Sociology BSc

Compulsory

• Culture & Society

  An introduction to the study of classical and contemporary approaches and methods in the study of culture and society via Cultural Studies. The module presents the historical development, key debates and methodological approaches in Cultural Studies. It will provide opportunity for critical reflection in these areas.

• Digital Media Landscapes

  The module introduces students to a range of concepts and issues that underpin the ways in which everyday social life is shaped by the digital technologies. Students will examine the implications of digital media environments for societies and journalism. Focus is placed upon the relationship between states, societies and the media in the digital age.

• Global London

  Through focusing on the concept of ‘Global London’, this module shows you how the social sciences can enable you to better understand their lived social environment. It introduces you to the techniques used by a range of disciplines within social science for gaining and validating knowledge of the social world and equips you with an academic skill base appropriate for university study. 

• Global Sociology

  This module will survey current debates around the idea of global sociology. It will address contrasting theories of global sociology as well as specific issues raised by the subject including the debates around the idea of sociology as a global discipline as opposed to one that takes nation-states as its starting point of analysis.

• Key Ideas in Sociology

  Key themes in sociology are explored through theoretical and empirical analysis. You will do this by examining some of the most important ideas of leading sociologists and critically engage with their theories through empirical illustrations. 

• Power, Inequality and Society

  This module unpacks the definition, origins, evolution and trajectory of inequality in society through multiple empirical and theoretical angles. It also examines different manifestations of inequality including gender, income, educational and intersectional dynamics. Finally, it explores social mobility and how the state, charities as well as labour groups work towards redistribution of opportunities and resources.

Compulsory

• Global London

  Through focusing on the concept of ‘Global London’, this module shows you how the social sciences can enable you to better understand their lived social environment. It introduces you to the techniques used by a range of disciplines within social science for gaining and validating knowledge of the social world and equips you with an academic skill base appropriate for university study. 

• Researching Your World

  This module provides an advanced understanding of research methodologies, with a particular focus on data analysis. Equipping students with an understanding and appreciation of the important theoretical paradigms that underpin qualitative and quantitative social and communications research traditions. Furnishing students with the tools and skills required to conduct and evaluate their own empirical social and communications research.

• Sociology of Everyday Life: Issues in Contemporary Culture

  In this module you will consider the meanings of ordinary, ‘everyday’ processes and actions in society, by examining what everyday life consists of and the relevant academic debates and theories around it. The module will encourage you to reflect on your own everyday life through the lense of power, identity and gender in wider socio-cultural contexts.

Optional

• Body, Media and Society

  In this module we will examine many different aspects of embodiment and bodies in society, with a focus on the role of media in representing, stereotyping, and medicalising different kinds of bodies. 

• Climate Politics

  This module aims to enable students to attain a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and theories in the politics and political economy of climate change. It will provide students with resources to assist them in making informed judgments on a range of questions and debates.  

• Crime and Deviance in Society

  An introduction to notions of deviance in terms of othering, stigma, and criminalisation. It will consider the changing nature of deviance, how perceptions of deviance change over time, and how these perceptions impact on individuals and communities. Deviance will be studied through a number of different lenses that consider deviance as a part of a process of oppression but also a source of resistance.

• Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• Digital Culture

  This module considers the shape of new media technologies such as iPhones – it explores how new developments in media technology have changed the basis of contemporary social life and culture. This module will examine some of the key transformations that are taking place through digital culture.

• Ethnography in South Asia

  This module explores classic anthropological themes -- such as community, class, kinship, gender, and globalisation -- through an indepth focus on a particular ethnographic region: South Asia and its diasporas.

• Ethnography of a Selected Region

  In this module you will grasp the interplay between ethnographic observations during fieldwork and theory building during the write up process. You will examine key cultural issues for the region, covering topics such as religion, nationalism, economics, and the interplay of politics and memory.

• Gangs, Street Culture and Crime

  Students will be introduced to the history and the various theoretical debates surrounding the nature of street gangs and street cultural formation. Using a wide range of criminological and empirical research, the causes of gangs and street culture, and the responses to this global phenomenon will be considered.

• Gender, Sexuality and Feminism

  This module will introduce students to core ideas in feminism via the key concepts of gender and sexuality. It will develop students’ understandings of social structures, human cultures, and economic inequalities and political relationships. The course will offer theoretical tools and historical insights into gendered, feminised, and sexualised socio-cultural worlds.

• Global Communication

  Examine the ways in which the globalisation of communication has transformed social, political, and economic relations. The following themes will be addressed in this module: the state, economy, power, globalisation, nationalism, identity, digitisation, culture and consumerism, media markets, public relations and politics, and political economy of communication.

• Kinship, Sex and Gender

  An introduction to some of the key social anthropological literature on kinship, gender and sexuality including universalities and particularities in the construction of gender roles and different theoretical paradigms on gender and sexuality.

• Popular Culture and Creative Industries

  This module explores how meanings are developed through contemporary cultural representations, practices and processes, with a focus on creativity and the creative industries sector. It examines popular culture and the rise of the creative and cultural sector in late modernity drawing on relevant sociological, media and cultural studies debates and theories. 

• Understanding Childhood and Youth

  This module will introduce you to the study of childhood and youth as they are constructed and practiced in different social, cultural and economic settings. The first section focuses on children, looking first at how ideas of childhood are constructed by adults, the second section is devoted to young people.

• Unity and Cultural Diversity

  In this module students will gain an understanding of the texts of political theorists who focus on the issue of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity. Students will also gain an understanding of case studies that help to illuminate the difficulties of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity.

Compulsory

• Advanced Research Skills for Sociology and Communication

Optional

• Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• Cities, Power and Social Change

  An introduction to urban sociology and will develop the students understanding of urban development, cultures, and representation. The course will offer theoretical tools and provide practical applications for the relationship between space, culture, and social life in contemporary cities.

• Comedy, the Media & Society

  This module provides a serious critical consideration of the role of comedy in contemporary media and society. This role is explored in relation to comedy’s institutional, historical, social and textual conventions. The module also explores comedy as it exists in a broad range of texts and examines the role of comedy in the construction and transmission of social difference and issues of identity.

• Crisis and Critique

  The main aim of the module is to provide students with an understanding of some of the major socio-political crises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ways in which they have been understood by political theorists.

• Digital Audiences and Identities

  This module provides students with a critical overview of key debates about media audiences and identities. Students will engage with key contemporary debates about media influence and be able to apply theoretical concepts to a range of contemporary sites.

• Drugs, Crime and Criminal Justice

  Examine historical and current debates concerning the criminalisation of a variety of drugs. This will introduce students to debates about the impact of the criminalisation of drugs on marginalised communities. Students will be introduced to debates about global drug markets and the changing nature of those markets over time.

• Global Migration

  Equips students with an understanding of the key concepts in global migration including the causes and consequences of migration, national and international responses to migration and the diversity of migrant flows within a global context, using cases from both Global North and Global South contexts.

• Home, Housing and Social Harm

  This module introduces students to a number of questions concerning notions of home and housing in contemporary society, and how sociologists and criminologists should confront these issues as they occupy a central place in political, public, and mediated debates. It explores sociological and criminological debates around housing and the home, looking at the relationship between self, society, and state.

• Marx and the Critique of Political Economy

  This module involves reading several key works by Marx, culminating in several weeks on Das Kapital

• Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the Modern World System

  This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• Media Empires

  The module explores the role played by the media in the development and maintenance of ‘empires’, and examines how we can understand media ‘empires’ via key concepts such as ‘media/cultural imperialism’, ‘public diplomacy’ and ‘intellectual property rights’.

• Social Media and Society

  This module will enable students to critically engage and analyse the historical and current impact of social media on social relations and contemporary culture. It will allow students to develop a critical understanding of social media in the context of broader changes in the media landscape, and how it impacts identity, power and everyday life.

• Social Reproduction and Care

  This module aims to introduce students to theoretical debates in feminism about social reproduction and care. It will offer a broad history of such debates and update these with new theoretical interventions in this field that have arisen in recent times, particularly in the context of the pandemic.

• Sociological Career Development

  This module will provide students with a critical overview of working in industries that draw on or are connected with sociological knowledge from direct encounters with industry professionals, companies or institutions. Drawing on a variety of formats, the module will support students’ understanding of, competence and confidence in working independently in a professional manner appropriate to ‘sociological’ industries.

• Sociology Dissertation

  The final year dissertation provides undergraduates with the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to plan, design and execute a Sociology research project.

• Sociology Major Final Project

  The final year project enables the student to demonstrate their abilities to plan, design and execute a project that involves a practice-based research element via the production of a sociological-media artefact.