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In this module we study horror cinema in social and cultural context. In order to introduce the module we start by thinking through the meaning of horror and exploring the function of horror cinema. What is it that horror cinema communicates? Following this introductory class, we begin our exploration of the horror genre by analysing the classic film Nosferatu and the sub-genre of the vampire movie. Beyond our study of the vampire, we move on to examine Frankenstein, the archetype of the mad scientist, and the critique of promethean man in the horror genre. Remaining in the 1930s, we look at Jekyll and Hyde and the horror of self / other, before focusing on Wolfman and the figure of the werewolf in western culture.
If Jekyll and Hyde introduced the figure of the other in horror cinema, and Wolfman developed the idea of the other as animality, the classic 1950 B-movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, created the notion of the other as a social alien, in this case the communist infiltrator. In classes that follow we extend our study of the other in horror cinema through discussions of the figure of the zombie, the Devil, and the monstrosity of the wilderness. Moving away from an analysis of the horror of the wilderness, we consider horror much closer to home, the trope of the haunted house, the suburbs, the psycho-killer, and the idea that everyday life is horrific. Finally, and in order to conclude the module, we examine mock realism in the horror genre through a consideration of the Blair Witch Project and the sadistic ultra-violent turn in horror cinema represented by the torture porn sub-genre and in particular the movie Saw.
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We live on an urbanising planet. Rather than being a historical phenomenon urbanisation and the study of the city are of contemporary concern, not only to sociologists but to other academic disciplines (geography, criminology, social policy, politics, public health, etc.). The issues and problems that arise as populations migrate from traditional rural environments, traditions and societies is one that has been investigated and analysed in respect of the developed world of the northern hemisphere from the 19th century onwards. These analyses identified not only characteristic features of the experience of urban life but also the problems and associated political and structural arrangements that accompanied the expansion of the urban as a key site for modernity. These are still significant and crucial concerns and issues for understanding urbanisation in the 21st century.
This module provides an introduction and overview of the historical development of the urban concentrating on key approaches and perspectives and analyses of the transition to and experience of urban life in modernity. It will trace key elements and factors that distinguish characteristic features of the city and the urban and discuss the development of new forms of urbanisation in respect of post-modern debates and globalisation. It therefore links historical and extant urban issues and problems with those of wider sociological relevance such as class, gender, ethnicity, governance, social and environmental sustainability etc. to consider the contemporary experience of urban growth and expansion as well as issues of security, quality of life and opportunity.
The lectures will focus on
The City as Historical Form
Classical Sociology and the City: Marx, Durkheim and Weber
Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Urban Sociology in Modern Germany
Walter Benjamin: Phantasmagoria, Flaneurie and Paris, City of Modernity
The Industrial City in Britain
The Chicago School: American Urbanism
Ameliorating the Consequences: Urban Plans and Designs for the 'good city'
20th century Reconstruction and Re-generation
Post-modern Cities
Global Cities or cities in a Global World
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
The lecture topics serve as the basis for the seminars where students will be asked to participate in a number of individual and group activities. Students will be required to complete and submit various formative assessments throughout the course of the module to make up a portfolio of formatively assessed work which includes the following:
Short presentation on a lecture/ seminar topic/theme
View film screening(s) and discuss the themes/issues presented
Submit 500 word formative assessments on 2 of the lecture themes
Complete in class group exercises and discuss in plenary the various answers/responses
Complete a KLE multiple choice quiz as formative assessment
Essay planning
Exam revision and techniques |
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If Marx, Weber, and Durkheim were central figures in the 19th century project to think through the problem of the identification of self and society, then the key thinkers of the 20th century built upon their achievements. The object of this course is to run off the achievements of Marx, Weber, Durkheim into a consideration of the 20th century social theories of Freud, whose invention, psychoanalysis, made the psychological effects of the self / society problem explicit, Simmel, who thought about the problem of social relations in the city, the French structuralists, who came face to face with the symbolic edifice that structures our lives, and the various exponents of post-modernity, who have thought / fought to save us from either the loneliness that the existentialists considered the essential characteristic of the human condition or the horror of the monolithic other, society, that threatens to erase our identity. In-between our consideration of Freud, Simmel, Foucault, and Baudrillard, we will explore the works of the symbolic interactionists, critical theorists, feminists, and post-colonial theorists. But before we can begin our survey of 20th century social theory, we must consider the figure of theory of itself. What is theory? What is the purpose of theory? Why is it necessary to use theory to think through the self / society problem?
The lectures will focus on:
What is Theory?
Freud and Paranoia
Simmel and the City
Mead, Goffman, Symbolic Interactionism
Adorno and Horkheimer
Structuralism
Post-Colonialism
Post-Feminism
Post-Modernism
Risk and Globalisation
Formative Assessment and Tutorial activities:
The tutorial programme is detailed below and are you are formatively assessed throughout the module by verbal and written feedback:
Group work - The Value of Theory in Everyday Life (500 Word - Formative Assessment)
Discussion - Relationship between Paranoia and Theory
Work Sheets, Simmel and the Contemporary City
Ethnography - What is Role-Play in SI?
Group Work - Construct an Advert (Employ Principles of Standardization and Persuasion)
Discussion - What is Social Construction? (Presentations - 500 Word Formative Assessment)
Group Work - Deconstruction of Images of Racial Others
Group Work - Deconstruction of Images of Gendered Identity
Work Sheets - What is Post-modernism? (Presentations - 500 Word Formative Assessment)
Discussion: Globalisation and Everyday Life |
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
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|
MDS-20019 |
Analysing Culture |
EA |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
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|
In Analysing Culture we consider how culture enables people to make sense of their personal and social lives. The first session of the course refers to Geertz&©s classic paper on Balinese society to introduce the concept of culture. The key question we want to ask through our study of Geertz essay is $ùwhat is culture?&© Following this example of an anthropologically strange culture we move on to think about the construction of national identity through a consideration of Hall&©s work on western identity, Said&©s essay on orientalism, Anderson&©s notion of imaginary communities, and various representations of contemporary nationality. Although the nation has provided a strong cultural map for people since the middle of the 17th century, the rise of modern urbanism has challenged this cultural form through its embrace of privacy and a culture of alienation. In week 3 we consider urban culture, read Simmel&©s classic essay on the metropolitan mind, and think about the ways in which the city is represented today. In the next session we show how people have sought to relate culture to the problem of alienation in modern culture. In week 4 we think about the notion of consumer culture through Adorno and Horkheimer&©s idea of mass culture and Klein's theory of branding and consider how commodities might work like narcotics that numb our senses to the impoverished reality of our one-dimensional society. Our key cultural texts here is Danny Boyle&©s film Trainspotting.
In the second part of the course we begin by thinking about cultural politics. In week 5 we focus on Bourdieu&©s idea of distinction and think about how far his theory reflects popular uses of culture in the contemporary world. For Bourdieu culture is not simply a form of deception, but rather a tool that people use in order to try to distinguish themselves from other people in the endless struggle that is competitive capitalism. Although Bourdieu suggests that people use culture for their own purposes, he thinks that they use it unimaginatively and strictly within the confines of capitalist ideology. Thus we may say that Bourdieu is essentially a Marxist. In week 6 we try to extend the Marxist theory of culture through an exploration of the works on the key writers on everyday life. In particular we refer to the idea of contested culture expressed in the works of the French theorists of constructed space and everyday life, Lefebvre and de Certeau. The purpose of this exercise is to suggest that culture may be a space of negotiation, contestation, and confrontation, rather than simply a mechanism of deception or distinction.
In week 7 we extend our exploration of this idea of cultural resistance through a discussion of the theory of sub-culture. This theory shows how new communities are able to emerge through consumer relations and cultural performance. We address this theory through a consideration of the classic example of punk, the more contemporary case of gangsta rap, and a reading of the works of the cultural sociologists of performance, Goffman, Garfinkel, and Mead. In the final three weeks of the course we move on to focus on theories of post-modernism, the culturally constructed body, and globalisation. In week 8 we explore the idea of post-modern culture through Dominic Strinati&©s essay on the topic, David Lynch&©s cinema, and Fredric Jameson&©s influential paper, Post-modernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. For Jameson culture is the dominant form of identification in post-modern society. He thinks that people no longer worry about economics or politics, but rather understand these categories through culture. What does this mean? We will try to find out week 10 when we consider the ideas of global culture and anti-capitalism. But before we consider global culture, we examine the post-modern concern for the body and in particular Bordo's theory of the economic body. In week 9 we approach Bordo's theory through a cultural history of thinking about and imaging the body, taking in the Greek God body, the modern super-hero body, and the post-modern techno body, represented by both Haraway's cyborg, Bordo's metabolic body, and various science fiction bodies.
Our study of the body, and body image, allows us to think about the ways that politics and economics are subsumed in culture in global society. Shifting from a study of the microcosm of the body to the macrocosm of the globalised world, in week 10 we refer to the works of contemporary writers, such as Giddens and Beck, who dispute the claims of the conflict theorists, such as Adorno and Horkheimer, by arguing that there is no monolithic centre of power that imposes meaning upon people&©s lives in global society. Rather Giddens and Beck argue that contemporary culture is characterised by risk, chance, and freedom of choice. In this session we think about their suggestion that traditional power structures no longer hold in post-modern / global society through an exploration of the idea of the new social movement and in particular anti-capitalist cultural politics. Our core text for this session is the recent film, Fight Club, which connects visions of the body and globalised consumer capitalism to issues of revolutionary cultural politics.
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|
|
SOC-20017 |
Sociology - Study Abroad III |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20018 |
Sociology - Study Abroad IV |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20033 |
Witchcraft, Zombies and Social Anxiety |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The topic of the supernatural has received little attention from sociologists and is largely dismissed as a set of irrational and superstitious beliefs. This module centrally positions the supernatural and paranormal - ghosts, monsters, witches, vampires, werewolves and zombies in the sociological study of modernity, thus contributing to contemporary debates about the transparency of social forces in a global economy and the secularisation of society. In the global economy, supernatural commentaries thrive and have become a symbol of the destructive effects of capitalism. In other words, occult practices crystallise social conflicts in the modern world. For example in early modern Europe and in Salem, witchcraft accusations encapsulated the inequality that obtains between rural and urban regions, gender and socio-economic status. In the global economy anxieties reverberate about the theft of childrens&© organs and ritual murder reflecting concerns about child trafficking and migration. Meanwhile, in Europe and the United States, allegations about the satanic abuse of children refuse to disappear as newspaper reports multiply about child abductions and horrific serial killers. Likewise, the media is obsessed with vampires and, now, zombies and horror stories and movies about the walking dead reverberate around the world.
The key theme of this course is that supernatural discourses represent a distinctive way of articulating fears about the increased uncertainty found in everyday life and the insecurities of the global economy.
In essence therefore, the course looks at the ways in which supernatural and occult discourses throw light on the very different ways in which we live our lives.
The lectures will focus on
Understanding Witchcraft and Monsters in a Global Society
The Witches' Sabbath: Early Modern European Witchcraft and Salem
Superstition, Religion and Science
Occultism and Risk
African Witchcraft and Modernity
Revision Session - poster and examination question/answer session
Zombies and Globalisation: The Malcontents of Modernity
The Supernatural: Commodification, Conspiracy and the Occult
Witches, Vampires and Female Sexuality
Conclusion: Witchcraft, Anxiety and Social Change; feedback on posters
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Students on the module will be required to complete a range of different tasks in preparation for and during the seminars. Some of these will require individual reporting based on prior reading and some of these will require group working and discussion on key topics/issues set in class by the tutor.
Group work - thinking monsters and witchcraft
DVD screening on Early European witchcraft. Students asked to present in week 3 key factors behind Salem witchhunts (group work)
Salem presentations. Group work on symbolism of superstition and the significance of ritual.
DVD screening on satanism and child abuse in USA. Group work on key factors behind scapegoating.
Group work on African witchcraft and on key digitalised readings on witchcraft in Nigeria
Discussion on posters/revision - question and answer - reexamination of key topics covered so far; preparation for handing in of posters week 7/8
Group work on metaphor of zombie and world recession; group work on the transparancy of capitalism; Internet presentation on illicit global trade in body parts (Berkeley University web site)
Screening of X-Files montage; group discussion of the conspiracy through film/television
Screening of vampire montage; group discussion on Dracula and female sexuality
Conclusion - group feedback on posters/Individual feedback |
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|
SOC-20034 |
Crime, Morality and the Media |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Crime, Morality and the Media will introduce students to the main theories and debates surrounding the factual and fictional representations of crime and deviance. Students will be asked to consider past and present media portrayals of criminality and deviance in order to unpack how and why the tales of morality implicit in their representation continue to hold resonance for audiences.
Reflecting upon both media examples and theoretical debates, in this course students will consider the view that representations of criminal and deviant acts help to communicate a dominant view of class, ethnicity, gender, and age, and work to secure the consensus of the mass audience. As well as looking at factual news reports into events such as the disappearance of Madeleine McCann or the War on Terror, we will also examine entertainment forms and ask why certain genres of music, film and videogame incite moral outrage from large sections of the mass media and its audience.
To situate these ideas about the social construction of meaning we will look at Stanley Cohen&©s classic study on folk devils and moral panics and attempt to unpack debates about morality, fear and risk. We will also apply the theoretical perspectives put forward by key thinkers including Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, and Rene Girard to further our understanding of important ideas such as Self / Other, knowledge and power, and the scapegoat mechanism in relation to media representations of crime and deviance.
The lectures will focus on
Theories of moral panics, fear and risk
The fear of the $ùmob&© - representations of class conflict
Constructing the nation - the ethnic Other as scapegoat
Deviant women - nature versus culture
Children in the news - transgressing innocence
Violence on film - social commentary and the slasher flick
True-crime TV - blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction
Music and mayhem - deviant subcultures
Videogame nasties - virtual reality and the embodiment of violence
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Students will be expected to work on their own and as part of a group by:
- reading key theoretical texts in preparation for class
- critically analysing and commenting on media and cultural texts
- critically analysing and commenting on key theoretical texts
- engaging in small group discussion and whole of class debates
- preparing for and discussing assessments (case study, poster and formative tests)
In addition to traditional lectures and seminars there will be occasional screenings, KLE-based activities and student-led research.
Students will be asked to complete two take-home tests over the course of the module. The tests will comprise of a page of short answer and multiple choice questions where students will be required to research a breadth of material independently.
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|
|
SOC-20043 |
Globalisation and its Discontents |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Globalisation has brought some great wealth, but it has plunged many more into the depths of poverty. While rich westerners grow more prosperous, millions of others in forgotten parts of the world continue to die of poverty, war, and disease. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, complacent westerners believed that they were, in practical terms, untouchable. This conceit was, of course, destroyed by the events of September 11th 2001. However, we must recognise that the spectre of insecurity which now haunts the west has always been the normal condition for most of the rest of the world. In this respect we can say that the terror attacks on New York and Washington finally woke the west to its global inheritance. That is to say that we have been given a taste of the fear and insecurity which has affected most of the world&©s population for more or less the whole of the 20th century.
Insofar as the condition of the global poor has started to impact upon our own lives, we have woken up to the rest of the world. While this situation may be deeply troubling for many people, it would be too easy, and ultimately futile, for the west to try to cordon itself off from the rest of the world. On the contrary, rather than trying to hide from the problems of globalisation, the west must attempt to think about the underlying causes of the current turbulent situation. This consideration is necessary in order to prevent further terror attacks on the west, but also to improve the lives of people in other parts of the world. It is too easy to say that because these people live far away, we have no responsibility to work to improve their situation. Due to globalisation we have become responsible for everybody in the world, regardless of their race, nation, class, or gender. For these reasons it is now, more than ever before, important for sociologists to study the subject of globalisation.
Following this rationale, Globalisation and Discontents divides the study of globalisation into three sections: history, discontents, and governance. In the first division the module is concerned to address the emergence of globalisation (industrialism to post-industrialism and Americanisation) and the rise of the new global economy. The second part of the course considers the future of the human rights society (political participation, citizenship, and the law) and the discontents (environmentalism, anti-capitalism, immigration) that necessarily accompany the birth of the world risk society. After the assessment of the key expressions of global discontent, the third division of the course is concerned with the political struggles that characterise attempts to construct a world society. To this end the module considers the politics of multiculturalism, thinks through the recent rise of fundamentalism and terror insofar as they can be seen to represent archaic forms of local anti-global identification, and assesses the value of humanitarian war as a means for upholding law in the turbulent global society.
The lectures will focus on
The Origins of Contemporary Global Society: Industrialism
The High Tech Society: Post-Industrialism
The American Century
The Post-Modern Society
The End of History and the Critique of Empire
The Risk Society: Economy and the Crash
Environmental Destruction and Global Catastrophe
Global Protest (Anti-Capitalism-Environmentalism)
Global Societies: Immigration and Multiculturalism
The Rise of Fundamentalism: War, Violence, Human Rights
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Two hour seminars are split between lectures, tutorials, and other activities such as DVD screenings and web exercises which include the following:
Group work - Students each submit 500 words for formative assessment
Student Presentations
Close Reading - Students submit 500 words for formative assessment
Student Debate - Students submit 500 words on the dualistic nature of global politics for formative assessment. |
|
|
SOC-20046 |
Research Methods |
C |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module aims to introduce you to both the principles of developing research strategies and to the strengths and weaknesses of different data collection methods used within sociology. The lectures will be concerned with examining the criteria that can be used to judge the advantages of different research approaches, as well as introducing you to the assumptions that underpin different modes of data collection. There will also be a focus on the ethics of social research.
The workshops will help develop further the understanding gained through the lectures. They will be more practically focused. Workshops will entail you demonstrating skills in the use of bibliographic data bases, evaluating existing research and exploring alternative methodologies for collecting relevant data within the constraints of specified research resources.
The module will consist of lectures and workshops. The workshops will based and concerned with applying the concerns of the lectures to specific research problems, the discussion of specific methodological issues or the development of research skills.
The lectures will focus on:
What is social research?
Interviewing
Ethnography
Ethics
Analysing qualitative data
Official statistics and surveys
Using quantitative methods in social research and mixing methods
Internet, social media and social research
Using documents in research
Writing social research
The workshop activities will include:
- Undertaking search strategies and developing bibliographies
- Discussions of the processes involved in operationalising specific research issues
- Using research methods: interview techniques
- Discussion of ethical dilemmas
- Analysing qualitative data
|
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-30025 |
Streets, Skyscrapers, and Slums: The City in Social, Cultural, and Historical Context |
O |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In this module we trace the cultural politics of the city from Ancient Athens to contemporary mega-cities, such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Lagos. Following the introductory lecture, which examines the meaning of the original cities of the ancient world, the first part of the module, modern cities, offers a consideration of the late 19th century / early 20th century European metropolises.
After an exploration of the ideas of metropolitan psychology, fashion, and the department store in the works of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, we move on to think about the city in the late 20th century. Here we think about the situationist city, the spectacular city, and the surveillance city and consider the ideas of Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault.
In the second part of the module, post-modern cities, we study the American mega-city. For writers such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Mike Davis cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas are strange surreal places. In this section of the course we explore the post-modern city through the ideas of simulation, informationalism, urban violence, the ghetto, and the obsession with security.
After our exploration of the post-modern city, the final section of the module examines contemporary third world mega-cities. We begin with a consideration of Mike Davis&©s recent study of the third world slum and then move on to think about the ideas of pollution and danger in mega-cities.
Other topics in this section of the course include the situation of the occultism in the African city, corruption and crime in South Africa, and the mythology of the werewolf in one of Africa&©s most populous cities, Lagos.
The aim of the module is to explore the cultural politics of the city in history.
|
|
|
SOC-30025 |
Streets, Skyscrapers, and Slums: The City in Social, Cultural, and Historical Context |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In this module we trace the cultural politics of the city from Ancient Athens to contemporary mega-cities, such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Lagos. Following the introductory lecture, which examines the meaning of the original cities of the ancient world, the first part of the module, modern cities, offers a consideration of the late 19th century / early 20th century European metropolises.
After an exploration of the ideas of metropolitan psychology, fashion, and the department store in the works of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, we move on to think about the city in the late 20th century. Here we think about the situationist city, the spectacular city, and the surveillance city and consider the ideas of Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault.
In the second part of the module, post-modern cities, we study the American mega-city. For writers such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Mike Davis cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas are strange surreal places. In this section of the course we explore the post-modern city through the ideas of simulation, informationalism, urban violence, the ghetto, and the obsession with security.
After our exploration of the post-modern city, the final section of the module examines contemporary third world mega-cities. We begin with a consideration of Mike Davis&©s recent study of the third world slum and then move on to think about the ideas of pollution and danger in mega-cities.
Other topics in this section of the course include the situation of the occultism in the African city, corruption and crime in South Africa, and the mythology of the werewolf in one of Africa&©s most populous cities, Lagos.
The aim of the module is to explore the cultural politics of the city in history.
|
|
|
SOC-30026 |
Risk and Society |
O |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Everyday we are bombarded by media reports about all kinds of risks and experts are constantly suggesting various strategies to ensure people are as safe as possible.
For example, there are concerns over the link between mobile phones and brain tumours, whether we can trust our doctors and environmental pressure groups are busy highlighting the disastrous effects of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer. Risk anxiety about food, crime, health and terrorism, together with an endless variety of new risks, now seem to be associated with nearly every mundane human experience.
But to what extent are people increasingly worried about risks?
Are we really living in a $ùrisk society&©?
If so, why do some individuals actively seek out high-risk pursuits (skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing etc) that could result in serious injury and even death?
These are just some of the questions this module will be concerned with. The first part of the module will explore the main theoretical perspectives that have emerged on risk in the social sciences. This will mainly concentrate on the work of Mary Douglas, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault. The second part of the course will address debates surrounding risk that have come to dominate public, political and private arenas. Substantive areas covered include crime, health, sexuality, terrorism and voluntary risk taking.
The overall aim of the course is to enhance a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of risk and the role it plays in contemporary society. |
|
|
SOC-30026 |
Risk and Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Everyday we are bombarded by media reports about all kinds of risks and experts are constantly suggesting various strategies to ensure people are as safe as possible.
For example, there are concerns over the link between mobile phones and brain tumours, whether we can trust our doctors and environmental pressure groups are busy highlighting the disastrous effects of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer. Risk anxiety about food, crime, health and terrorism, together with an endless variety of new risks, now seem to be associated with nearly every mundane human experience.
But to what extent are people increasingly worried about risks?
Are we really living in a $ùrisk society&©?
If so, why do some individuals actively seek out high-risk pursuits (skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing etc) that could result in serious injury and even death?
These are just some of the questions this module will be concerned with. The first part of the module will explore the main theoretical perspectives that have emerged on risk in the social sciences. This will mainly concentrate on the work of Mary Douglas, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault. The second part of the course will address debates surrounding risk that have come to dominate public, political and private arenas. Substantive areas covered include crime, health, sexuality, terrorism and voluntary risk taking.
The overall aim of the course is to enhance a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of risk and the role it plays in contemporary society. |
|
|
SOC-30029 |
Gender and Consumption |
O |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Consumption and consumer culture are salient facets of everyday life in affluent societies of the 21st century. Equally, gender is a ubiquitous dimension which shapes the social and culture world, and the subjectivities of individuals living within it.
This module examines the intersections and interconnections between consumption, consumer culture and gender, looking not only at how gender informs the organisation of markets, but also at how markets inform formulations of gender structure, gender culture and provides resources for gender performativity.
It does this by looking at a series of topics relating to the rise of an all-enveloping consumer culture in affluent societies during the 20th Century, with visits to the department store, a perusal of magazine contents and the formulation of advertisements. It also considers the domestic home as a place for the expression of domestic femininity through home related consumption.
It then turns its focus to contemporary topics, amongst which are a consideration of the consequences of commercialisation for intimate life, the interlinking of gender and class in consumption, and the ways in which consumer culture frames and offers resources for the enactment of gender amongst the young. |
|
|
SOC-30029 |
Gender and Consumption |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Consumption and consumer culture are salient facets of everyday life in affluent societies of the 21st century. Equally, gender is a ubiquitous dimension which shapes the social and culture world, and the subjectivities of individuals living within it.
This module examines the intersections and interconnections between consumption, consumer culture and gender, looking not only at how gender informs the organisation of markets, but also at how markets inform formulations of gender structure, gender culture and provides resources for gender performativity.
It does this by looking at a series of topics relating to the rise of an all-enveloping consumer culture in affluent societies during the 20th Century, with visits to the department store, a perusal of magazine contents and the formulation of advertisements. It also considers the domestic home as a place for the expression of domestic femininity through home related consumption.
It then turns its focus to contemporary topics, amongst which are a consideration of the consequences of commercialisation for intimate life, the interlinking of gender and class in consumption, and the ways in which consumer culture frames and offers resources for the enactment of gender amongst the young. |
|
|
SOC-30038 |
Medical Sociology |
O |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
$ùThe hospital is succeeding the church and the parliament as the archetypal institution of Western culture.&© Philip Rieff (1979) Freud: The Mind of a Moralist. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 355.
In the more than thirty years since Reiff wrote these words, modern biomedicine and the various enterprises associated with it (the natural sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, health care delivery systems, epidemiology, public health and the psychotherapeutic enterprise) have grown at a galloping pace. At the same time, however, patients have grown increasingly knowledgeable about and personally and politically involved in their own care. In a world increasingly shaped by scientific and medical discourse, practice, and regulation, how can sociology contribute to understanding the roles of biomedicine and patienthood in social life, and the tensions and overlaps between them? This module expands on the Sociology Programme&©s 2nd-year module entitled Health and Society by (a) considering anthropological and historical approaches to medicine and (b) the illness experience, doctor-patient interaction, and new health social movements. After reviewing the basic approaches of biomedicine, anthropology, and history to health and medicine, we consider sociological work on the medicalization and pharmaceuticalization of society, and sociological studies of illness behavior, health promotion and service use; doctor-patient interaction; the experiences of illness, disability, and rehabilitation; and new health social movements. Lectures will be supplemented by student-led tutorial discussion; assessments include an essay and marked discussion questions submitted by stduents.
|
|
|
SOC-30038 |
Medical Sociology |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
$ùThe hospital is succeeding the church and the parliament as the archetypal institution of Western culture.&© Philip Rieff (1979) Freud: The Mind of a Moralist. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 355.
In the more than thirty years since Reiff wrote these words, modern biomedicine and the various enterprises associated with it (the natural sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, health care delivery systems, epidemiology, public health and the psychotherapeutic enterprise) have grown at a galloping pace. At the same time, however, patients have grown increasingly knowledgeable about and personally and politically involved in their own care. In a world increasingly shaped by scientific and medical discourse, practice, and regulation, how can sociology contribute to understanding the roles of biomedicine and patienthood in social life, and the tensions and overlaps between them? This module expands on the Sociology Programme&©s 2nd-year module entitled Health and Society by (a) considering anthropological and historical approaches to medicine and (b) the illness experience, doctor-patient interaction, and new health social movements. After reviewing the basic approaches of biomedicine, anthropology, and history to health and medicine, we consider sociological work on the medicalization and pharmaceuticalization of society, and sociological studies of illness behavior, health promotion and service use; doctor-patient interaction; the experiences of illness, disability, and rehabilitation; and new health social movements. Lectures will be supplemented by student-led tutorial discussion; assessments include an essay and marked discussion questions submitted by stduents.
|
| Semester 1-2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-30028 |
Dissertation - ISP |
O |
C
|
15 |
30 |
|
|
In this module you will be given the opportunity to apply your theoretical and methodological understandings of sociology to a research problem in either sociological literature or the social field. This will entail:
a. the definition of a research problem,
b. the creation of research questions or a hypothesis,
c. the design of a research solution,
d. the completion of a literature review,
e. a methodological statement,
f. the application of an appropriate method to your research object,
g. an appropriate form of data analysis and,
h. the construction of relevant conclusions.
If you choose this module you will work with a supervisor on a project of your own choosing. Upon choosing this module you will be asked to submit a working title to the module tutor who will then assign you a tutor in order to negotiate a final title and dissertation plan. When this has been agreed, you will be able to start work on your project in consultation with your supervisor. Your supervisor will be available to see you throughout the duration of your project in timetabled supervisory slots.
The dissertation module is an important component of the sociology programme. It provides you with the opportunity to demonstrate that you can define, design, and execute your own research in the field and show prospective employers in a variety of fields that you are a skilled researcher capable of developing research solutions and communicating these effectively. This module is similarly appropriate if you want to remain in education because it will enable you to practice and hone the kinds of independent research skills that are essential in post-graduate education.
What our students have said about their projects:
Best advice is to start work early, I found my dissertation was fun (to an extent) to do as I did some work before Christmas so I didn&©t leave it to the last minute.
The dissertation pack kept me on target, especially the time plan.
Going with what you enjoy. Sociology&©s well interesting.
Clear and useful advice one to one with tutors on how to improve work.
I emailed my dissertation supervisor weekly, gave him countless drafts to read and saw him about once every two weeks.
He was always approachable and gave good constructive criticism.
|
|
|
SOC-30028 |
Dissertation - ISP |
EP |
C
|
15 |
30 |
|
|
In this module you will be given the opportunity to apply your theoretical and methodological understandings of sociology to a research problem in either sociological literature or the social field. This will entail:
a. the definition of a research problem,
b. the creation of research questions or a hypothesis,
c. the design of a research solution,
d. the completion of a literature review,
e. a methodological statement,
f. the application of an appropriate method to your research object,
g. an appropriate form of data analysis and,
h. the construction of relevant conclusions.
If you choose this module you will work with a supervisor on a project of your own choosing. Upon choosing this module you will be asked to submit a working title to the module tutor who will then assign you a tutor in order to negotiate a final title and dissertation plan. When this has been agreed, you will be able to start work on your project in consultation with your supervisor. Your supervisor will be available to see you throughout the duration of your project in timetabled supervisory slots.
The dissertation module is an important component of the sociology programme. It provides you with the opportunity to demonstrate that you can define, design, and execute your own research in the field and show prospective employers in a variety of fields that you are a skilled researcher capable of developing research solutions and communicating these effectively. This module is similarly appropriate if you want to remain in education because it will enable you to practice and hone the kinds of independent research skills that are essential in post-graduate education.
What our students have said about their projects:
Best advice is to start work early, I found my dissertation was fun (to an extent) to do as I did some work before Christmas so I didn&©t leave it to the last minute.
The dissertation pack kept me on target, especially the time plan.
Going with what you enjoy. Sociology&©s well interesting.
Clear and useful advice one to one with tutors on how to improve work.
I emailed my dissertation supervisor weekly, gave him countless drafts to read and saw him about once every two weeks.
He was always approachable and gave good constructive criticism.
|
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-30027 |
Space and the City |
O |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
$ùTo be tired of the city is to be tired of life&©
The city is exciting, alluring, dangerous and filled with possibilities and opportunities. It offers hustle and bustle, speed and distraction, a melting pot of sights, sounds, smells, and experiences in a cosmopolitan mix of multi-culturalism. It is simplistic to say that all activities and interactions take place in space. But as the city is at the centre of the modern urban world more and more of what we take for granted takes place in towns and cities. They are the primary location for work, production, consumption, education, learning, cultural and transport institutions and leisure and pleasure. However, the city is more than the sum of its parts and it is more than merely the individual&©s experience of it.
This course will give you knowledge and understanding of the city as a socially constructed space in which the physical landscape that we see, use and misuse is not an accidental or coincidental coming-together of things and people. The city is a human produced space in which combinations of factors over time have produced a variety of urban spaces that increasingly dominate our existence and our experience. However, everyone&©s experience and opportunity of the city is not the same. There are winners and losers and we can readily identify areas and people in which relative success and failure is written into the landscape of the city.
This course will give you new tools to develop new ways of thinking about the world - a socio-spatial imagination - to explore and understand how cities have developed in the way they have, what role planning and urban design have played, how and why the production, regulation and organisation, the policing and surveillance of urban space affects how and why different people settle and live in different areas, what limits there are to physical movement and social mobility. In short, by thinking more critically about space, cities will never seem the same again.
Information on our MA in Urban Futures and Sustainable Communities is available at
http://www.keele.ac.uk/urban-futures/
|
|
|
SOC-30027 |
Space and the City |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
$ùTo be tired of the city is to be tired of life&©
The city is exciting, alluring, dangerous and filled with possibilities and opportunities. It offers hustle and bustle, speed and distraction, a melting pot of sights, sounds, smells, and experiences in a cosmopolitan mix of multi-culturalism. It is simplistic to say that all activities and interactions take place in space. But as the city is at the centre of the modern urban world more and more of what we take for granted takes place in towns and cities. They are the primary location for work, production, consumption, education, learning, cultural and transport institutions and leisure and pleasure. However, the city is more than the sum of its parts and it is more than merely the individual&©s experience of it.
This course will give you knowledge and understanding of the city as a socially constructed space in which the physical landscape that we see, use and misuse is not an accidental or coincidental coming-together of things and people. The city is a human produced space in which combinations of factors over time have produced a variety of urban spaces that increasingly dominate our existence and our experience. However, everyone&©s experience and opportunity of the city is not the same. There are winners and losers and we can readily identify areas and people in which relative success and failure is written into the landscape of the city.
This course will give you new tools to develop new ways of thinking about the world - a socio-spatial imagination - to explore and understand how cities have developed in the way they have, what role planning and urban design have played, how and why the production, regulation and organisation, the policing and surveillance of urban space affects how and why different people settle and live in different areas, what limits there are to physical movement and social mobility. In short, by thinking more critically about space, cities will never seem the same again.
Information on our MA in Urban Futures and Sustainable Communities is available at
http://www.keele.ac.uk/urban-futures/
|
|
|
SOC-30030 |
Sociology of Parenting and Early Childhood |
O |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
We live in a society which places increasing emphasis on the long-term significance of good parenting and the importance of positive early childhood experiences. This module enables students to focus on these issues by exploring a developing area of British sociology, parenting culture studies.
The module begins with an introduction to recent analyses about the nature of parenthood over the last 20 years, including ideas about the intensive nature of motherhood, the increasing dominance of scientific ideas around childrearing and the 'paranoid' state of parents. Various aspects of childrearing practices will be explored, including nutrition, sleep and discipline. The module then moves on to consider the roles of 'experts', the media and the state in parenting. In conclusion the focus moves to a consideration of the nature of parenting and the implications this has for our understanding of adulthood and childhood in contemporary social life.
|
|
|
SOC-30030 |
Sociology of Parenting and Early Childhood |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
We live in a society which places increasing emphasis on the long-term significance of good parenting and the importance of positive early childhood experiences. This module enables students to focus on these issues by exploring a developing area of British sociology, parenting culture studies.
The module begins with an introduction to recent analyses about the nature of parenthood over the last 20 years, including ideas about the intensive nature of motherhood, the increasing dominance of scientific ideas around childrearing and the 'paranoid' state of parents. Various aspects of childrearing practices will be explored, including nutrition, sleep and discipline. The module then moves on to consider the roles of 'experts', the media and the state in parenting. In conclusion the focus moves to a consideration of the nature of parenting and the implications this has for our understanding of adulthood and childhood in contemporary social life.
|
|
|
SOC-30032 |
Home: belonging, locality and material culture |
O |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will critically explore the idea of home as a socio-cultural concept. Using an interdisciplinary approach, broadly located in sociology, but appealing to students interested in geography, english, marketing, psychology and media/cultural studies, it asks a number of difficult but fascinating questions about why we are all so obsessed with home cultures.
Why are we obsessed with the homes of celebrities? What dreams are we pursuing when we seek to nosy around their wine cellars and their marble bathtubs? Is this dream telling us something about our own narratives of belonging, or do we realise we will never achieve what they have? And how can we understand this obsession with homes in a social context: have we always been like this, or is this only since home buying became a central part of the British economy?
What is the significance of stuff? We're surrounded by it, but it is often mute and difficult to understand. We will be exploring the relationship of people to their things - displaying, collecting, disposing: the objects that make up home have enormous social, personal, cultural and psychological significance which needs unravelling.
Is it true that the only good music and art comes from 'running away from home'? From the Modernist avant garde, to punk, to Hirst and Emin, to grime - it seems that inspiration comes not from the stifling normality of homely life, but from city streets. Home spaces are often seen as the evil 'other' of creativity, yet they are as much a part of the modern city as shiny glass buildings and exciting public spaces.
What does the idea of home do to obscure the real social relations that go on behind closed doors? In what ways does the concept of the 'domestic' shelter us from the gritty reality of home life? And how is this ideology promoted and defended? The dark, uncanny side of home will be explored and themes from sociology, geography and cultural studies blended to examine how home is a key motif in notions of evil.
|
|
|
SOC-30032 |
Home: belonging, locality and material culture |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will critically explore the idea of home as a socio-cultural concept. Using an interdisciplinary approach, broadly located in sociology, but appealing to students interested in geography, english, marketing, psychology and media/cultural studies, it asks a number of difficult but fascinating questions about why we are all so obsessed with home cultures.
Why are we obsessed with the homes of celebrities? What dreams are we pursuing when we seek to nosy around their wine cellars and their marble bathtubs? Is this dream telling us something about our own narratives of belonging, or do we realise we will never achieve what they have? And how can we understand this obsession with homes in a social context: have we always been like this, or is this only since home buying became a central part of the British economy?
What is the significance of stuff? We're surrounded by it, but it is often mute and difficult to understand. We will be exploring the relationship of people to their things - displaying, collecting, disposing: the objects that make up home have enormous social, personal, cultural and psychological significance which needs unravelling.
Is it true that the only good music and art comes from 'running away from home'? From the Modernist avant garde, to punk, to Hirst and Emin, to grime - it seems that inspiration comes not from the stifling normality of homely life, but from city streets. Home spaces are often seen as the evil 'other' of creativity, yet they are as much a part of the modern city as shiny glass buildings and exciting public spaces.
What does the idea of home do to obscure the real social relations that go on behind closed doors? In what ways does the concept of the 'domestic' shelter us from the gritty reality of home life? And how is this ideology promoted and defended? The dark, uncanny side of home will be explored and themes from sociology, geography and cultural studies blended to examine how home is a key motif in notions of evil.
|
|
|
SOC-30034 |
Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context |
O |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will enable students to explore psychological theories of society and social relations. Following an introduction, which links psychoanalysis to the history of sociology and in particular ideas of alienation, disenchantment, and anomie, the module looks the key principles of Freudian psychoanalysis and core texts in the Freudian tradition.
The core purpose of the module is to show how psychoanalysis can be seen to contain a general meta-psychology of universal human behaviour that might be used to understand social phenomenon through what Freud saw as the fundamental human concerns: sex, death, and desire. Throughout the module we seek to think through the possible application of key psychoanalytic concepts - repression, projection, anxiety, perversion, sadism, thanatos or the death drive, paranoia and so on - to concrete social examples in order to illuminate a new dimension of socio-psychoanalytic explanation. |
|
|
SOC-30034 |
Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will enable students to explore psychological theories of society and social relations. Following an introduction, which links psychoanalysis to the history of sociology and in particular ideas of alienation, disenchantment, and anomie, the module looks the key principles of Freudian psychoanalysis and core texts in the Freudian tradition.
The core purpose of the module is to show how psychoanalysis can be seen to contain a general meta-psychology of universal human behaviour that might be used to understand social phenomenon through what Freud saw as the fundamental human concerns: sex, death, and desire. Throughout the module we seek to think through the possible application of key psychoanalytic concepts - repression, projection, anxiety, perversion, sadism, thanatos or the death drive, paranoia and so on - to concrete social examples in order to illuminate a new dimension of socio-psychoanalytic explanation. |
Sociology Major - Level 1 Modules
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
MDS-10008 |
Mediated World |
EA |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Mediated World aims to introduce students to some of the main theories and debates found in contemporary media, communication and cultural studies. In this course we examine how the mass media has come to dominate our everyday life $ú from the spaces we inhabit, to the beliefs we hold and values we share $ú while analyzing our individual and collective role in this complex relationship. By looking at how and why the tools developed by societies $ú from the first printing press to today&©s high speed internet $ú have been used for mass communication, we will probe how power is constructed in media messages and ask whether the consumers of such messages can ever wrest back control over meaning. |
|
|
SOC-10012 |
Researching British Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Researching British Society introduces you to the tradition of British Sociology from the post World War II period to the present day. Key topics, such as changes in family relationships, class structure, ethnic conflict, gender relations, and community integration are analysed through important texts which throw light on the issues under consideration, the historical shifts that have occurred, and the ways in which the discipline of sociology has understood them. The objective is to enable you to reflect on the ways that British society, like all societies, was and continues to be produced by particular social, political, economic and cultural constellations.
Why were these key studies done?
What was the social, economic and political background which framed them?
How did the social and economic conditions of the period alter?
What issues informed the politics of the time?
What influence did these key studies have on the world outside sociology?
The lectures will focus on
Sociology in a changing world: Britain since the 1950's
Citizenship and the post-war state
The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure
Race, Community and Conflict
Gender and social structure: Housewife
Work, consumption and the new capitalism
Changing families, households and intimacies
Social inclusion, exclusion and social structure
Ethnicity, migration and cummunity
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Tutorials are used to develop students' skills and through a range of structured activities provide them with opportunities to assess their weaknesses and develop their strengths.The class activities will include such elements as: demonstration of successful literature search; production of a bibliography; group presentations of review and critiques of articles; short quizzes testing knowledge of readings.
|
|
|
SOC-10014 |
Classical Sociology |
C |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The purpose of this module is to introduce you to the thought of the classical sociologists of the 19th century - Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. Apart from considering the central works and key ideas of these foundational sociologists, we also focus on the enormous changes that took place in the historical period we call modernity. In the introductory sessions you are introduced to the idea of $ùthinking sociologically&©. Following these classes, lecture and tutorial topics include modernity, Marx and Marxism, Weber and the state, Durkheim and anomie, and Simmel and urban life.
Why do we still study classical social theory?
What did it have to say about the nature of modernity?
How did Sociology develop as a subject?
Are classical approaches still relevant today?
What is distinctive about modernity?
What is the relationship between sociology and modernity?
Why read the classics today?
The lectures will focus on
The Sociological imagination
Modernity
Karl Marx and Communism
Karl Marx Alienation
Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic
Max Weber and Methodological Individualism
Emile Durkheim and the Division of Labour
Emile Durkheim and Anomie
Georg Simmel and Urban Sociology
Exam Preparation
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
15 minute student presentation
|
|
|
SOC-10016 |
Sport and Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Whether you take part in it, follow it as a fan, watch it for entertainment or enjoyment, it is impossible to ignore the importance of sport in modern society or its impact on the lives of people all over the world.
The development of organised sport and its regulation, influence and global reach is a reflection of not only changes in society but also of the increasing importance of leisure and recreation in contrast to work and labour. In addition, the development and experience of modern sport represents fundamental and important changes in cultural, economic and political spheres.
Sport is important because it also motivates and engenders strong attachments and loyalties (to teams, individuals, communities, towns, nations, subcultures, etc.)
This module will introduce a number of sociological perspectives that provide understanding as to the varied roles that sport plays in maintaining and perpetuating social divisions and differences as well as a means for escape or distraction, for identity formation and as resistance to dominant roles and ideologies.
We will use a variety of sports as illustration and examples to discuss and explore sociologically the importance of sport for individuals, for social groups and for larger social formations such as nations, all set in the context of an increasingly globalised world.
|
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-10009 |
Social inequalities in the contemporary world |
C |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module explores social inequalities in both a British and a global context. The module focuses on major social inequalities, such as class, ethnicity, gender and age and considers how these shape societies and the life chances of individuals. The module encourages students to consider sociological accounts of existence and persistence of social inequalities and to challenge common-sense and individualised explanations.
Do social class and poverty affect your life chances?
Women are associated with nature, and are hence inferior, men with culture, therefore superior - how do sociologists view this?
How do racism, prejudice and xenophobia create barriers to social mobility?
To what extent has Britain become a more equal society since the election of a Labour government in 1997?
Is there any evidence that the deep-seated inequalities that have been addressed in this
module are being reduced or is British society becoming even more unequal?
The lectures will focus on
Understanding social inequalities
Social class - researching and explaining class differences
The end of class?: The excluded rich and the underclass
Gender and sex - masculinities, feminities
Gender in a global context
Ethnicity and race
Age and social divisions
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Presentation in a small group - feedback will be provided by your tutor
|
|
|
SOC-10013 |
Modernity and its Darkside |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The idea of the modern individual and society is tied to wider social and political understandings about the world that we live in. As our understandings of the world change, so do ideas of who we are and what our place in the world is. In this module we examine some of the key themes and concepts associated with the $ùmodern&© individual and the wider context within which some are labelled as modern and others traditional. Key themes include a study of the enlightenment period, the birth of commercial society, modern state and the idea of citizenship. We then turn to look at the dark side of modernity - what is classed as abnormal, supernatural and irrational and societies attempt to control the pathological and paranoid desires of its members.
Who is the modern individual?
Can a group of individuals, composed of different ideas and beliefs, avoid conflict and rule
themselves?
What is classed as abnormal, supernatural and irrational by society and what attempts does
society make to control this?
Have the ideas developed in modernity been used to destroy rather than develop society?
The lectures will focus on
Modernity and Individualism
The Enlightenment Individual
The Political Individual
The Economic Individual
The Sociological Individual
The Irrational Self
The Consumer
The Holocaust and the Irrational Individual
Normalisation and Contemporary Individualism
The Post Modern Individual
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Students each week, with guidance from the group tutor, will write a creative paragraph outlining the significant themes of the lecture/seminar, as they have undertood them. This will be added to each week with each lecture so that a narrative is reflexively constructed illustrating how the student has pieced together the course and what they have understood.
|
Sociology Major - Level 2 Modules
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
MDS-20027 |
From Nosferatu to Saw: Horror Cinema in Social Context |
EA |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In this module we study horror cinema in social and cultural context. In order to introduce the module we start by thinking through the meaning of horror and exploring the function of horror cinema. What is it that horror cinema communicates? Following this introductory class, we begin our exploration of the horror genre by analysing the classic film Nosferatu and the sub-genre of the vampire movie. Beyond our study of the vampire, we move on to examine Frankenstein, the archetype of the mad scientist, and the critique of promethean man in the horror genre. Remaining in the 1930s, we look at Jekyll and Hyde and the horror of self / other, before focusing on Wolfman and the figure of the werewolf in western culture.
If Jekyll and Hyde introduced the figure of the other in horror cinema, and Wolfman developed the idea of the other as animality, the classic 1950 B-movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, created the notion of the other as a social alien, in this case the communist infiltrator. In classes that follow we extend our study of the other in horror cinema through discussions of the figure of the zombie, the Devil, and the monstrosity of the wilderness. Moving away from an analysis of the horror of the wilderness, we consider horror much closer to home, the trope of the haunted house, the suburbs, the psycho-killer, and the idea that everyday life is horrific. Finally, and in order to conclude the module, we examine mock realism in the horror genre through a consideration of the Blair Witch Project and the sadistic ultra-violent turn in horror cinema represented by the torture porn sub-genre and in particular the movie Saw.
|
|
|
SOC-20014 |
Sociology - Study Abroad I |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20015 |
Sociology - Study Abroad II |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20035 |
Sociology of the Body |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Looking at the body through a sociological lens allows us to further question the nature/culture and biological/social dichotomies; it also allows us to examine the ways in which the body is constructed as a key site of social division and exclusion; further, the body can be read as a cultural and social text $ú as the repository for social meaning. Using examples of contemporary bodily practice, a wide range of visual material demonstrating the importance of 'looking' at bodies in contemporary culture and exploring some of the ethical dilemmas in managing bodies, this module seeks to demonstrate the centrality of a socio-cultural notion of bodies.
The lectures will focus on areas such as
Bodily exclusions: Sport, gender and ethnicity
Bodily image &eating disorders
Body management
Specularity: the body as an object in vision
Michel Foucault and the disciplined body
Body modification
Body parts as commodities: the ethics of trade
The Ageing Body
Posthuman bodies $ú an accommodation between the social and the $ùmaterial&© $ö.?
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Each session will include some delivered content, including lectures, KLE content, film/slide shows; in addition there will be group presentations by students, group discussion and additional online/tutorial activities.
Students complete a presentation on a topic related to the course and their likely essay topic. |
|
|
SOC-20040 |
City, Culture, Society |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
We live on an urbanising planet. Rather than being a historical phenomenon urbanisation and the study of the city are of contemporary concern, not only to sociologists but to other academic disciplines (geography, criminology, social policy, politics, public health, etc.). The issues and problems that arise as populations migrate from traditional rural environments, traditions and societies is one that has been investigated and analysed in respect of the developed world of the northern hemisphere from the 19th century onwards. These analyses identified not only characteristic features of the experience of urban life but also the problems and associated political and structural arrangements that accompanied the expansion of the urban as a key site for modernity. These are still significant and crucial concerns and issues for understanding urbanisation in the 21st century.
This module provides an introduction and overview of the historical development of the urban concentrating on key approaches and perspectives and analyses of the transition to and experience of urban life in modernity. It will trace key elements and factors that distinguish characteristic features of the city and the urban and discuss the development of new forms of urbanisation in respect of post-modern debates and globalisation. It therefore links historical and extant urban issues and problems with those of wider sociological relevance such as class, gender, ethnicity, governance, social and environmental sustainability etc. to consider the contemporary experience of urban growth and expansion as well as issues of security, quality of life and opportunity.
The lectures will focus on
The City as Historical Form
Classical Sociology and the City: Marx, Durkheim and Weber
Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Urban Sociology in Modern Germany
Walter Benjamin: Phantasmagoria, Flaneurie and Paris, City of Modernity
The Industrial City in Britain
The Chicago School: American Urbanism
Ameliorating the Consequences: Urban Plans and Designs for the 'good city'
20th century Reconstruction and Re-generation
Post-modern Cities
Global Cities or cities in a Global World
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
The lecture topics serve as the basis for the seminars where students will be asked to participate in a number of individual and group activities. Students will be required to complete and submit various formative assessments throughout the course of the module to make up a portfolio of formatively assessed work which includes the following:
Short presentation on a lecture/ seminar topic/theme
View film screening(s) and discuss the themes/issues presented
Submit 500 word formative assessments on 2 of the lecture themes
Complete in class group exercises and discuss in plenary the various answers/responses
Complete a KLE multiple choice quiz as formative assessment
Essay planning
Exam revision and techniques |
|
|
SOC-20047 |
20th Century Social Theory |
C |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
If Marx, Weber, and Durkheim were central figures in the 19th century project to think through the problem of the identification of self and society, then the key thinkers of the 20th century built upon their achievements. The object of this course is to run off the achievements of Marx, Weber, Durkheim into a consideration of the 20th century social theories of Freud, whose invention, psychoanalysis, made the psychological effects of the self / society problem explicit, Simmel, who thought about the problem of social relations in the city, the French structuralists, who came face to face with the symbolic edifice that structures our lives, and the various exponents of post-modernity, who have thought / fought to save us from either the loneliness that the existentialists considered the essential characteristic of the human condition or the horror of the monolithic other, society, that threatens to erase our identity. In-between our consideration of Freud, Simmel, Foucault, and Baudrillard, we will explore the works of the symbolic interactionists, critical theorists, feminists, and post-colonial theorists. But before we can begin our survey of 20th century social theory, we must consider the figure of theory of itself. What is theory? What is the purpose of theory? Why is it necessary to use theory to think through the self / society problem?
The lectures will focus on:
What is Theory?
Freud and Paranoia
Simmel and the City
Mead, Goffman, Symbolic Interactionism
Adorno and Horkheimer
Structuralism
Post-Colonialism
Post-Feminism
Post-Modernism
Risk and Globalisation
Formative Assessment and Tutorial activities:
The tutorial programme is detailed below and are you are formatively assessed throughout the module by verbal and written feedback:
Group work - The Value of Theory in Everyday Life (500 Word - Formative Assessment)
Discussion - Relationship between Paranoia and Theory
Work Sheets, Simmel and the Contemporary City
Ethnography - What is Role-Play in SI?
Group Work - Construct an Advert (Employ Principles of Standardization and Persuasion)
Discussion - What is Social Construction? (Presentations - 500 Word Formative Assessment)
Group Work - Deconstruction of Images of Racial Others
Group Work - Deconstruction of Images of Gendered Identity
Work Sheets - What is Post-modernism? (Presentations - 500 Word Formative Assessment)
Discussion: Globalisation and Everyday Life |
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
MDS-20019 |
Analysing Culture |
EA |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In Analysing Culture we consider how culture enables people to make sense of their personal and social lives. The first session of the course refers to Geertz&©s classic paper on Balinese society to introduce the concept of culture. The key question we want to ask through our study of Geertz essay is $ùwhat is culture?&© Following this example of an anthropologically strange culture we move on to think about the construction of national identity through a consideration of Hall&©s work on western identity, Said&©s essay on orientalism, Anderson&©s notion of imaginary communities, and various representations of contemporary nationality. Although the nation has provided a strong cultural map for people since the middle of the 17th century, the rise of modern urbanism has challenged this cultural form through its embrace of privacy and a culture of alienation. In week 3 we consider urban culture, read Simmel&©s classic essay on the metropolitan mind, and think about the ways in which the city is represented today. In the next session we show how people have sought to relate culture to the problem of alienation in modern culture. In week 4 we think about the notion of consumer culture through Adorno and Horkheimer&©s idea of mass culture and Klein's theory of branding and consider how commodities might work like narcotics that numb our senses to the impoverished reality of our one-dimensional society. Our key cultural texts here is Danny Boyle&©s film Trainspotting.
In the second part of the course we begin by thinking about cultural politics. In week 5 we focus on Bourdieu&©s idea of distinction and think about how far his theory reflects popular uses of culture in the contemporary world. For Bourdieu culture is not simply a form of deception, but rather a tool that people use in order to try to distinguish themselves from other people in the endless struggle that is competitive capitalism. Although Bourdieu suggests that people use culture for their own purposes, he thinks that they use it unimaginatively and strictly within the confines of capitalist ideology. Thus we may say that Bourdieu is essentially a Marxist. In week 6 we try to extend the Marxist theory of culture through an exploration of the works on the key writers on everyday life. In particular we refer to the idea of contested culture expressed in the works of the French theorists of constructed space and everyday life, Lefebvre and de Certeau. The purpose of this exercise is to suggest that culture may be a space of negotiation, contestation, and confrontation, rather than simply a mechanism of deception or distinction.
In week 7 we extend our exploration of this idea of cultural resistance through a discussion of the theory of sub-culture. This theory shows how new communities are able to emerge through consumer relations and cultural performance. We address this theory through a consideration of the classic example of punk, the more contemporary case of gangsta rap, and a reading of the works of the cultural sociologists of performance, Goffman, Garfinkel, and Mead. In the final three weeks of the course we move on to focus on theories of post-modernism, the culturally constructed body, and globalisation. In week 8 we explore the idea of post-modern culture through Dominic Strinati&©s essay on the topic, David Lynch&©s cinema, and Fredric Jameson&©s influential paper, Post-modernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. For Jameson culture is the dominant form of identification in post-modern society. He thinks that people no longer worry about economics or politics, but rather understand these categories through culture. What does this mean? We will try to find out week 10 when we consider the ideas of global culture and anti-capitalism. But before we consider global culture, we examine the post-modern concern for the body and in particular Bordo's theory of the economic body. In week 9 we approach Bordo's theory through a cultural history of thinking about and imaging the body, taking in the Greek God body, the modern super-hero body, and the post-modern techno body, represented by both Haraway's cyborg, Bordo's metabolic body, and various science fiction bodies.
Our study of the body, and body image, allows us to think about the ways that politics and economics are subsumed in culture in global society. Shifting from a study of the microcosm of the body to the macrocosm of the globalised world, in week 10 we refer to the works of contemporary writers, such as Giddens and Beck, who dispute the claims of the conflict theorists, such as Adorno and Horkheimer, by arguing that there is no monolithic centre of power that imposes meaning upon people&©s lives in global society. Rather Giddens and Beck argue that contemporary culture is characterised by risk, chance, and freedom of choice. In this session we think about their suggestion that traditional power structures no longer hold in post-modern / global society through an exploration of the idea of the new social movement and in particular anti-capitalist cultural politics. Our core text for this session is the recent film, Fight Club, which connects visions of the body and globalised consumer capitalism to issues of revolutionary cultural politics.
|
|
|
SOC-20017 |
Sociology - Study Abroad III |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20018 |
Sociology - Study Abroad IV |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20033 |
Witchcraft, Zombies and Social Anxiety |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The topic of the supernatural has received little attention from sociologists and is largely dismissed as a set of irrational and superstitious beliefs. This module centrally positions the supernatural and paranormal - ghosts, monsters, witches, vampires, werewolves and zombies in the sociological study of modernity, thus contributing to contemporary debates about the transparency of social forces in a global economy and the secularisation of society. In the global economy, supernatural commentaries thrive and have become a symbol of the destructive effects of capitalism. In other words, occult practices crystallise social conflicts in the modern world. For example in early modern Europe and in Salem, witchcraft accusations encapsulated the inequality that obtains between rural and urban regions, gender and socio-economic status. In the global economy anxieties reverberate about the theft of childrens&© organs and ritual murder reflecting concerns about child trafficking and migration. Meanwhile, in Europe and the United States, allegations about the satanic abuse of children refuse to disappear as newspaper reports multiply about child abductions and horrific serial killers. Likewise, the media is obsessed with vampires and, now, zombies and horror stories and movies about the walking dead reverberate around the world.
The key theme of this course is that supernatural discourses represent a distinctive way of articulating fears about the increased uncertainty found in everyday life and the insecurities of the global economy.
In essence therefore, the course looks at the ways in which supernatural and occult discourses throw light on the very different ways in which we live our lives.
The lectures will focus on
Understanding Witchcraft and Monsters in a Global Society
The Witches' Sabbath: Early Modern European Witchcraft and Salem
Superstition, Religion and Science
Occultism and Risk
African Witchcraft and Modernity
Revision Session - poster and examination question/answer session
Zombies and Globalisation: The Malcontents of Modernity
The Supernatural: Commodification, Conspiracy and the Occult
Witches, Vampires and Female Sexuality
Conclusion: Witchcraft, Anxiety and Social Change; feedback on posters
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Students on the module will be required to complete a range of different tasks in preparation for and during the seminars. Some of these will require individual reporting based on prior reading and some of these will require group working and discussion on key topics/issues set in class by the tutor.
Group work - thinking monsters and witchcraft
DVD screening on Early European witchcraft. Students asked to present in week 3 key factors behind Salem witchhunts (group work)
Salem presentations. Group work on symbolism of superstition and the significance of ritual.
DVD screening on satanism and child abuse in USA. Group work on key factors behind scapegoating.
Group work on African witchcraft and on key digitalised readings on witchcraft in Nigeria
Discussion on posters/revision - question and answer - reexamination of key topics covered so far; preparation for handing in of posters week 7/8
Group work on metaphor of zombie and world recession; group work on the transparancy of capitalism; Internet presentation on illicit global trade in body parts (Berkeley University web site)
Screening of X-Files montage; group discussion of the conspiracy through film/television
Screening of vampire montage; group discussion on Dracula and female sexuality
Conclusion - group feedback on posters/Individual feedback |
|
|
SOC-20034 |
Crime, Morality and the Media |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Crime, Morality and the Media will introduce students to the main theories and debates surrounding the factual and fictional representations of crime and deviance. Students will be asked to consider past and present media portrayals of criminality and deviance in order to unpack how and why the tales of morality implicit in their representation continue to hold resonance for audiences.
Reflecting upon both media examples and theoretical debates, in this course students will consider the view that representations of criminal and deviant acts help to communicate a dominant view of class, ethnicity, gender, and age, and work to secure the consensus of the mass audience. As well as looking at factual news reports into events such as the disappearance of Madeleine McCann or the War on Terror, we will also examine entertainment forms and ask why certain genres of music, film and videogame incite moral outrage from large sections of the mass media and its audience.
To situate these ideas about the social construction of meaning we will look at Stanley Cohen&©s classic study on folk devils and moral panics and attempt to unpack debates about morality, fear and risk. We will also apply the theoretical perspectives put forward by key thinkers including Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, and Rene Girard to further our understanding of important ideas such as Self / Other, knowledge and power, and the scapegoat mechanism in relation to media representations of crime and deviance.
The lectures will focus on
Theories of moral panics, fear and risk
The fear of the $ùmob&© - representations of class conflict
Constructing the nation - the ethnic Other as scapegoat
Deviant women - nature versus culture
Children in the news - transgressing innocence
Violence on film - social commentary and the slasher flick
True-crime TV - blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction
Music and mayhem - deviant subcultures
Videogame nasties - virtual reality and the embodiment of violence
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Students will be expected to work on their own and as part of a group by:
- reading key theoretical texts in preparation for class
- critically analysing and commenting on media and cultural texts
- critically analysing and commenting on key theoretical texts
- engaging in small group discussion and whole of class debates
- preparing for and discussing assessments (case study, poster and formative tests)
In addition to traditional lectures and seminars there will be occasional screenings, KLE-based activities and student-led research.
Students will be asked to complete two take-home tests over the course of the module. The tests will comprise of a page of short answer and multiple choice questions where students will be required to research a breadth of material independently.
|
|
|
SOC-20043 |
Globalisation and its Discontents |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Globalisation has brought some great wealth, but it has plunged many more into the depths of poverty. While rich westerners grow more prosperous, millions of others in forgotten parts of the world continue to die of poverty, war, and disease. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, complacent westerners believed that they were, in practical terms, untouchable. This conceit was, of course, destroyed by the events of September 11th 2001. However, we must recognise that the spectre of insecurity which now haunts the west has always been the normal condition for most of the rest of the world. In this respect we can say that the terror attacks on New York and Washington finally woke the west to its global inheritance. That is to say that we have been given a taste of the fear and insecurity which has affected most of the world&©s population for more or less the whole of the 20th century.
Insofar as the condition of the global poor has started to impact upon our own lives, we have woken up to the rest of the world. While this situation may be deeply troubling for many people, it would be too easy, and ultimately futile, for the west to try to cordon itself off from the rest of the world. On the contrary, rather than trying to hide from the problems of globalisation, the west must attempt to think about the underlying causes of the current turbulent situation. This consideration is necessary in order to prevent further terror attacks on the west, but also to improve the lives of people in other parts of the world. It is too easy to say that because these people live far away, we have no responsibility to work to improve their situation. Due to globalisation we have become responsible for everybody in the world, regardless of their race, nation, class, or gender. For these reasons it is now, more than ever before, important for sociologists to study the subject of globalisation.
Following this rationale, Globalisation and Discontents divides the study of globalisation into three sections: history, discontents, and governance. In the first division the module is concerned to address the emergence of globalisation (industrialism to post-industrialism and Americanisation) and the rise of the new global economy. The second part of the course considers the future of the human rights society (political participation, citizenship, and the law) and the discontents (environmentalism, anti-capitalism, immigration) that necessarily accompany the birth of the world risk society. After the assessment of the key expressions of global discontent, the third division of the course is concerned with the political struggles that characterise attempts to construct a world society. To this end the module considers the politics of multiculturalism, thinks through the recent rise of fundamentalism and terror insofar as they can be seen to represent archaic forms of local anti-global identification, and assesses the value of humanitarian war as a means for upholding law in the turbulent global society.
The lectures will focus on
The Origins of Contemporary Global Society: Industrialism
The High Tech Society: Post-Industrialism
The American Century
The Post-Modern Society
The End of History and the Critique of Empire
The Risk Society: Economy and the Crash
Environmental Destruction and Global Catastrophe
Global Protest (Anti-Capitalism-Environmentalism)
Global Societies: Immigration and Multiculturalism
The Rise of Fundamentalism: War, Violence, Human Rights
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Two hour seminars are split between lectures, tutorials, and other activities such as DVD screenings and web exercises which include the following:
Group work - Students each submit 500 words for formative assessment
Student Presentations
Close Reading - Students submit 500 words for formative assessment
Student Debate - Students submit 500 words on the dualistic nature of global politics for formative assessment. |
|
|
SOC-20046 |
Research Methods |
C |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module aims to introduce you to both the principles of developing research strategies and to the strengths and weaknesses of different data collection methods used within sociology. The lectures will be concerned with examining the criteria that can be used to judge the advantages of different research approaches, as well as introducing you to the assumptions that underpin different modes of data collection. There will also be a focus on the ethics of social research.
The workshops will help develop further the understanding gained through the lectures. They will be more practically focused. Workshops will entail you demonstrating skills in the use of bibliographic data bases, evaluating existing research and exploring alternative methodologies for collecting relevant data within the constraints of specified research resources.
The module will consist of lectures and workshops. The workshops will based and concerned with applying the concerns of the lectures to specific research problems, the discussion of specific methodological issues or the development of research skills.
The lectures will focus on:
What is social research?
Interviewing
Ethnography
Ethics
Analysing qualitative data
Official statistics and surveys
Using quantitative methods in social research and mixing methods
Internet, social media and social research
Using documents in research
Writing social research
The workshop activities will include:
- Undertaking search strategies and developing bibliographies
- Discussions of the processes involved in operationalising specific research issues
- Using research methods: interview techniques
- Discussion of ethical dilemmas
- Analysing qualitative data
|
Sociology Major - Level 3 Modules
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-30025 |
Streets, Skyscrapers, and Slums: The City in Social, Cultural, and Historical Context |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In this module we trace the cultural politics of the city from Ancient Athens to contemporary mega-cities, such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Lagos. Following the introductory lecture, which examines the meaning of the original cities of the ancient world, the first part of the module, modern cities, offers a consideration of the late 19th century / early 20th century European metropolises.
After an exploration of the ideas of metropolitan psychology, fashion, and the department store in the works of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, we move on to think about the city in the late 20th century. Here we think about the situationist city, the spectacular city, and the surveillance city and consider the ideas of Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault.
In the second part of the module, post-modern cities, we study the American mega-city. For writers such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Mike Davis cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas are strange surreal places. In this section of the course we explore the post-modern city through the ideas of simulation, informationalism, urban violence, the ghetto, and the obsession with security.
After our exploration of the post-modern city, the final section of the module examines contemporary third world mega-cities. We begin with a consideration of Mike Davis&©s recent study of the third world slum and then move on to think about the ideas of pollution and danger in mega-cities.
Other topics in this section of the course include the situation of the occultism in the African city, corruption and crime in South Africa, and the mythology of the werewolf in one of Africa&©s most populous cities, Lagos.
The aim of the module is to explore the cultural politics of the city in history.
|
|
|
SOC-30026 |
Risk and Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Everyday we are bombarded by media reports about all kinds of risks and experts are constantly suggesting various strategies to ensure people are as safe as possible.
For example, there are concerns over the link between mobile phones and brain tumours, whether we can trust our doctors and environmental pressure groups are busy highlighting the disastrous effects of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer. Risk anxiety about food, crime, health and terrorism, together with an endless variety of new risks, now seem to be associated with nearly every mundane human experience.
But to what extent are people increasingly worried about risks?
Are we really living in a $ùrisk society&©?
If so, why do some individuals actively seek out high-risk pursuits (skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing etc) that could result in serious injury and even death?
These are just some of the questions this module will be concerned with. The first part of the module will explore the main theoretical perspectives that have emerged on risk in the social sciences. This will mainly concentrate on the work of Mary Douglas, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault. The second part of the course will address debates surrounding risk that have come to dominate public, political and private arenas. Substantive areas covered include crime, health, sexuality, terrorism and voluntary risk taking.
The overall aim of the course is to enhance a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of risk and the role it plays in contemporary society. |
|
|
SOC-30029 |
Gender and Consumption |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Consumption and consumer culture are salient facets of everyday life in affluent societies of the 21st century. Equally, gender is a ubiquitous dimension which shapes the social and culture world, and the subjectivities of individuals living within it.
This module examines the intersections and interconnections between consumption, consumer culture and gender, looking not only at how gender informs the organisation of markets, but also at how markets inform formulations of gender structure, gender culture and provides resources for gender performativity.
It does this by looking at a series of topics relating to the rise of an all-enveloping consumer culture in affluent societies during the 20th Century, with visits to the department store, a perusal of magazine contents and the formulation of advertisements. It also considers the domestic home as a place for the expression of domestic femininity through home related consumption.
It then turns its focus to contemporary topics, amongst which are a consideration of the consequences of commercialisation for intimate life, the interlinking of gender and class in consumption, and the ways in which consumer culture frames and offers resources for the enactment of gender amongst the young. |
|
|
SOC-30038 |
Medical Sociology |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
$ùThe hospital is succeeding the church and the parliament as the archetypal institution of Western culture.&© Philip Rieff (1979) Freud: The Mind of a Moralist. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 355.
In the more than thirty years since Reiff wrote these words, modern biomedicine and the various enterprises associated with it (the natural sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, health care delivery systems, epidemiology, public health and the psychotherapeutic enterprise) have grown at a galloping pace. At the same time, however, patients have grown increasingly knowledgeable about and personally and politically involved in their own care. In a world increasingly shaped by scientific and medical discourse, practice, and regulation, how can sociology contribute to understanding the roles of biomedicine and patienthood in social life, and the tensions and overlaps between them? This module expands on the Sociology Programme&©s 2nd-year module entitled Health and Society by (a) considering anthropological and historical approaches to medicine and (b) the illness experience, doctor-patient interaction, and new health social movements. After reviewing the basic approaches of biomedicine, anthropology, and history to health and medicine, we consider sociological work on the medicalization and pharmaceuticalization of society, and sociological studies of illness behavior, health promotion and service use; doctor-patient interaction; the experiences of illness, disability, and rehabilitation; and new health social movements. Lectures will be supplemented by student-led tutorial discussion; assessments include an essay and marked discussion questions submitted by stduents.
|
| Semester 1-2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-30028 |
Dissertation - ISP |
C |
C
|
15 |
30 |
|
|
In this module you will be given the opportunity to apply your theoretical and methodological understandings of sociology to a research problem in either sociological literature or the social field. This will entail:
a. the definition of a research problem,
b. the creation of research questions or a hypothesis,
c. the design of a research solution,
d. the completion of a literature review,
e. a methodological statement,
f. the application of an appropriate method to your research object,
g. an appropriate form of data analysis and,
h. the construction of relevant conclusions.
If you choose this module you will work with a supervisor on a project of your own choosing. Upon choosing this module you will be asked to submit a working title to the module tutor who will then assign you a tutor in order to negotiate a final title and dissertation plan. When this has been agreed, you will be able to start work on your project in consultation with your supervisor. Your supervisor will be available to see you throughout the duration of your project in timetabled supervisory slots.
The dissertation module is an important component of the sociology programme. It provides you with the opportunity to demonstrate that you can define, design, and execute your own research in the field and show prospective employers in a variety of fields that you are a skilled researcher capable of developing research solutions and communicating these effectively. This module is similarly appropriate if you want to remain in education because it will enable you to practice and hone the kinds of independent research skills that are essential in post-graduate education.
What our students have said about their projects:
Best advice is to start work early, I found my dissertation was fun (to an extent) to do as I did some work before Christmas so I didn&©t leave it to the last minute.
The dissertation pack kept me on target, especially the time plan.
Going with what you enjoy. Sociology&©s well interesting.
Clear and useful advice one to one with tutors on how to improve work.
I emailed my dissertation supervisor weekly, gave him countless drafts to read and saw him about once every two weeks.
He was always approachable and gave good constructive criticism.
|
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-30027 |
Space and the City |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
$ùTo be tired of the city is to be tired of life&©
The city is exciting, alluring, dangerous and filled with possibilities and opportunities. It offers hustle and bustle, speed and distraction, a melting pot of sights, sounds, smells, and experiences in a cosmopolitan mix of multi-culturalism. It is simplistic to say that all activities and interactions take place in space. But as the city is at the centre of the modern urban world more and more of what we take for granted takes place in towns and cities. They are the primary location for work, production, consumption, education, learning, cultural and transport institutions and leisure and pleasure. However, the city is more than the sum of its parts and it is more than merely the individual&©s experience of it.
This course will give you knowledge and understanding of the city as a socially constructed space in which the physical landscape that we see, use and misuse is not an accidental or coincidental coming-together of things and people. The city is a human produced space in which combinations of factors over time have produced a variety of urban spaces that increasingly dominate our existence and our experience. However, everyone&©s experience and opportunity of the city is not the same. There are winners and losers and we can readily identify areas and people in which relative success and failure is written into the landscape of the city.
This course will give you new tools to develop new ways of thinking about the world - a socio-spatial imagination - to explore and understand how cities have developed in the way they have, what role planning and urban design have played, how and why the production, regulation and organisation, the policing and surveillance of urban space affects how and why different people settle and live in different areas, what limits there are to physical movement and social mobility. In short, by thinking more critically about space, cities will never seem the same again.
Information on our MA in Urban Futures and Sustainable Communities is available at
http://www.keele.ac.uk/urban-futures/
|
|
|
SOC-30030 |
Sociology of Parenting and Early Childhood |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
We live in a society which places increasing emphasis on the long-term significance of good parenting and the importance of positive early childhood experiences. This module enables students to focus on these issues by exploring a developing area of British sociology, parenting culture studies.
The module begins with an introduction to recent analyses about the nature of parenthood over the last 20 years, including ideas about the intensive nature of motherhood, the increasing dominance of scientific ideas around childrearing and the 'paranoid' state of parents. Various aspects of childrearing practices will be explored, including nutrition, sleep and discipline. The module then moves on to consider the roles of 'experts', the media and the state in parenting. In conclusion the focus moves to a consideration of the nature of parenting and the implications this has for our understanding of adulthood and childhood in contemporary social life.
|
|
|
SOC-30032 |
Home: belonging, locality and material culture |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will critically explore the idea of home as a socio-cultural concept. Using an interdisciplinary approach, broadly located in sociology, but appealing to students interested in geography, english, marketing, psychology and media/cultural studies, it asks a number of difficult but fascinating questions about why we are all so obsessed with home cultures.
Why are we obsessed with the homes of celebrities? What dreams are we pursuing when we seek to nosy around their wine cellars and their marble bathtubs? Is this dream telling us something about our own narratives of belonging, or do we realise we will never achieve what they have? And how can we understand this obsession with homes in a social context: have we always been like this, or is this only since home buying became a central part of the British economy?
What is the significance of stuff? We're surrounded by it, but it is often mute and difficult to understand. We will be exploring the relationship of people to their things - displaying, collecting, disposing: the objects that make up home have enormous social, personal, cultural and psychological significance which needs unravelling.
Is it true that the only good music and art comes from 'running away from home'? From the Modernist avant garde, to punk, to Hirst and Emin, to grime - it seems that inspiration comes not from the stifling normality of homely life, but from city streets. Home spaces are often seen as the evil 'other' of creativity, yet they are as much a part of the modern city as shiny glass buildings and exciting public spaces.
What does the idea of home do to obscure the real social relations that go on behind closed doors? In what ways does the concept of the 'domestic' shelter us from the gritty reality of home life? And how is this ideology promoted and defended? The dark, uncanny side of home will be explored and themes from sociology, geography and cultural studies blended to examine how home is a key motif in notions of evil.
|
|
|
SOC-30034 |
Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will enable students to explore psychological theories of society and social relations. Following an introduction, which links psychoanalysis to the history of sociology and in particular ideas of alienation, disenchantment, and anomie, the module looks the key principles of Freudian psychoanalysis and core texts in the Freudian tradition.
The core purpose of the module is to show how psychoanalysis can be seen to contain a general meta-psychology of universal human behaviour that might be used to understand social phenomenon through what Freud saw as the fundamental human concerns: sex, death, and desire. Throughout the module we seek to think through the possible application of key psychoanalytic concepts - repression, projection, anxiety, perversion, sadism, thanatos or the death drive, paranoia and so on - to concrete social examples in order to illuminate a new dimension of socio-psychoanalytic explanation. |
Sociology Minor - Level 1 Modules
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
MDS-10008 |
Mediated World |
EA |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Mediated World aims to introduce students to some of the main theories and debates found in contemporary media, communication and cultural studies. In this course we examine how the mass media has come to dominate our everyday life $ú from the spaces we inhabit, to the beliefs we hold and values we share $ú while analyzing our individual and collective role in this complex relationship. By looking at how and why the tools developed by societies $ú from the first printing press to today&©s high speed internet $ú have been used for mass communication, we will probe how power is constructed in media messages and ask whether the consumers of such messages can ever wrest back control over meaning. |
|
|
SOC-10012 |
Researching British Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Researching British Society introduces you to the tradition of British Sociology from the post World War II period to the present day. Key topics, such as changes in family relationships, class structure, ethnic conflict, gender relations, and community integration are analysed through important texts which throw light on the issues under consideration, the historical shifts that have occurred, and the ways in which the discipline of sociology has understood them. The objective is to enable you to reflect on the ways that British society, like all societies, was and continues to be produced by particular social, political, economic and cultural constellations.
Why were these key studies done?
What was the social, economic and political background which framed them?
How did the social and economic conditions of the period alter?
What issues informed the politics of the time?
What influence did these key studies have on the world outside sociology?
The lectures will focus on
Sociology in a changing world: Britain since the 1950's
Citizenship and the post-war state
The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure
Race, Community and Conflict
Gender and social structure: Housewife
Work, consumption and the new capitalism
Changing families, households and intimacies
Social inclusion, exclusion and social structure
Ethnicity, migration and cummunity
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Tutorials are used to develop students' skills and through a range of structured activities provide them with opportunities to assess their weaknesses and develop their strengths.The class activities will include such elements as: demonstration of successful literature search; production of a bibliography; group presentations of review and critiques of articles; short quizzes testing knowledge of readings.
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|
|
SOC-10014 |
Classical Sociology |
C |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The purpose of this module is to introduce you to the thought of the classical sociologists of the 19th century - Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. Apart from considering the central works and key ideas of these foundational sociologists, we also focus on the enormous changes that took place in the historical period we call modernity. In the introductory sessions you are introduced to the idea of $ùthinking sociologically&©. Following these classes, lecture and tutorial topics include modernity, Marx and Marxism, Weber and the state, Durkheim and anomie, and Simmel and urban life.
Why do we still study classical social theory?
What did it have to say about the nature of modernity?
How did Sociology develop as a subject?
Are classical approaches still relevant today?
What is distinctive about modernity?
What is the relationship between sociology and modernity?
Why read the classics today?
The lectures will focus on
The Sociological imagination
Modernity
Karl Marx and Communism
Karl Marx Alienation
Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic
Max Weber and Methodological Individualism
Emile Durkheim and the Division of Labour
Emile Durkheim and Anomie
Georg Simmel and Urban Sociology
Exam Preparation
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
15 minute student presentation
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|
|
SOC-10016 |
Sport and Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Whether you take part in it, follow it as a fan, watch it for entertainment or enjoyment, it is impossible to ignore the importance of sport in modern society or its impact on the lives of people all over the world.
The development of organised sport and its regulation, influence and global reach is a reflection of not only changes in society but also of the increasing importance of leisure and recreation in contrast to work and labour. In addition, the development and experience of modern sport represents fundamental and important changes in cultural, economic and political spheres.
Sport is important because it also motivates and engenders strong attachments and loyalties (to teams, individuals, communities, towns, nations, subcultures, etc.)
This module will introduce a number of sociological perspectives that provide understanding as to the varied roles that sport plays in maintaining and perpetuating social divisions and differences as well as a means for escape or distraction, for identity formation and as resistance to dominant roles and ideologies.
We will use a variety of sports as illustration and examples to discuss and explore sociologically the importance of sport for individuals, for social groups and for larger social formations such as nations, all set in the context of an increasingly globalised world.
|
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
SOC-10009 |
Social inequalities in the contemporary world |
C |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module explores social inequalities in both a British and a global context. The module focuses on major social inequalities, such as class, ethnicity, gender and age and considers how these shape societies and the life chances of individuals. The module encourages students to consider sociological accounts of existence and persistence of social inequalities and to challenge common-sense and individualised explanations.
Do social class and poverty affect your life chances?
Women are associated with nature, and are hence inferior, men with culture, therefore superior - how do sociologists view this?
How do racism, prejudice and xenophobia create barriers to social mobility?
To what extent has Britain become a more equal society since the election of a Labour government in 1997?
Is there any evidence that the deep-seated inequalities that have been addressed in this
module are being reduced or is British society becoming even more unequal?
The lectures will focus on
Understanding social inequalities
Social class - researching and explaining class differences
The end of class?: The excluded rich and the underclass
Gender and sex - masculinities, feminities
Gender in a global context
Ethnicity and race
Age and social divisions
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Presentation in a small group - feedback will be provided by your tutor
|
|
|
SOC-10013 |
Modernity and its Darkside |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The idea of the modern individual and society is tied to wider social and political understandings about the world that we live in. As our understandings of the world change, so do ideas of who we are and what our place in the world is. In this module we examine some of the key themes and concepts associated with the $ùmodern&© individual and the wider context within which some are labelled as modern and others traditional. Key themes include a study of the enlightenment period, the birth of commercial society, modern state and the idea of citizenship. We then turn to look at the dark side of modernity - what is classed as abnormal, supernatural and irrational and societies attempt to control the pathological and paranoid desires of its members.
Who is the modern individual?
Can a group of individuals, composed of different ideas and beliefs, avoid conflict and rule
themselves?
What is classed as abnormal, supernatural and irrational by society and what attempts does
society make to control this?
Have the ideas developed in modernity been used to destroy rather than develop society?
The lectures will focus on
Modernity and Individualism
The Enlightenment Individual
The Political Individual
The Economic Individual
The Sociological Individual
The Irrational Self
The Consumer
The Holocaust and the Irrational Individual
Normalisation and Contemporary Individualism
The Post Modern Individual
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Students each week, with guidance from the group tutor, will write a creative paragraph outlining the significant themes of the lecture/seminar, as they have undertood them. This will be added to each week with each lecture so that a narrative is reflexively constructed illustrating how the student has pieced together the course and what they have understood.
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Sociology Minor - Level 2 Modules
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
MDS-20027 |
From Nosferatu to Saw: Horror Cinema in Social Context |
EA |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In this module we study horror cinema in social and cultural context. In order to introduce the module we start by thinking through the meaning of horror and exploring the function of horror cinema. What is it that horror cinema communicates? Following this introductory class, we begin our exploration of the horror genre by analysing the classic film Nosferatu and the sub-genre of the vampire movie. Beyond our study of the vampire, we move on to examine Frankenstein, the archetype of the mad scientist, and the critique of promethean man in the horror genre. Remaining in the 1930s, we look at Jekyll and Hyde and the horror of self / other, before focusing on Wolfman and the figure of the werewolf in western culture.
If Jekyll and Hyde introduced the figure of the other in horror cinema, and Wolfman developed the idea of the other as animality, the classic 1950 B-movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, created the notion of the other as a social alien, in this case the communist infiltrator. In classes that follow we extend our study of the other in horror cinema through discussions of the figure of the zombie, the Devil, and the monstrosity of the wilderness. Moving away from an analysis of the horror of the wilderness, we consider horror much closer to home, the trope of the haunted house, the suburbs, the psycho-killer, and the idea that everyday life is horrific. Finally, and in order to conclude the module, we examine mock realism in the horror genre through a consideration of the Blair Witch Project and the sadistic ultra-violent turn in horror cinema represented by the torture porn sub-genre and in particular the movie Saw.
|
|
|
SOC-20014 |
Sociology - Study Abroad I |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20015 |
Sociology - Study Abroad II |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20035 |
Sociology of the Body |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Looking at the body through a sociological lens allows us to further question the nature/culture and biological/social dichotomies; it also allows us to examine the ways in which the body is constructed as a key site of social division and exclusion; further, the body can be read as a cultural and social text $ú as the repository for social meaning. Using examples of contemporary bodily practice, a wide range of visual material demonstrating the importance of 'looking' at bodies in contemporary culture and exploring some of the ethical dilemmas in managing bodies, this module seeks to demonstrate the centrality of a socio-cultural notion of bodies.
The lectures will focus on areas such as
Bodily exclusions: Sport, gender and ethnicity
Bodily image &eating disorders
Body management
Specularity: the body as an object in vision
Michel Foucault and the disciplined body
Body modification
Body parts as commodities: the ethics of trade
The Ageing Body
Posthuman bodies $ú an accommodation between the social and the $ùmaterial&© $ö.?
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
Each session will include some delivered content, including lectures, KLE content, film/slide shows; in addition there will be group presentations by students, group discussion and additional online/tutorial activities.
Students complete a presentation on a topic related to the course and their likely essay topic. |
|
|
SOC-20040 |
City, Culture, Society |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
We live on an urbanising planet. Rather than being a historical phenomenon urbanisation and the study of the city are of contemporary concern, not only to sociologists but to other academic disciplines (geography, criminology, social policy, politics, public health, etc.). The issues and problems that arise as populations migrate from traditional rural environments, traditions and societies is one that has been investigated and analysed in respect of the developed world of the northern hemisphere from the 19th century onwards. These analyses identified not only characteristic features of the experience of urban life but also the problems and associated political and structural arrangements that accompanied the expansion of the urban as a key site for modernity. These are still significant and crucial concerns and issues for understanding urbanisation in the 21st century.
This module provides an introduction and overview of the historical development of the urban concentrating on key approaches and perspectives and analyses of the transition to and experience of urban life in modernity. It will trace key elements and factors that distinguish characteristic features of the city and the urban and discuss the development of new forms of urbanisation in respect of post-modern debates and globalisation. It therefore links historical and extant urban issues and problems with those of wider sociological relevance such as class, gender, ethnicity, governance, social and environmental sustainability etc. to consider the contemporary experience of urban growth and expansion as well as issues of security, quality of life and opportunity.
The lectures will focus on
The City as Historical Form
Classical Sociology and the City: Marx, Durkheim and Weber
Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Urban Sociology in Modern Germany
Walter Benjamin: Phantasmagoria, Flaneurie and Paris, City of Modernity
The Industrial City in Britain
The Chicago School: American Urbanism
Ameliorating the Consequences: Urban Plans and Designs for the 'good city'
20th century Reconstruction and Re-generation
Post-modern Cities
Global Cities or cities in a Global World
Formative Assessment and Tutorial Activities
The lecture topics serve as the basis for the seminars where students will be asked to participate in a number of individual and group activities. Students will be required to complete and submit various formative assessments throughout the course of the module to make up a portfolio of formatively assessed work which includes the following:
Short presentation on a lecture/ seminar topic/theme
View film screening(s) and discuss the themes/issues presented
Submit 500 word formative assessments on 2 of the lecture themes
Complete in class group exercises and discuss in plenary the various answers/responses
Complete a KLE multiple choice quiz as formative assessment
Essay planning
Exam revision and techniques |
|
|
SOC-20047 |
20th Century Social Theory |
C |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
If Marx, Weber, and Durkheim were central figures in the 19th century project to think through the problem of the identification of self and society, then the key thinkers of the 20th century built upon their achievements. The object of this course is to run off the achievements of Marx, Weber, Durkheim into a consideration of the 20th century social theories of Freud, whose invention, psychoanalysis, made the psychological effects of the self / society problem explicit, Simmel, who thought about the problem of social relations in the city, the French structuralists, who came face to face with the symbolic edifice that structures our lives, and the various exponents of post-modernity, who have thought / fought to save us from either the loneliness that the existentialists considered the essential characteristic of the human condition or the horror of the monolithic other, society, that threatens to erase our identity. In-between our consideration of Freud, Simmel, Foucault, and Baudrillard, we will explore the works of the symbolic interactionists, critical theorists, feminists, and post-colonial theorists. But before we can begin our survey of 20th century social theory, we must consider the figure of theory of itself. What is theory? What is the purpose of theory? Why is it necessary to use theory to think through the self / society problem?
The lectures will focus on:
What is Theory?
Freud and Paranoia
Simmel and the City
Mead, Goffman, Symbolic Interactionism
Adorno and Horkheimer
Structuralism
Post-Colonialism
Post-Feminism
Post-Modernism
Risk and Globalisation
Formative Assessment and Tutorial activities:
The tutorial programme is detailed below and are you are formatively assessed throughout the module by verbal and written feedback:
Group work - The Value of Theory in Everyday Life (500 Word - Formative Assessment)
Discussion - Relationship between Paranoia and Theory
Work Sheets, Simmel and the Contemporary City
Ethnography - What is Role-Play in SI?
Group Work - Construct an Advert (Employ Principles of Standardization and Persuasion)
Discussion - What is Social Construction? (Presentations - 500 Word Formative Assessment)
Group Work - Deconstruction of Images of Racial Others
Group Work - Deconstruction of Images of Gendered Identity
Work Sheets - What is Post-modernism? (Presentations - 500 Word Formative Assessment)
Discussion: Globalisation and Everyday Life |
| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
|
|
MDS-20019 |
Analysing Culture |
EA |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
In Analysing Culture we consider how culture enables people to make sense of their personal and social lives. The first session of the course refers to Geertz&©s classic paper on Balinese society to introduce the concept of culture. The key question we want to ask through our study of Geertz essay is $ùwhat is culture?&© Following this example of an anthropologically strange culture we move on to think about the construction of national identity through a consideration of Hall&©s work on western identity, Said&©s essay on orientalism, Anderson&©s notion of imaginary communities, and various representations of contemporary nationality. Although the nation has provided a strong cultural map for people since the middle of the 17th century, the rise of modern urbanism has challenged this cultural form through its embrace of privacy and a culture of alienation. In week 3 we consider urban culture, read Simmel&©s classic essay on the metropolitan mind, and think about the ways in which the city is represented today. In the next session we show how people have sought to relate culture to the problem of alienation in modern culture. In week 4 we think about the notion of consumer culture through Adorno and Horkheimer&©s idea of mass culture and Klein's theory of branding and consider how commodities might work like narcotics that numb our senses to the impoverished reality of our one-dimensional society. Our key cultural texts here is Danny Boyle&©s film Trainspotting.
In the second part of the course we begin by thinking about cultural politics. In week 5 we focus on Bourdieu&©s idea of distinction and think about how far his theory reflects popular uses of culture in the contemporary world. For Bourdieu culture is not simply a form of deception, but rather a tool that people use in order to try to distinguish themselves from other people in the endless struggle that is competitive capitalism. Although Bourdieu suggests that people use culture for their own purposes, he thinks that they use it unimaginatively and strictly within the confines of capitalist ideology. Thus we may say that Bourdieu is essentially a Marxist. In week 6 we try to extend the Marxist theory of culture through an exploration of the works on the key writers on everyday life. In particular we refer to the idea of contested culture expressed in the works of the French theorists of constructed space and everyday life, Lefebvre and de Certeau. The purpose of this exercise is to suggest that culture may be a space of negotiation, contestation, and confrontation, rather than simply a mechanism of deception or distinction.
In week 7 we extend our exploration of this idea of cultural resistance through a discussion of the theory of sub-culture. This theory shows how new communities are able to emerge through consumer relations and cultural performance. We address this theory through a consideration of the classic example of punk, the more contemporary case of gangsta rap, and a reading of the works of the cultural sociologists of performance, Goffman, Garfinkel, and Mead. In the final three weeks of the course we move on to focus on theories of post-modernism, the culturally constructed body, and globalisation. In week 8 we explore the idea of post-modern culture through Dominic Strinati&©s essay on the topic, David Lynch&©s cinema, and Fredric Jameson&©s influential paper, Post-modernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. For Jameson culture is the dominant form of identification in post-modern society. He thinks that people no longer worry about economics or politics, but rather understand these categories through culture. What does this mean? We will try to find out week 10 when we consider the ideas of global culture and anti-capitalism. But before we consider global culture, we examine the post-modern concern for the body and in particular Bordo's theory of the economic body. In week 9 we approach Bordo's theory through a cultural history of thinking about and imaging the body, taking in the Greek God body, the modern super-hero body, and the post-modern techno body, represented by both Haraway's cyborg, Bordo's metabolic body, and various science fiction bodies.
Our study of the body, and body image, allows us to think about the ways that politics and economics are subsumed in culture in global society. Shifting from a study of the microcosm of the body to the macrocosm of the globalised world, in week 10 we refer to the works of contemporary writers, such as Giddens and Beck, who dispute the claims of the conflict theorists, such as Adorno and Horkheimer, by arguing that there is no monolithic centre of power that imposes meaning upon people&©s lives in global society. Rather Giddens and Beck argue that contemporary culture is characterised by risk, chance, and freedom of choice. In this session we think about their suggestion that traditional power structures no longer hold in post-modern / global society through an exploration of the idea of the new social movement and in particular anti-capitalist cultural politics. Our core text for this session is the recent film, Fight Club, which connects visions of the body and globalised consumer capitalism to issues of revolutionary cultural politics.
|
|
|
SOC-20017 |
Sociology - Study Abroad III |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20018 |
Sociology - Study Abroad IV |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This is a module that is automatically allocated to the records our Keele level II students who are going to Study Abroad at a partner University for a semester of their second year and cannot be selected by any other level II students. |
|
|
SOC-20033 |
Witchcraft, Zombies and Social Anxiety |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
The topic of the supernatural has received little attention from sociologists and is largely dismissed as a set of irrational and superstitious beliefs. This module centrally positions the supernatural and paranormal - ghosts, monsters, witches, vampires, werewolves and zombies in the sociological study of modernity, thus contributing to contemporary debates about the transparency of social forces in a global economy and the secularisation of society. In the global economy, supernatural commentaries thrive and have become a symbol of the destructive effects of capitalism. In other words, occult practices crystallise social conflicts in the modern world. For example in early modern Europe and in Salem, witchcraft accusations encapsulated the inequality that obtains between rural and urban regions, gender and socio-economic status. In the global economy anxieties reverberate about the theft of childrens&© organs and ritual murder reflecting concerns about child trafficking and migration. Meanwhile, in Europe and the United States, allegations about the satanic abuse of children refuse to disappear as newspaper reports multiply about child abductions and horrific serial killers. Likewise, the media is obsessed with vampires and, now, zombies and horror stories and movies about the walking dead reverberate around the world.
The key theme of this course is that supernatural discourses represent a distinctive way of articulating fears about the increased uncertainty found in everyday life and the insecurities of the global economy.
In essence therefore, the course looks at the ways in which supernatural and occult discourses throw light on the very different ways in which we live our lives.
The lectures will focus on
Understanding Witchcraft and Monsters in a Global Society
The Witches' Sabbath: Early Modern European Witchcraft and Salem
Superstition, Religion and Science
Occultism and Risk
African Witchcraft and Modernity
Revision Session - poster and examination question/answer session
Zombies and Globalisation: The Malcontents of Modernity
The Supernatural: Commodification, Conspiracy and the Occult
Witches, Vampires and Female Sexuality
Conclusion: Witchcraft, Anxiety and Social Change; feedback on posters
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Students on the module will be required to complete a range of different tasks in preparation for and during the seminars. Some of these will require individual reporting based on prior reading and some of these will require group working and discussion on key topics/issues set in class by the tutor.
Group work - thinking monsters and witchcraft
DVD screening on Early European witchcraft. Students asked to present in week 3 key factors behind Salem witchhunts (group work)
Salem presentations. Group work on symbolism of superstition and the significance of ritual.
DVD screening on satanism and child abuse in USA. Group work on key factors behind scapegoating.
Group work on African witchcraft and on key digitalised readings on witchcraft in Nigeria
Discussion on posters/revision - question and answer - reexamination of key topics covered so far; preparation for handing in of posters week 7/8
Group work on metaphor of zombie and world recession; group work on the transparancy of capitalism; Internet presentation on illicit global trade in body parts (Berkeley University web site)
Screening of X-Files montage; group discussion of the conspiracy through film/television
Screening of vampire montage; group discussion on Dracula and female sexuality
Conclusion - group feedback on posters/Individual feedback |
|
|
SOC-20034 |
Crime, Morality and the Media |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Crime, Morality and the Media will introduce students to the main theories and debates surrounding the factual and fictional representations of crime and deviance. Students will be asked to consider past and present media portrayals of criminality and deviance in order to unpack how and why the tales of morality implicit in their representation continue to hold resonance for audiences.
Reflecting upon both media examples and theoretical debates, in this course students will consider the view that representations of criminal and deviant acts help to communicate a dominant view of class, ethnicity, gender, and age, and work to secure the consensus of the mass audience. As well as looking at factual news reports into events such as the disappearance of Madeleine McCann or the War on Terror, we will also examine entertainment forms and ask why certain genres of music, film and videogame incite moral outrage from large sections of the mass media and its audience.
To situate these ideas about the social construction of meaning we will look at Stanley Cohen&©s classic study on folk devils and moral panics and attempt to unpack debates about morality, fear and risk. We will also apply the theoretical perspectives put forward by key thinkers including Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, and Rene Girard to further our understanding of important ideas such as Self / Other, knowledge and power, and the scapegoat mechanism in relation to media representations of crime and deviance.
The lectures will focus on
Theories of moral panics, fear and risk
The fear of the $ùmob&© - representations of class conflict
Constructing the nation - the ethnic Other as scapegoat
Deviant women - nature versus culture
Children in the news - transgressing innocence
Violence on film - social commentary and the slasher flick
True-crime TV - blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction
Music and mayhem - deviant subcultures
Videogame nasties - virtual reality and the embodiment of violence
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Students will be expected to work on their own and as part of a group by:
- reading key theoretical texts in preparation for class
- critically analysing and commenting on media and cultural texts
- critically analysing and commenting on key theoretical texts
- engaging in small group discussion and whole of class debates
- preparing for and discussing assessments (case study, poster and formative tests)
In addition to traditional lectures and seminars there will be occasional screenings, KLE-based activities and student-led research.
Students will be asked to complete two take-home tests over the course of the module. The tests will comprise of a page of short answer and multiple choice questions where students will be required to research a breadth of material independently.
|
|
|
SOC-20043 |
Globalisation and its Discontents |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Globalisation has brought some great wealth, but it has plunged many more into the depths of poverty. While rich westerners grow more prosperous, millions of others in forgotten parts of the world continue to die of poverty, war, and disease. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, complacent westerners believed that they were, in practical terms, untouchable. This conceit was, of course, destroyed by the events of September 11th 2001. However, we must recognise that the spectre of insecurity which now haunts the west has always been the normal condition for most of the rest of the world. In this respect we can say that the terror attacks on New York and Washington finally woke the west to its global inheritance. That is to say that we have been given a taste of the fear and insecurity which has affected most of the world&©s population for more or less the whole of the 20th century.
Insofar as the condition of the global poor has started to impact upon our own lives, we have woken up to the rest of the world. While this situation may be deeply troubling for many people, it would be too easy, and ultimately futile, for the west to try to cordon itself off from the rest of the world. On the contrary, rather than trying to hide from the problems of globalisation, the west must attempt to think about the underlying causes of the current turbulent situation. This consideration is necessary in order to prevent further terror attacks on the west, but also to improve the lives of people in other parts of the world. It is too easy to say that because these people live far away, we have no responsibility to work to improve their situation. Due to globalisation we have become responsible for everybody in the world, regardless of their race, nation, class, or gender. For these reasons it is now, more than ever before, important for sociologists to study the subject of globalisation.
Following this rationale, Globalisation and Discontents divides the study of globalisation into three sections: history, discontents, and governance. In the first division the module is concerned to address the emergence of globalisation (industrialism to post-industrialism and Americanisation) and the rise of the new global economy. The second part of the course considers the future of the human rights society (political participation, citizenship, and the law) and the discontents (environmentalism, anti-capitalism, immigration) that necessarily accompany the birth of the world risk society. After the assessment of the key expressions of global discontent, the third division of the course is concerned with the political struggles that characterise attempts to construct a world society. To this end the module considers the politics of multiculturalism, thinks through the recent rise of fundamentalism and terror insofar as they can be seen to represent archaic forms of local anti-global identification, and assesses the value of humanitarian war as a means for upholding law in the turbulent global society.
The lectures will focus on
The Origins of Contemporary Global Society: Industrialism
The High Tech Society: Post-Industrialism
The American Century
The Post-Modern Society
The End of History and the Critique of Empire
The Risk Society: Economy and the Crash
Environmental Destruction and Global Catastrophe
Global Protest (Anti-Capitalism-Environmentalism)
Global Societies: Immigration and Multiculturalism
The Rise of Fundamentalism: War, Violence, Human Rights
Formative Assessment and Seminar Activities
Two hour seminars are split between lectures, tutorials, and other activities such as DVD screenings and web exercises which include the following:
Group work - Students each submit 500 words for formative assessment
Student Presentations
Close Reading - Students submit 500 words for formative assessment
Student Debate - Students submit 500 words on the dualistic nature of global politics for formative assessment. |
|
|
SOC-20046 |
Research Methods |
C |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module aims to introduce you to both the principles of developing research strategies and to the strengths and weaknesses of different data collection methods used within sociology. The lectures will be concerned with examining the criteria that can be used to judge the advantages of different research approaches, as well as introducing you to the assumptions that underpin different modes of data collection. There will also be a focus on the ethics of social research.
The workshops will help develop further the understanding gained through the lectures. They will be more practically focused. Workshops will entail you demonstrating skills in the use of bibliographic data bases, evaluating existing research and exploring alternative methodologies for collecting relevant data within the constraints of specified research resources.
The module will consist of lectures and workshops. The workshops will based and concerned with applying the concerns of the lectures to specific research problems, the discussion of specific methodological issues or the development of research skills.
The lectures will focus on:
What is social research?
Interviewing
Ethnography
Ethics
Analysing qualitative data
Official statistics and surveys
Using quantitative methods in social research and mixing methods
Internet, social media and social research
Using documents in research
Writing social research
The workshop activities will include:
- Undertaking search strategies and developing bibliographies
- Discussions of the processes involved in operationalising specific research issues
- Using research methods: interview techniques
- Discussion of ethical dilemmas
- Analysing qualitative data
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Sociology Minor - Level 3 Modules
| Semester 1 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
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|
SOC-30025 |
Streets, Skyscrapers, and Slums: The City in Social, Cultural, and Historical Context |
EP |
C
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7.5 |
15 |
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In this module we trace the cultural politics of the city from Ancient Athens to contemporary mega-cities, such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Lagos. Following the introductory lecture, which examines the meaning of the original cities of the ancient world, the first part of the module, modern cities, offers a consideration of the late 19th century / early 20th century European metropolises.
After an exploration of the ideas of metropolitan psychology, fashion, and the department store in the works of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, we move on to think about the city in the late 20th century. Here we think about the situationist city, the spectacular city, and the surveillance city and consider the ideas of Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault.
In the second part of the module, post-modern cities, we study the American mega-city. For writers such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Mike Davis cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas are strange surreal places. In this section of the course we explore the post-modern city through the ideas of simulation, informationalism, urban violence, the ghetto, and the obsession with security.
After our exploration of the post-modern city, the final section of the module examines contemporary third world mega-cities. We begin with a consideration of Mike Davis&©s recent study of the third world slum and then move on to think about the ideas of pollution and danger in mega-cities.
Other topics in this section of the course include the situation of the occultism in the African city, corruption and crime in South Africa, and the mythology of the werewolf in one of Africa&©s most populous cities, Lagos.
The aim of the module is to explore the cultural politics of the city in history.
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SOC-30026 |
Risk and Society |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
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Everyday we are bombarded by media reports about all kinds of risks and experts are constantly suggesting various strategies to ensure people are as safe as possible.
For example, there are concerns over the link between mobile phones and brain tumours, whether we can trust our doctors and environmental pressure groups are busy highlighting the disastrous effects of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer. Risk anxiety about food, crime, health and terrorism, together with an endless variety of new risks, now seem to be associated with nearly every mundane human experience.
But to what extent are people increasingly worried about risks?
Are we really living in a $ùrisk society&©?
If so, why do some individuals actively seek out high-risk pursuits (skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing etc) that could result in serious injury and even death?
These are just some of the questions this module will be concerned with. The first part of the module will explore the main theoretical perspectives that have emerged on risk in the social sciences. This will mainly concentrate on the work of Mary Douglas, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault. The second part of the course will address debates surrounding risk that have come to dominate public, political and private arenas. Substantive areas covered include crime, health, sexuality, terrorism and voluntary risk taking.
The overall aim of the course is to enhance a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of risk and the role it plays in contemporary society. |
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SOC-30029 |
Gender and Consumption |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
Consumption and consumer culture are salient facets of everyday life in affluent societies of the 21st century. Equally, gender is a ubiquitous dimension which shapes the social and culture world, and the subjectivities of individuals living within it.
This module examines the intersections and interconnections between consumption, consumer culture and gender, looking not only at how gender informs the organisation of markets, but also at how markets inform formulations of gender structure, gender culture and provides resources for gender performativity.
It does this by looking at a series of topics relating to the rise of an all-enveloping consumer culture in affluent societies during the 20th Century, with visits to the department store, a perusal of magazine contents and the formulation of advertisements. It also considers the domestic home as a place for the expression of domestic femininity through home related consumption.
It then turns its focus to contemporary topics, amongst which are a consideration of the consequences of commercialisation for intimate life, the interlinking of gender and class in consumption, and the ways in which consumer culture frames and offers resources for the enactment of gender amongst the young. |
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SOC-30038 |
Medical Sociology |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
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$ùThe hospital is succeeding the church and the parliament as the archetypal institution of Western culture.&© Philip Rieff (1979) Freud: The Mind of a Moralist. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 355.
In the more than thirty years since Reiff wrote these words, modern biomedicine and the various enterprises associated with it (the natural sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, health care delivery systems, epidemiology, public health and the psychotherapeutic enterprise) have grown at a galloping pace. At the same time, however, patients have grown increasingly knowledgeable about and personally and politically involved in their own care. In a world increasingly shaped by scientific and medical discourse, practice, and regulation, how can sociology contribute to understanding the roles of biomedicine and patienthood in social life, and the tensions and overlaps between them? This module expands on the Sociology Programme&©s 2nd-year module entitled Health and Society by (a) considering anthropological and historical approaches to medicine and (b) the illness experience, doctor-patient interaction, and new health social movements. After reviewing the basic approaches of biomedicine, anthropology, and history to health and medicine, we consider sociological work on the medicalization and pharmaceuticalization of society, and sociological studies of illness behavior, health promotion and service use; doctor-patient interaction; the experiences of illness, disability, and rehabilitation; and new health social movements. Lectures will be supplemented by student-led tutorial discussion; assessments include an essay and marked discussion questions submitted by stduents.
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| Semester 2 |
C/O |
TYP |
ECTS | CATS |
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SOC-30027 |
Space and the City |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
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$ùTo be tired of the city is to be tired of life&©
The city is exciting, alluring, dangerous and filled with possibilities and opportunities. It offers hustle and bustle, speed and distraction, a melting pot of sights, sounds, smells, and experiences in a cosmopolitan mix of multi-culturalism. It is simplistic to say that all activities and interactions take place in space. But as the city is at the centre of the modern urban world more and more of what we take for granted takes place in towns and cities. They are the primary location for work, production, consumption, education, learning, cultural and transport institutions and leisure and pleasure. However, the city is more than the sum of its parts and it is more than merely the individual&©s experience of it.
This course will give you knowledge and understanding of the city as a socially constructed space in which the physical landscape that we see, use and misuse is not an accidental or coincidental coming-together of things and people. The city is a human produced space in which combinations of factors over time have produced a variety of urban spaces that increasingly dominate our existence and our experience. However, everyone&©s experience and opportunity of the city is not the same. There are winners and losers and we can readily identify areas and people in which relative success and failure is written into the landscape of the city.
This course will give you new tools to develop new ways of thinking about the world - a socio-spatial imagination - to explore and understand how cities have developed in the way they have, what role planning and urban design have played, how and why the production, regulation and organisation, the policing and surveillance of urban space affects how and why different people settle and live in different areas, what limits there are to physical movement and social mobility. In short, by thinking more critically about space, cities will never seem the same again.
Information on our MA in Urban Futures and Sustainable Communities is available at
http://www.keele.ac.uk/urban-futures/
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SOC-30030 |
Sociology of Parenting and Early Childhood |
EP |
M
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
We live in a society which places increasing emphasis on the long-term significance of good parenting and the importance of positive early childhood experiences. This module enables students to focus on these issues by exploring a developing area of British sociology, parenting culture studies.
The module begins with an introduction to recent analyses about the nature of parenthood over the last 20 years, including ideas about the intensive nature of motherhood, the increasing dominance of scientific ideas around childrearing and the 'paranoid' state of parents. Various aspects of childrearing practices will be explored, including nutrition, sleep and discipline. The module then moves on to consider the roles of 'experts', the media and the state in parenting. In conclusion the focus moves to a consideration of the nature of parenting and the implications this has for our understanding of adulthood and childhood in contemporary social life.
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SOC-30032 |
Home: belonging, locality and material culture |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will critically explore the idea of home as a socio-cultural concept. Using an interdisciplinary approach, broadly located in sociology, but appealing to students interested in geography, english, marketing, psychology and media/cultural studies, it asks a number of difficult but fascinating questions about why we are all so obsessed with home cultures.
Why are we obsessed with the homes of celebrities? What dreams are we pursuing when we seek to nosy around their wine cellars and their marble bathtubs? Is this dream telling us something about our own narratives of belonging, or do we realise we will never achieve what they have? And how can we understand this obsession with homes in a social context: have we always been like this, or is this only since home buying became a central part of the British economy?
What is the significance of stuff? We're surrounded by it, but it is often mute and difficult to understand. We will be exploring the relationship of people to their things - displaying, collecting, disposing: the objects that make up home have enormous social, personal, cultural and psychological significance which needs unravelling.
Is it true that the only good music and art comes from 'running away from home'? From the Modernist avant garde, to punk, to Hirst and Emin, to grime - it seems that inspiration comes not from the stifling normality of homely life, but from city streets. Home spaces are often seen as the evil 'other' of creativity, yet they are as much a part of the modern city as shiny glass buildings and exciting public spaces.
What does the idea of home do to obscure the real social relations that go on behind closed doors? In what ways does the concept of the 'domestic' shelter us from the gritty reality of home life? And how is this ideology promoted and defended? The dark, uncanny side of home will be explored and themes from sociology, geography and cultural studies blended to examine how home is a key motif in notions of evil.
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SOC-30034 |
Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context |
EP |
C
|
7.5 |
15 |
|
|
This module will enable students to explore psychological theories of society and social relations. Following an introduction, which links psychoanalysis to the history of sociology and in particular ideas of alienation, disenchantment, and anomie, the module looks the key principles of Freudian psychoanalysis and core texts in the Freudian tradition.
The core purpose of the module is to show how psychoanalysis can be seen to contain a general meta-psychology of universal human behaviour that might be used to understand social phenomenon through what Freud saw as the fundamental human concerns: sex, death, and desire. Throughout the module we seek to think through the possible application of key psychoanalytic concepts - repression, projection, anxiety, perversion, sadism, thanatos or the death drive, paranoia and so on - to concrete social examples in order to illuminate a new dimension of socio-psychoanalytic explanation. |
