BA (Hons) 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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 introduces you to critical debates about knowledge and method within sociology and related social sciences, and examines how these debates have shifted over the history of the discipline.   

The first block of lectures is concerned with questions of the relationship between science and social analysis. We begin with questions about the ‘scientific’ character of sociology, for example: Is sociological knowledge similar to the knowledge produced by the natural sciences, and should social science seek to adopt similar methods? We go on to analyse concepts of objectivity and value-free knowledge. This block of lectures concludes by considering debates on the construction of social reality as a source of knowledge for social research as well as critical realist approaches that attempt to transcend the prevailing methodological and analytical dichotomies such as empiricism/rationalism, realism/idealism and positivism/ interpretivism. 

The second block engages the relationship between epistemology in terms of the production of knowledge and processes of social evaluation that seek to account for the forms of understanding developed by sociologists within the research process. It begins by exploring the relationship between understanding and prescription within social science, for example: What do political approaches to social research teach us about the nature of objectivity and about the sociological project generally? We then go on to examine feminist analyses of the social sciences as a system of knowledge that is linked to relations of social privilege and power, and the role of ethics in social scientific inquiry and research. 

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.

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.

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.

This module is about the relationships between three central and dominant themes in contemporary social and cultural theory: culture, representation and difference. These themes are at the heart of what has been referred to as the ‘discursive turn’; a significant paradigm shift in ways of thinking about how meaning is created and communicated. This shift put a strong emphasis on the role of language in producing rather than simply reflecting the social world (it is most often associated with ‘social constructionism’).  

One of the outcomes of the discursive turn and its problematising of representation was a sense of uncertainty about taken-for-granted social categories of difference and group membership - such as those relating to class, gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality, class, dis/ability and political affiliation. For example, the understanding of sex and gender came into question, and race as a category defined by biological differences was discredited. 

In this module, we'll discuss some of the opportunities and constraints that have arisen through these ways of thinking about representation and meaning-making and will also introduce other approaches, such as those influenced by psychoanalysis (the study of the unconscious mind) and materialism (how actions,  technologies and objects create meaning). We'll explore how culture - as a system of shared meanings is produced through representation and how questions of identity and difference are an integral part of all cultural systems. Across the module, examples and case studies will be taken from advertising, the media, photography, film and other cultural forms to show how theories of representation, identity and difference can be applied to examining real-world examples. As the module develops, you will be encouraged to reflect upon and question the value of the different approaches that we have studied.

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.

In recent years the sociology of art has been emerging from its marginality, increasingly combining theoretical investigations with empirical research on contemporary artistic phenomena. We have witnessed a pluralization of the thematic scope – hand in hand with the continuous reflection on what is art, part of the ongoing expansion and problematisation of the definition of culture and key distinctions within it – and an increased relevance of research on the arts as a society.  

In this module, you'll be introduces to key themes and authors in the sociology of art, classical and contemporary. Each session is enshrined in a thematic approach that highlights crucial issues, such as, for example:

• Is art about beauty?
• What is an artist?
• Is art beyond society?
• Should art be political?

You'll explore both an outline of theoretical approaches and an overview of major results and trends in empirical research; key case studies illustrate and interrogate the thematic core of each lecture. 

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.

This module gives you an overview of the sociology of intimacy and personal life – an area of growing interest in light of increased social change, diversity, and transformations in both family formations and the ‘doing’ of family and personal life.

You'll examine why personal relationships and the seeking of intimacy, remain significant features of contemporary society. We'll evaluate theoretical accounts that suggest our relationships are becoming more transient and individualised, with others that suggest that intimate personal relationships remain significant and fundamental in our lives with many relationships being long-term. We'll also explore debates around whether gender inequalities persist in contemporary relationships or whether there is a ‘democratisation’ in family & intimate relationships (Chambers, 2012).  

The module will explore key concepts in the study of intimacy such as the role of marriage and sexuality, friendships, and the relationships between intimacy, love and sex across religion, gender and culture. The significance of the role of religion and spirituality in the formation of intimate selves, sexuality and relationships across differing belief and non-belief systems will also be explored.  

You'll also learn about topics such as digital intimacies; partnership formation and dissolution (‘de-coupling’); intimacy, care and relationships; pets and relationships; singlehood, celibacy and childlessness. The module will provide you with an overview of research methods used when researching personal lives and intimacy. 

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. 

In what ways is reason linked to forms of power, and at whose expense?

This module introduces you to key theories and debates about the relationships between modern forms of rationality and various forms of power: how an appeal to “Reason” is made to coincide with a disqualification of other ways of thinking and being in the world. You'll critically explore the historical, cultural, social and political arrangements through which certain ideas and ways of thinking come to be defined as 'rational' while others are disqualified as magical, irrational, superstitious, or fantastical.

Following a guiding question, “What is rational?”, the module introduces you to relevant debates in philosophy and social theory, historical sociology, cultural anthropology, science studies, and postcolonial studies, on the modern intertwining of reason, culture and politics in a variety of contexts. By discussing different case studies, from science to colonialism, it will ask how these philosophers and social scientists have understood how rationalities arise, the political and historical processes that connect modern reason to forms of power, the cultural and social limits of reason and rationality and it will appraise attempts by cultural and political practices to counter the discontents of modern rationality by reclaiming culture, politics and philosophy “beyond reason”. 

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 asks: what can a sociologist offer to current and future anticipated infectious diseases? Although communicable infections are understood as the preserve of the natural sciences due to the identification of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites such as mosquitos, efforts to prevent their exchange between human bodies tell us much about social relations and modes of health governance. Drawing on critical social science studies of global and national policies and programmes, historical narratives including those of bubonic plague along with contemporary patient/activist responses to vaccination and forms of quarantining, you'll have the opportunity to reflect on different styles of sociological inquiry. While the module will rely primarily on textual accounts, the focus will be on the scientific imaginary that has inspired blockbuster films such as Contagion. You'll have the opportunity to experiment with simulation games in order to identify and critically evaluate assumptions that inform pre-empting epidemics. A diverse range of teaching materials will enable you to become skilled in scrutinising the now commonplace reliance on future forecasting and the challenge of preparing for what cannot be known in advance.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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. 

Globalisation 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 help you develop a critical and historical understanding of the issues which inform contemporary debates on globalisation. The disciplinary perspective is that of development studies and sociology of development, focusing on political economy and institutions mainly.   

We shall place contemporary anti-globalisation protests in historical context by building on classic theories of imperialism and studies of antiimperialism followed by exploration of modernisation theories and theories of underdevelopment. We shall look at the role of culture in development.  

This is an intensive, fieldwork-based module, aimed at further developing your skills and experience in doing and writing ethnographic research. Learning is framed around encouraging you to develop detailed knowledge and understanding of how to design, carry out and write up an ethnographic research project. In this way, the module aims to develop your capacity to apply ethnographic research skills. The central feature of the module is your participation in a collaborative ethnographic project taking place in Reading Week. 

This is a module that is particularly well-suited to students who want the opportunity to further enhance their ethnographic research skills by conducting a more sustained piece of ethnographic fieldwork under the guidance of an experienced ethnographer.

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.

As incarceration rates reach record levels around the world, the use of penal power and its impact on those subject to it are urgent areas of social inquiry.  Taking perspectives from sociology and criminology, this module will introduce you to key debates about what prison is for, what it does and what alternatives may be possible.

We'll ask how practices of imprisonment have been intertwined with other aspects of state power in historical and contemporary contexts. Focusing primarily but not solely on Britain and the United States, we'll pay particular attention to the interaction of penal policies with structures of racism, gender, class, nation and disability, examining the prison as a ‘concrete space where global inequalities play out’ (Bosworth and Kaufman 2013, 171). 

We'll engage with classic and contemporary research to think about the lived experiences of prisoners on the inside, as well as how regimes of imprisonment shape the social terrain and broader discourses of identity, citizenship and social order on the outside. 

Most modules are either theoretically driven or methodologically driven. This module is neither. Instead, the module proceeds from the positions that (a) social inquiry involves an iterative process of moving back and forth between ideas and evidence, and (b) while all evidence requires some form of data, not all data constitutes evidence. To advance our arguments and to convince others that particular theories, ideas, and statements are true, we need to make data matter by establishing what actually constitutes evidence in relation to ongoing sociological debates.

Philosophy, Politics & Alterity considers the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Isabelle Stengers and others in order to explore what they understand by the term ‘politics’ and the political constitution of difference/alterity. In pursuit of this aim, we will consider the importance of spatiality and temporality of difference, the construction of subjectivity as a political process, the importance of contemporary geo-political formations and the different analyses of resistance offered by these theorists, whether that be in terms of revolution and uprising, or in terms of aesthetic interventions. Through explorations, reading and discussion, the module will not only to understand the work of these thinkers, but also to turn our collective attention to current geo-political controversies and the legacies of those from the past.

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.

What is work? What distinguishes work from other forms of social activities, and how have the social and political meanings of work been changing throughout the era of industrialised capitalist society? This module addresses major themes and issues in the sociology of work, engaging with both classic scholars and contemporary debates, to develop a critical understanding of the cultural and political features of this central element of social life. 

The module begins with an introduction to the features of the emergence of capitalist work, and the way that life has been reorganised in accordance with modernity’s new forms of labour. We consider how space, time and morality were reorganized in the service of work, as well as the major developments associated with the factory:  Taylor’s ‘scientific management’ and the Fordist vision of mass production and consumption. We discuss Karl Marx’s critique of capitalist work to consider the place of work in the production of social division and the forms of politics that emerge from this.

The module develops this critical reflection on social inequality further, moving on to discuss the gendered and racialised dimensions of work, and its place in both individual lives and the wider structures of society. We engage with major feminist analyses of domestic work, emotional labour and sex work, asking how the social organization of work both reflects and reproduces gender inequalities, but also using these forms of gendered work to develop a deeper understanding of contemporary work in general. This is taken further with the question of migration and ‘industrial citizenship’, where we consider the relationship between work and participation in the (political) community.  We turn then to a focused look at unemployment and the way in which particular policies addressing worklessness are associated with wider ideological assumptions about the place of work in society. 

The final part of the module bears down on some major tendencies in work today. We address the major changes associated with post-Fordism and the (dis)connections emerging from globalized forms of production and consumption, and also consider the fragmented forms of work that are often associated with new technological platforms, and the precarious forms of life that emerge from the ‘gig economy’. In these final weeks we consider the extension of the logic of work into more and more areas of life, from the ‘personal’ space of our leisure time, and the creative life of our minds, to the very forms of political activism that attempt to work against the prevailing tendencies of capitalism.  

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.

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.

Time is no doubt a major preoccupation in the organization and understanding of contemporary modern societies.  Within sociology, the notion of time has served inquiries of the economy, labour, health, digital technologies and, arguably, is pre-eminent in response to environmental issues where time is often said to be ‘running out.’ Yet, while the concept of time has a long history of engagement within philosophy and in some branches of the sciences, namely physics, it is the commonplace notion of time provided by the mechanistic clock that tends to prevail in the sociological analyses.

Its ability to systemise thinking within the natural sciences and to order social relations has led to it acquiring a certain self-evidency, despite what is also a sense of time as an enigma that transcends the mutability of life. The course will introduce students to critiques of mechanistic time and how its linear, self-same measures both afford and limit the manner in which social issues are conceived and acted upon.

The module will begin with an attention to the historical development of the clock and its relationship to modernity as proposed by key philosophers on time (Bergson, Whitehead, Dewey), before turning to a study of how mechanistic measures of time can be seen at work in a range of social issues.  The pedagogical style will consist of lectures and workshops in which you will be encouraged to present and debate their ideas and your experiences of time as the basis for your own individual verbal and written presentations.

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.