SOC-30025 - Module Specification
School of Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2024/25

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2024/25

The aim of the module is to explore the cultural politics of the city in history and in contemporary society. In this module, we trace this idea and practice of cultural politics of the city from Ancient Athens through modern and postmodern cities to contemporary global cities, such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York and London. The module is structured in three sections: modern, post-modern and global urbanism.
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 produced city, and the surveillance city and consider the ideas of Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault. In the final session in this section, we will consider an illustration of how the modern city was conceived, planned and experienced through a case study. The example of the development of urban public parks as ubiquitous features of most modern cities and considered essential `green¿ infrastructure that served a complex of social, cultural and health functions, but which also raised issues of their appropriate use, highlights the potential for conflict and contestation in new modern urban spaces.
In the second part of the module, post-modern cities, we study the American mega-city. For writers such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Ed Soja and Mike Davis cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas are strange surreal places. In this section of the module we explore the post-modern city through the ideas of simulation, information, urban violence, the ghetto, and the obsession with security as a means to explore not only how cities develop and change but also how our experience and understanding of them is shaped and influenced by ideas and representations that influence how policies, planning and economics influence how we think and use the city.
After our exploration of the post-modern city, the final section of the module examines the city in the context of globalisation. We begin with a consideration of Mike Davis¿s study of the third world slum before going on to consider the ideas of Doreen Massey, Saskia Sassen and David Harvey as they relate to cities in an era of globalisation. The global and networked urbanism of the 21st century has similarities with modern and post-modern cities but there are also differences. This section of the module will end with a case study of urban culture through the consideration of graffiti and street art in the late 20th and early 21st century that reflects its ubiquitousness as well as aspects how both the local and the global influence the cultural politics of the city.

• To teach students the history of the city and its changing forms
  
• To teach students the core theories of the city and to enable them to apply these theories beyond their original context
  
• To enable students to understand the relationship between individuals, society, and the environment
  
• To encourage students to think about the ways society, culture, economy, politics, intersect with space

Intended Learning Outcomes

• evaluate the history of the city through the discussion of core examples drawn from the ancient, modern, and post-modern epochs
  
• critically assess the relationship between the city and society through the discussion of examples
  
• evaluate the sociological distinctions between different kinds of cities in terms of the transition from ancient through modern to post-modern society
  
• demonstrate knowledge of the core theories of the city and apply these beyond the first context
  
• create analyses of contemporary cities on the basis of knowledge of core theories of urban space
  
• design theoretical models for understanding cities on the basis of theoretical materials

Study hours

28 contact hours - 14 lectures / 14 tutorials
28 hours class preparation
37 independent study
57 assessment preparation
150 HOURS

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment