativity and belonging, you're invited to consider the ways in which identity can act as a valuable resource, but also as an instrument of stigmatisation; contemporary examples relating to social class, disability, racialisation and LGBTQ lives help to illuminate the cultural politics of identity in contemporary societies. The emotional dimension of identity is foregrounded through the sociological analysis of emotion as an effect of wider, societal processes, but also as a driver of categorisation. 

You'll then be introduced to the relationship between identity and collective memory. Through an exploration of different facets of remembering and forgetting – such as cultural trauma and nostalgia – lectures foreground the contested nature of social memory. Contemporary local and global examples – eg on austerity politics, Black Lives Matter, and the Covid-19 pandemic - help students to apply theoretical knowledge to the critical analysis of social identities. You'll be encouraged to build on material presented within the module to develop further your independent, sociological thought, as well as your ability to communicate with non-academic audiences.

Recent dramatic shifts in worldwide religiosity demand sociological analysis: new variants of religions and spiritual movements are proliferating just as numbers of non-religious people are increasing. Both of those changes - towards more religion/spirituality and away from religion - are impacting everyday life through, for example, politics, media, international relations, gender dynamics, education, consumerism and security. Participants share profuse manifestations of relationality – embodied, enacted and digitalised - which appear to contradict social theories of post-enlightenment individualisation.    

As literalist, fundamentalist strands of Christianity, Islam and Judaism rise and mutate, they affect extremist and populist forms of politics, violence and terrorism. While many religions have become more orthodox, devout and exclusionary - posing challenges for the more liberal ‘middle ground’ -  they have also (apparently paradoxically) attracted people who had previously been less religious and committed to their faith, yet now embrace some its more divisive, often violent, beliefs and practices.  

Less dogmatic and more mystical variants, such as Sufism in Islam and Kabbalah in Judaism proliferate amongst otherwise non-religious people.  Some religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, diffuse through both secular and spiritual practices, as many people turn to mindfulness, yoga, and meditation. Reinvented religions and spiritual practices may revive through paganism, the occult and rich afterlife beliefs.  

And then there is the fastest-growing religion category of them all - those who say they practise no religion. 

The number of those who claim to have no religion is increasing rapidly:  the ‘nones’ is the third-largest religion-related group – about 1.1 billion people - worldwide. The demographic of those who identify as atheist is remarkably consistent: overwhelmingly young, and mostly male. Beyond those self-described atheists is a larger, more fluid category of people who affiliate with ‘non-religion’ but have complex beliefs and practices, sometimes described as spiritual or paranormal, often relating to kin and ethnicity, sometimes visible through nationalism, environmentalism and human/other-than-human rights campaigns,  

Central to these shifts to and from religion are wider global, structural, economic and discursive changes. In this module we explore the new imaginaries, tensions, histories, power dynamics and cultural e(a)ffects that may help explain the current contemporary religious landscape. 

This module will also prepare you for future study of contemporary religion and for careers where understanding diversity and complexity will be strong employability assets. 

This module is intended as an advanced introduction to the exploration of sociological issues and themes with visual methods. You'll be introduced to a variety of visual media and methods. These methods will be discussed with regard to their suitability for sociological research. In the seminars, you'll explore various visual methods yourself. 

You'll also work throughout on your own project, relating to the theme of visualising connections, and you will present your own project in the last two sessions. The module focuses on an introduction to a wide variety of media and methods and does not provide in-depth training of particular methods. It focuses on experimentation and exploration, hoping that students will use their skills for later more in-depth projects. 

The main emphasis of this module is not to teach the technicalities of photography and other visual methods but rather to help you develop a visually informed sociological imagination and as such we would welcome the use of low-tech visual technologies such as drawings and shooting with digital cameras and mobile phones.

What is childhood and what are children’s experiences of their childhoods, their societies and cultures? How do children contribute and shape their communities, societies and cultures? This module lets you explore childhood and children’s lives from an interdisciplinary and international perspective. Building on key debates in childhood studies, including issues of power, participation, agency and control, students on the module learn about the different ways childhood has been produced in societies across time in relation to the state, families, education, government, and more.

You'll learn to ask what these ‘figurations of the child’ mean for children’s everyday lives and lived experiences and how children respond to dominant understandings of childhood. The module places an emphasis on children’s cultures, their everyday lives, and lived experiences, and you'll be exposed to a range of theories and methodologies that have been used to study childhood and do research with children. In view of discussions around the decolonization of the curriculum, the reading list has been updated and the various sessions consider the topics from an international and historical perspective.

How are some of the foundations of sociological and philosophical thinking 'undone' by animals? How does recent research transform our conceptions of animals, and of the relations between animals and humans? How do animals and humans live together? How should they live together?

This module lets you explore how animals have been understood across a range of histories and disciplines, beginning with key philosophers of Renaissance humanism and stretching through to contemporary animal liberationists, analytic and continental philosophers and ethicists, feminists, posthumanist theorists, and animal scientists. 

The module has three sections: ethics and politics; power; and 'thinking otherwise.' The first section, ethics and politics, lays the foundations of the module as a whole by exploring how animals have traditionally been understood in western philosophy and how that legacy shapes the contemporary ethics and politics of animals. The role of ‘thinking’ and ‘rationality’ will be key here, as will be the relations between speciesism and racism.

The second section, power, addresses two key sites of human power over animals: animal food farming and pet keeping. We will see how food farming is bound up both with the on-going legacies of colonialism, and with contemporary global inequalities. We will also explore new conceptions of domestication not as something that humans do to animals, but as multispecies events.

The third section of the module, 'thinking otherwise,' revisits earlier themes in the light of exciting new developments in the animal sciences and in animal studies. These developments suggest that animals have emotions, cognition, and perhaps even morality; that some animals can laugh, experience pain, grief, humour, and that nearly all animals have preferences, desires, and opinions. What are the implications of these developments for how we think about animals and, more practically, how we live, work and conduct research with them? How should we address the tricky problem of anthropomorphism? The final lecture of the module considers how radically different 'thinkers' - octopuses and plants – can force us, as social scientists, to think differently too. 

This module is co-taught with Monk, an eight-year old black Labrador. Students are not obliged to engage with Monk. Conversely, students should not expect to touch Monk without his permission. A short video on 'petting consent tests' is mandatory viewing for this module, even if students are familiar with dogs.  

This module will take an interdisciplinary approach in order to chart the gender dimensions of transnational migrations in the contemporary world. As a growing number of migration scholars emphasize, a gender perspective is crucial to orienting our theories and understanding of migration and global human geographies in the twenty-first century. You'll be encouraged to address questions such as:

• Why are men and women increasingly on the move on a global scale?
• What do male and female migrants do in the so-called countries of destination in the Global North?
• How does gender help us to understand the migration trajectories of migrants?
• How are gendered migrations linked to processes of social reproduction?  

The module will be divided into two parts. First, you'll be encouraged to analyse the recent history and political economy of migrations through the lenses of gender, as well as ‘race’ and class theories. We'll focus on the notions of ‘feminisation of migrations’ and ‘crisis of social reproduction’ to examine their root causes and dimensions.

You'll then learn to explore the social and cultural representations of migrants in the Global North and to identify the ways these representations can be scrutinised through theories of gender, ‘race’ and class. We'll take a critical perspective on key concepts such as ‘sexualisation of racism’, ‘racialisation of sexism’, ‘gendered assimilation’, ‘civic integration of migrants’ and ‘gendered colonial technologies of domination’. Taking a case study approach throughout the module, you'll learn how to evaluate the feasibility and appropriateness of different methodologies and techniques of social research when undertaking empirical research projects involving migrants. 

During the term we will explore multiple dimensions of the concept of subjectivity in relation problems of health and medicine: the epistemological dimension, where ‘subjectivity’ implies a reference to the subject/object dichotomy and to different forms of knowledge; the phenomenological dimension, where ‘subjectivity’ points to questions of embodiment, experience, and transformation; and the political dimension where ‘subjectivity’ points to the construction of different types of subject within different forms of governance. We will trace a path across these dimensions by examining a range of phenomena at the margins of conventional/mainstream biomedical knowledge, from contested illnesses to placebo/nocebo effects, to pedagogical programmes designed to restore to medicine the element of ‘art’ it has allegedly lost to science. I very much look forward to working with you on these topics this term, and hope that you in turn will find the work exciting and productive.

What difference can other ways of thinking and being make to our own? How do we think with others who are unlike us, with those to whom our Western understanding of the world does not adequately apply?

This module introduces you to key questions, perspectives and debates on the relationship between philosophy and cultural difference: it asks what it means for philosophy and the social sciences to take difference seriously, and what that can teach us about living well with others. Weaving together philosophy, social theory, cultural anthropology, postcolonial studies, and religious studies, the module will critically appraise key theoretical debates on questions of cultural difference, tolerance, relativism, pluralism, and the challenges of decolonizing Western thought.

It will do so by exploring a range of empirical issues and case-studies from across the Global South and the Global North that challenge our most basic assumptions and raise profound philosophical questions about the relations between thinking and feeling, knowledge and faith, concepts and stories, difference and sameness, as well as nature and culture. Exploring how other collectives can transform our own ways of thinking and being, this module will ask what concepts, stories, and sensibilities we may need to foster plural ways of inhabiting the world today.

This course helps you to understand the relationship between human interventions and global and local environments. How do humans interfere with the world? How can we judge human interventions in their material surroundings? Could we establish rules for intervening in the world? At the beginning of the course, we review some theoretical ideas how human agency relates to the environment, beginning with Marxist ideas of production to Actor-network theory and attendant ideas. We then look at different ways to understand large and small-scale time scales and interventions, from spaceship earth to Gaja to the Anthropocene. 

We then analyse the effects and technologies of particular interventions, such as geoengineering, pollution, climate change, traffic and urbanization. Finally, we discuss different kinds of interventions, such as different forms of critique, activism and design interventions and we ask how these relate to theoretical concerns addressed earlier in the course.  

Essays can both be written as theoretical treatises discussing theories of human intervention or they can be your own design interventions. 

This module charts the shifting contours of contemporary repressive and punitive state responses to crime and disorder. You'll consider a number of emerging dynamics in criminal justice, including:

• Crises of policing and prisons
• Privatisation of prisons, probation and policing
• Suspension of human rights and the rule of law under “states of exception” and an array of strategies for policing public and private space.

You'll question many taken-for-granted assumptions about some of the central institutions of the criminal justice apparatus today. 

This module explores the tension between “criminal justice” and “social justice” and juxtaposes harmful strategies of state criminalisation with a range of novel and progressive alternatives. If criminal justice approaches to preventing crime and delivering justice not only fail to achieve either of these stated aims, but actively exacerbate existing harms and produce new ones - what might more creative, empowering, humanising and transformative approaches look like?

Subjects to be considered include:

• The criminalisation of drugs versus harm reduction approaches
• Responses to the coronavirus pandemic
• Transformative justice
• Police abolition