BA (Hons) Sociology & Politics

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 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 is designed to introduce you to some of the fundamental concepts, theories and ideologies that influence our understanding and evaluation of the political world. The module explores key political concepts such as legitimacy, democracy, liberty, equality and justice by introducing some of the ideas of major political thinkers such as Hobbes, Bentham, Locke, Kant, Marx, J.S. Mill, Rawls and Nozick. The module also introduces students to major political ideologies including liberalism, socialism, conservatism and anarchism.

This module introduces you to the comparative approach to politics and government, in addition to building a foundation understanding of the politics and governance of four key members of the European Union: the UK, Germany, Italy and France. The first half of the module is focused on the UK and also considers the EU as an institution, while the second half concentrates on the other three countries at the module’s core. You will not only build an essential foundation for studying the politics of the UK/EU polity in which we live but will also develop their skills in comparative methods.

This module introduces you to the study of world politics, emphasising that there are different and competing perspectives on how to approach the subject. In the first term, it introduces you to the three dominant paradigms (Realism, Pluralism and Structuralism) that defined the discipline of International Relations (IR) throughout the 20th Century. It situates those paradigms in the historical context in which they were developed and critically examines both their contribution to our understanding of world politics and their theoretical and empirical shortcomings. The first term ends by highlighting the challenges posed to these traditional ways of studying international relations by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War order.

In the second term, the module identifies the contours of the post-Cold War international environment. In particular, it explores claims that contemporary world politics are defined by processes of globalisation. Specific topics addressed include: the nature of American power and the challenge of the BRICs; the prevalence of 'New Wars'; global poverty and inequality; nationalist and ethnic conflict; human rights; intervention and humanitarian crises; refugees and migration; and terrorism and the war on terror.

These themes are explored in order to evaluate i. how the contemporary globalised world differs from previous world orders and ii. whether traditional ways of thinking about world politics, such as the three paradigms, can still account for and explain global processes and outcomes.

This module aims to provide you with an understanding of the importance of colonialism and imperialism, and resistance to these, in the shaping of our world. It treats ‘culture’, including forms of ‘art’, as central to politics. It begins by considering non-Western forms of politics, civilization and culture prior to colonial domination. The rest of the module explores the forms of political, cultural, aesthetic and ideological interaction, and change, engendered in the module of the colonial encounter. A related aim of the module is to introduce students to a range of types of reading material and sources, beyond the conventional first year text book.

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.

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. 

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.

On this module, you will be introduced to several major thinkers in the modern history of political thought. It will begin with those individuals usually taken to be the founders of the modern discipline such as Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke, moving on to explore the eminent critics and defenders of the Enlightenment and European capitalist modernity such as Rousseau, J.S. Mill, Hegel, Marx, and Arendt, and culminate in an examination of two leading figures from the Global South, namely, Gandhi and Fanon. In the process of reading these thinkers’ seminal texts, we will tackle key themes and concepts addressed in their writings such as republicanism, sovereignty, justice, human nature, natural rights, liberty, property, democracy, equality, citizenship, revolution, alienation and violence.

In addition to providing students with an introduction to a series of thinkers who have decisively impacted the way we understand politics today; the module will lay out a more critical vantage point on what is conventionally taken to comprise the “canon” of Western political thought. Assessing thinkers such as Locke, Mill, Hegel, Marx and Arendt through a “decolonial” lens, it takes seriously those issues which have often been neglected and overlooked in the study of the history of modern political thought, such as slavery, settler colonialism, patriarchy and gender, race and racism, as well as imperialism and domination. This “decolonial” approach to modern political theory aims to recast the classic thinkers of Western political thought in a new light, as well as place them in conversation with thinkers from the Global South who for the most part have been either ignored or intentionally excluded from the discipline.

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 course introduces students to the study of international trade. Topics covered include the basics of classical and neoclassical trade theory, economies of scale, international factor mobil-ity, firms in the global economy, and the effect of trade on wages and income distribution.

We will also discuss the tools used by governments to conduct trade policy (e.g. tariffs and quo-tas) and their impact on trade volumes and welfare. Finally, we will turn our attention to the experience of developing countries in the global economy in order to examine key debates on trade and development, trade liberalisation, trade policies and development strategies.

The course is designed as a mixture of lectures, tutorials, and seminars.

*Please note that students must have taken Economics modules at level 4 in order to enrol on this module.

The purpose of the course is to provide students with a set of theoretical tools and concepts that will enable them to understand and systematically analyse the monetary side of the international economy.

Key topics covered include the balance of payments, the determination of ex-change rates, interest rates, and prices in open economies, different exchange rate regimes (fixed vs. floating), the interdependence of economies, and international macroeconomic policy.

We will also employ this theory to better understand recent issues such as the persistence of the US current account deficit; the creation of the Euro and the future of the US Dollar as the key international currency; the nature and consequences of financial crises.

Students are expected to come out of this course with a deeper understanding of international monetary theory and related economic policy issues. 

*In order to study this module you must have taken Economics modules at level 4.

This module treats culture as central to an understanding of politics and ideology and focuses on contemporary popular culture in Japan as a particularly significant site for understanding current political concerns. Focusing on literature, cinema, anime, manga, and other cultural forms in times of momentous political changes, the course seeks to chart how political anxieties and passions come to be articulated in different periods in Japan’s history. These forms often provide insights of a kind unavailable through standard historical documents and conventional discourse. How did Japan set about creating a modern nation along western lines in the 19th century, and what did this mean in terms of creating new forms of knowing and inhabiting the world? What were the affective intensities that fuelled ultranationalism in Japan? How were the Japanese able to turn themselves into war victims in the post-war period? How has Japan figured in the western imagination and how can we rethink Said’s Orientalism in light of Japan’s own strategic self-orientalisation? It is by examining the close inter-connections between politics, ideology, and culture that the module seeks to address these questions.

This is a broad, historically-based survey module of Chinese politics that takes the student from the early days of communist partisanship through to the end of the Cultural Revolution (from 1921 to 1976 or thereabouts). This module is designed to offer both an overview of and background to, contemporary Mainland Chinese political culture and an insight into a form of politics that is very different from that of liberal democracy.

This module is a lot more historically oriented than many of the other survey modules offered in the Department, but to understand this country requires an understanding of this history which is still lived very much as an on-going set of norms and values. It is difficult to understand China today without an understanding of this history and what this module offers is a survey account of this period.

This module focuses on the principal debates and issues that have been shaping world politics since the end of the Cold War. The module provides a detailed review of the main theoretical perspectives contributing to contemporary IR Theory, critically assesses what IR theory is about, identifies the abstractions and logic it deploys, and interrogates its relation to the outside world.

This module investigates the history of European society since 1945. This historical overview is divided into four thematic sections of several lectures each:

• Cold War and Post-Cold War Europe
• The Great Economic Boom and the Rise of Globalisation: Keynesianism, Neo-Liberalism and the Welfare State
• End of Empires West and East: Decolonisation and the Rise of Multicultural Europe
• European Integration and the Reconstruction of the European Nation-State

These themes reflect the unique changes in Europe since 1945, which still make this a valid periodisation today.

This module explores debates surrounding the concept of global governance and evaluates the power of international organisations in world politics. Global governance is generally framed as a response to the increased prevalence of transnational concerns and problems that cannot be resolved by individual sovereign states. We will look at theoretical frameworks to explain and evaluate global governance, including realist, constructivist, feminist and critical theory approaches. We will also examine the definition of global problems, identify the organisations responsible for intervening in these and critically assess their role and impacts.

The module traces the emergence and evolution of key organisations historically as well as their contemporary political significance. We critically reflect on the nature and impacts of United Nations agencies such as the World Health Organisation or the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA); the International Criminal Court; the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; and regional organisations. The module considers not only the role of states and intergovernmental organisations, but also the power of civil society, including social movements, NGOs and the media, and various forms of contestation and resistance. You will engage in both theoretical critique and the analysis of responses to particular global problems. The module will include formative group work on a presentation, linked to individual policy reports.

A critical and historical study of political thinking and political argument in the United Kingdom since the early twentieth century to the present day, examining liberalism, socialism, conservatism, anarchism, feminism, the rise of the modern state, the nature of politics, and the character of the political community.

The module examines the work of important thinkers from the William Morris and the Webbs through George Orwell and Virginia Woolf to the present day. 

With the collapse of ‘socialist’ regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, liberalism today is a triumphant political theory and system. Yet from the moment of its birth, liberalism has been subjected to sharp criticism, and alternatives to it have been and continue to be urged. This module is an introduction to liberal theory; to the circumstances of its historical emergence and, in particular, to the concepts and values which are central to liberal thought.

It aims to promote critical reflection upon the political and ethical values that underlie Western liberal democracies. Having examined the core values of liberalism, we proceed to consider critiques - communitarian, feminist and Marxist - of liberalism.  A second aim of this subject is to promote intellectual engagement with, and evaluation of, critiques of liberal theory and of liberal society.

This module sets out to analyse, critique and experiment with the politics of everyday life. It starts from the position that the study of daily life (or what the French call le quotidian) provides a necessary concrete specificity with which to address, engage with, or resist a range of important issues.

In the module of our investigations, the insights of de Certeau, the Situationists, the Trapese Collective, CrimethInc and many others are extended into detailed investigations of the structures and mythologies of ‘everyday life’. 

The module brings an historical perspective to key issues in British politics from 1979 to the present day.

It does that by examining themes such as rise of Thatcherism, the divisions in the main political parties, the rise and fall of New Labour, and the politics of the 2010 Coalition.

This module introduces students to the history and politics of the modern Middle East. Together we will explore the legacy of European colonialism and its impact on state formation and the regional state system; the emergence of national and transnational ideologies and movements such as Arab nationalism, Pan-Arabism and political Islam during the global Cold War; the origins of Zionism and the Palestinian national movement and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. We will also debate state and Islamic feminisms in Turkey, Egypt and Iran; the causes and consequences of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as well as its wider repercussions. We will move next to discuss the nature of American empire and the politics of oil in the Persian Gulf; the rise of Salafi-Jihadism and the newfound prominence of non-state actors such as al-Qaeda and ISIS on the global stage. The module will end by reflecting upon the roots of the Arab Uprisings of 2011 and the mass mobilisations against entrenched authoritarianism and neoliberalism, as well as their revolutionary and counter-revolutionary consequences for the politics and society of the Middle East and North Africa.

This module is concerned with the visual and its discursive political effects. It starts from the premise that vision is not merely a neutral way of seeing the world, but rather is intimately bound up with the political.

As such, the module is interested in unpacking the political nature of how we code and construct the world through vision, the position that art and aesthetics play in moderating political debate and even knowledge construction itself, as well as investigating the relationship between ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ more broadly in terms of surveillance, control and power.

In studying these issues, the module will explore topics as diverse as aesthetics, censorship, surveillance, documentary and blockbuster film making, mapping and cartography, travel writing and memory, cosmetic surgery and the visual elements of class politics. The module will consist of weekly lectures and seminars, as well as fortnightly film-screenings. The ultimate aim of this module is to provide students a ‘toolkit’ to decode the everyday politics of vision that guide and construct our lives.

To gain a more sophisticated (and less prejudiced) knowledge of “rough politics” is particularly vital today, as the age of globalisation seems to be framed by the conflict between the rule of law represented by western democracies, and the violent disorder embodied by the Global South.

In studying this shadowy territory we will touch upon fundamental issues for today's social sciences: the afterlives of Twentieth Century revolutionary politics, the connections between political violence and religion, the nature of informal and illegal economies, the current debates on globalisation from below, the prospects for social rebellion, the construction of new political subjectivities and novel ways of representing the “other”.

We will do all of this by studying the political significance of guerrilla warfare in shaping global politics; the language of martyrdom in religious based terrorism; Al Qaeda´s dependence on mass-murder to advance a populist theology, Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea reinventing the fascination and fear caused by pirates from a bygone age, Colombian paramilitaries enforcing order and disregarding at the very same time the Rule of Law, The Mara Salvatrucha street gang dominating neighbourhoods in El Salvador and Los Angeles, and hackers disturbing the otherwise unalterable profitmaking arrangements of the Internet.

This module explores the interaction between US domestic and foreign politics. It seeks to understand the way that domestic political dynamics influence foreign policy and the role of the US in the broader international arena. It introduces students to the structure of US government and the main interest groups involved in the foreign policy-making process, examining the broader ideological and political trends that have shaped the way the US acts on the global stage as the world’s only remaining superpower.

Part of the module will take a historical overview, looking at how US foreign policy has developed post-Second War, throughout the Cold War, and into today’s War on Terror, showing how different administrations have responded to perceived international threats, opportunities and challenges, as well as domestic political pressures and concerns.

The module will also examine a number of contemporary issues currently faced by the US, which are likely to shape US foreign policy and security strategy for the foreseeable future: conflict in the Middle East; the threat of Islamist terrorism; the economic rise of China; global nuclear proliferation; the challenges posed by Russia; and the broader issue of global climate change. It will look at how the US responds to these dilemmas, and how these issues figure in domestic political debates and the US’ perception of itself.

Since Francis Fukuyama’s ill-fated prediction that the liberal democratic model was here to stay, today liberal democracies seem threatened on all sides – from religious fundamentalism, populist politics and new forms of authoritarianism.

In this module, you'll explore from a political theory perspective, some of these underlying tensions. Starting with an examination of the idea of democracy in its different forms (direct, representative, radical and deliberative), its coincidence with liberalism and some radical critiques of its limitations, the module then goes on to explore some contemporary challenges to the democratic way of life: post-secularism and the return of religion to the public sphere; authoritarian politics; the populist resurgence; post-truth discourse; the cultural wars; new forms of activism and protest; and regimes of surveillance, control and social monitoring. The aim of the module is to understand what democracy means today in light of these challenges and how it might be rethought. 

Since the end of the Cold War, both the theory and practice of international security have undergone radical changes. In the era of globalisation, security is no longer confined to questions of interstate conflict and cooperation but embraces a plethora of new concerns.

Most significant among these is the prevalence of new wars fought within rather than between states and the range of phenomena such as environmental destruction, transnational criminal activity, development and insecurity, and migration and disease, that these conflicts generate.

Furthermore, the terms by which the institutions of international society engage with these security threats has been rearticulated within a discourse of liberal humanitarianism in which human rather than state security has become the main referent.

This module explores this transformation of the ‘new security agenda’ by means of:

• an exploration of the theoretical and conceptual reframing of security
• analysis of a selection of important challenges framed as security threats.

The module is in two parts. The first part examines and debates a range of competing theories and concepts of security. It considers different meanings of the term ‘security’ and whose security we can talk about. The second part examines some contemporary security threats with implications for international politics.

These will include, among other subjects: inter and intra-state conflict; the role and future of international and regional security institutions; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; international terrorism and the war on terror; cyber-warfare and transnational crime; and development, resources and conflict.

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.

This module deals with the diverse fields, uses and functions of technologies, analysing how they have been received in International Relations and the current debates in Science and Technology Studies. You'll be introduced to a critical study of technology, analysing the colonial history of contemporary technology.

You'll explore on technology as a strategic terrain, between control and surveillance on the one hand, and resistance and political mobilisations on the other. Concerning technology and modes of control, we'll consider different fields in which technology is today used and developed:

• Borders and remote control
• Military uses, dual-uses technologies
• Development and digital inclusion
• Big data
• Social media
• Migration
• Biometrics

You'll learn how digital governance and digital economy have transformed international politics. Concerning technology and resistance, it looks at how technology has been used in social movements, civic mobilisations and new forms of activism (digital activism, hacking). You'll be introduced to the key debates and texts in International Relations about technology and will retrace the colonial history of technology. We'll then discuss how technologies are used for security, humanitarian and military purposes, touching upon surveillance, remote control, migration, humanitarian wars and new conflicts. Lastly, we'll deal with information technology, and social media. It will analyse contemporary debates on how to rethink agency and collective subjects in light of digital technologies, highlighting citizen mobilisations that engaged in subverting surveillance.

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'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 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.

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.