Sociology option modules

The module will cover contemporary approaches to the body and especially sexuality, beginning with an introduction to Foucaultian critiques and associated theories of performativity. It will provoke a series of questions about social constructionism and materiality, inviting students to evaluate more process oriented theories of performativity as well as those emphasising the productive work of speech acts (Butler). The terms ‘drugs’ and ‘technology’ in the title give emphasis to the way in which the body will be posed as always already engaged with phenomena that is more commonly deemed external. This conceptual approach will introduce students in second year to more contemporary debates and particularly debates that offer a more applied approach to inquiries of the body in relation to health, medicine and everyday technologies.

This module considers crimes against humanity. In terms of social theory, it asks what it might mean to say that something is a crime against humanity as a whole, or against the human condition, rather than simply a crime against a particular state or a particular national law. You will consider the meaning of key concepts such as humanity, state, universal jurisdiction, and individual responsibility.

The introduction to this module will also look at sociological theories of nationalism and the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. It will go on to consider totalitarianism, comparing Bauman's analysis of totalitarianism as a prototype of 'modernity' with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism as a revolt against modern forms.

You will study what kinds of behaviour constitute crimes against humanity; how, why and by whom such crimes are committed, and consider what kinds of international legal instruments and institutions have arisen to designate crimes against humanity as such and to try to prevent or punish them. The module will also explore the difficulties of cultural representation of crimes against humanity, through movies including Shoah, Schindler's List, Ararat, Hotel Rwanda and The Act of Killing.

Throughout this module, you will develop a materialist sociological methodology: using concepts to understand case studies and case studies to shed light on concepts.

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

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

The first part of the module is primarily concerned with establishing a firm grasp of the fundamental approaches to the political sociology of democratic societies, whist the second introduces debates – over planning, ethnic cleansing, neoliberal ‘de-democratisation’ – that will allow us to think through the relevance of the classical categories of political sociology to the study of contemporary societies. 

How is space stabalised and de-stabalised? How do we imagine space? How is space invented? These questions will be considered from within different contexts, where space is understood to be invaded. The arrival of outsiders (on the grounds of not being human or the right kind of human) in places not demarcated for them will form the basis of several case studies on this module.

The production, representation and performance of space will be central. Both theoretical readings and sociological fieldwork will form the basis of the learning. Students will consider a series of case studies from public and private domains. These will include cities, public spaces, political sites, national ceremonies and animals in the civic space.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu once noted that ‘sociology and art make an odd couple’: indeed whilst sociological investigations on the arts and aesthetics can be traced back to the founders of the discipline, they remain, like their subject matter, a diverse and changing field.

Still, in recent years the sociology of art has been emerging from its marginality, increasingly combining theoretical investigations with empirical research on contemporary artistic phenomena. This module will introduce key themes and authors in the sociology of art, classical and contemporary.

It will outline both a history of theoretical approaches and an overview of major results and trends in empirical research; key case studies will illustrate and interrogate the thematic core of each lecture. The lectures are divided in two parts, enshrined in a thematic approach that highlights crucial issues, such as: is art about beauty? What is an artist? Is art beyond society? Should art be political?

Organisations make strange things happen. Organisations can cause serious problems. Some organisations can be quite useful or may even be necessary for doing things well together. Schools, churches, banks, supermarkets, the state and indeed the university not only shape the world but also shape the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves. This module explores the role of organisations in social life through a range of theoretical approaches and case studies.

The module draws on work from cultural studies and sociology to think critically about the relationships between forms of cultural representation and the construction of modern self-identity. The module will examine different approaches to representation such as those developed in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Stuart Hall. We will also discuss more recent theoretical approaches to difference based upon recognition of generosity and cosmopolitanism. Across the module, examples will be taken from areas such as advertising, photography, tattooing and other cultural forms. 

This is a visually oriented urban sociology module in which students are taught close observation of urban space in broader context and required to work through a combination of photography and writing. This module introduces students to key themes in sociology – class, ethnicity, space, time, social inequalities, social change - through active engagement with the urban environment around New Cross specifically and more generally other areas of London. It combines classroom lectures with lectures, observation, workshops and other activities embedded in urban walks. 

This module will introduce students to basic concepts developed from Marxist theory that are now ubiquitous elsewhere such as class, value, alienation, exploitation, and fetishism. Each week will focus on a basic concept; start with its original source, explain, contextualise, and trace its development and critique as it progresses through social theory and sometimes into popular uses. Each concept will be interrogated then developed in relation to contemporary issues, exploring its significance and explanatory power as a critical sociological tool.

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 migration as an inter-disciplinary field of study.

Exploring contemporary literature from writers and theorists working in a European context, the module will present students 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 will examine those legal frameworks and international agreements relevant to migration, and will explore the uneasy distinction between so-called forced migration and economic migration.
• Moving - We will consider borders and immigration controls, border theories, and the differentiated legal statutes of migrating people as linked to colonial and postcolonial relationships.
• Arriving - We will 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 will look at migration and cities, and focus on experiences of young migrants in particular.

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

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

This module is about the relationships between vision, sensuality and the production of truth, knowledge, and identity in Euro-American cultures. It asks: how do historically and culturally specific ways of seeing and sensing shape ways of knowing (epistemology) and ways of being (ontology)? What are the relationships between vision, sensuality and power?

What are the epistemological, methodological and ethical demands that are made upon sociology in its encounters with the visual and the sensual? Through discussion of topics such as Deigo Velázquez' 1656 painting Las Meninas, the camera and photography, and the visual manipulation of identity through ‘passing’, the module will provide a forum for thinking about the pleasures, dangers and contingencies present in visualising the social world. 

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

The module approaches learning about social research through data analysis. Data analysis is used as an exploratory device a means to generate questions about topics such as class, gender and race and then attempt to suggest possible answers supported by evidence. The module is made possible by the existence of vast archives of sociological data that can be accessed from the ESRC survey resource network including the qualidata archive.

Conventional ways of demarcating economic, power, and cultural relationships have long relied up notions of "North and South", "first and third", "east and west", "colonial and post-colonial." These means of envisioning the world and of tracing the intersections among diverse places, times, and peoples, while maintaining some salience, no longer seem to grasp what is really taking place.

The module, in particular, explores the emerging relationships between Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa—articulations that have been elaborated over a long history but which now take shape in new and powerful ways.

Additionally, there are a plurality of "worlds” that enjoin different actors and spaces that cannot be easily defined according to geopolitical understandings--where information infrastructure, design, telecommunications, and travel combine to create new possibilities of transaction. The module looks at how these worlds affect our understandings of sociality, actors, and collective life, in general, and the shape and operations of emerging powers in particular.

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. First, the module will provide a background to the historical development of surveillance and the mobilizing of notions of security through specific political regimes.

Second, the module will 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. Third, the module will end by investigating the possibility of addressing tensions between privacy, surveillance and security issues.

In particular we will 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 have been developed in recent years.

This module engages students in close readings of a small number of contemporary philosophers and thinkers who provoke us to consider questions of politics and alterity (or ‘difference’) anew. It aims to give students a sense of the constitution of politics as a relational and agonistic complex of power relations. We will consider how the chosen thinkers have attempted to define power and ‘the political’ and how they help us theorise political dynamics. Our texts will give us the opportunity to reflect on contemporary political situations and events.

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.

The question of power cuts across across many school and texts of modern and contemporary philosophy. Though principally associated with the field of political philosophy - from ancient essays on the relation between ethics, justice and political power, to contemporary explorations of power as a multi-dimensional social relation - power has also been crucial to debates in ontology and metaphysics, as well as to philosophy's complex interactions with other disciplines, from sociology to psychiatry, anthropology to feminism and gender studies.

Possible questions for consideration include: What is the history of philosophy's conceptualisation of power? What is power's relation to violence, authority, and domination? What is the relation between power and resistance? How are theories of power linked to theories of the subject? In what way is the gendered and racialised character of social and political power significant for philosophical reflection? How is power exerted on bodies? What is the relationship between power and right, as well as between power and justice? What different philosophical approaches can be applied to the question of power?

Readings will be selected from all areas of philosophy and from related disciplines, and will be particularly solicited from women and other groups historically underrepresented in the field.

This module takes 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 will 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 in two parts. First, you will analyse the recent history and political economy of migrations through the lenses of gender, as well as ‘race’ and class theories. We will focus particularly on the notions of ‘feminisation of migrations’ and ‘crisis of social reproduction’ in order to examine their root causes and dimensions. Second, you will learn to explore the social and cultural representations of migrants in the Global North and to identify the ways these representations can be scrutinized through theories of gender, ‘race’ and class. We will thus take a critical perspective on key concepts such as ‘sexualization of racism’, ‘racialization of sexism’, ‘gendered assimilation’, ‘civic integration of migrants’ and ‘gendered colonial technologies of domination’.

Taking a case study approach throughout the course, you will also learn how to evaluate the feasibility and appropriateness of different methodologies and techniques of social research when undertaking empirical research projects involving migrants.

This module aims to explore why music matters sociologically speaking. It discusses the relationship between music - both orchestral and popular - and social life in a wide range of spheres including the economy of music, the relationship between musical taste and social divisions, the enlisting of songs politically through national anthems and state propaganda, music as self-expression and political resistance, the changing media forms and technologies of sound produciton and the therapeutic potential of music.

The module aims to explain the place of music in society. Although, what is proposed is more than merely the sociology of music ie. where sociological tools are used to unlock the codes and secrets of musical culture. Rather, the module aims to do sociology with music emphasising how developing a deeper attentiveness to music can also improve our capacities as researchers and critics.

What do humans think about animals? How does this thinking shape the ethics, politics and methods of animal-human relations? Do animals think? What are the implications if they do?

This module explores how animal-human relations have been understood in the work of Renaissance and early modern philosophers through to contemporary animal liberationists, analytic and continental philosophers, feminists and posthumanist theorists.

Topics include the role of thought and rationality in understanding animal-human relations; animal ethics; animal suffering and animal deaths; transformative relations with animals; anthropomorphism; animal cognition, emotions and morality; animal cooperation and resistance; inter-species ethics.