Sociology - U6USCLGY

This module provides an overview of socio-economic inequalities within and between societies, exploring major theoretical and practical issues regarding data analysis and policy evaluation. Key topics to be covered include:

• theoretical overview of social divisions and inequalities
• exploring patterns and measuring inequalities
• the impact of social inequalities on individuals and society as a whole
• major social divisions: class, gender and race
• other social divisions and intersectionalities
• space and inequalities: local, national and global perspectives
• the social construction and reproduction of inequalities: social control and the role of institutions
• how policy makes and unmakes inequalities
• resistance, alternatives and social change

All these aspects are discussed on the basis of a range of case studies, both national and international, historical and based on current affairs. These are also used to examine different approaches to evidence analysis and data presentation, thus supporting the development of the specific skills necessary to undertake the course assessment. 

We now live in a digital age where new technology, online platforms, applications and wearable devices are an indispensable and, in some ways, an inescapable part of our lives. New digital technologies enable us to track our daily lives and routines, to filter our realities, to present different versions of ourselves, to form attachments and intimacies, engage in politics and protest. From selfie culture, through Tinder love and Twitter revolutions, new digital technologies and social media shape not only our perceptions of Self but also our relations with others.

This module introduces you to the key debates in digital sociology, paying particular attention to the rise of new social media and how this affects identity, belonging, intimacy and civic participation. The main focus of this module is a critical engagement with how Web 2.0 has affected perceptions of self and social relations, exploring why some people engage with new technology whilst others actively resist it.

The Body, the Self and Others explores the ways in which social identities and subjectivities can be created, maintained and expressed through the body and with reference to 'Others'. It particularly considers the following:

• Existing sociological theories of identity and 'Otherness'
• The sociologies of various 'geographies' of the body, including the sociology of food and diet; body modification and adornment; extreme sport
• Presentations of 'self' through work, especially 'body work'
• The corporeal 'mapping' of class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality
• Surveillance discourses and embodied resistance

This module analyses religion and its relevance to contemporary society. Utilising sociological frameworks like secularisation and lived religion, students will be encouraged to think critically about how religion is experienced not only at the level of individual belief and practice, but also in understanding national and global debates. We will examine the dynamic ways religion impacts everyday life, and how it is mobilised in terms of power, inequalities and agency.

Topics may include religious transformation, religious and non-religious identities, fundamentalism, religious discrimination, gender and sexuality equality, education, youth religiosity.  In our analysis, we will draw on examples from various religious traditions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as non-religious belief systems like atheism. 

This module emphasises sociological theories with reference to current events and social policy making in China. Topics change every year according to what is in the news, but in recent years we have explored ideas around nationhood and ethnicity, religious belief, the family, welfare provision, gender and sexualities, education, as well as crime and justice, to name but a few.

This module explores the phenomena of youth, crime and justice. Analysis of official statistics and self-report survey data will be placed within a broader understanding of the social construction of youth, drawing on political, media and other sources. The module will critically assess explanations of youth crime and desistance, including major theoretical explanations and developmental/life course perspectives.

The second half of the course considers social responses to youth crime and the role of the youth justice system in particular. This will consider the policing of children, culpability and criminal courts, and youth custody, amongst other things. The various discourses that inform youth justice will be examined, alongside critical examination of their policy and practice implications.

Finally, the module will explore key contemporary debates and issues in youth justice, including the over-representation of minoritised groups and the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

This module explores theory, research and illustrative media examples addressing the relationship between crime, justice and the media. Examining both factual and fictional representations of crime and justice, we reflect upon depictions of crime, criminals and victims in media and methods of analysing these representations.

Explore the core issues, debates and controversies surrounding the use of intoxicants, commonly referred to by ‘drugs’, and other chemical substances that find their way into the lives of people in contemporary society.  

The module has a developmental focus. It aims to maintain a consistent engagement with the long-term processes involved in the formation of a prevailing understanding, uses and experiences of certain psychoactive substances, food additives, and narcotic replacement therapies and the ways in which these are socially constructed as deviant acts or crimes. The module also explores the nature of addiction and examines the social and medical approaches to treatment of addiction.

This module is concerned with the sociology and politics of policing. The main focus will be on England and Wales but the module will draw on literature and experiences from other jurisdictions around the world and from the United States of America in particular. It will cover a range of topics such as:

• the meaning of, and differences between, police, policing and the police
• the history and development of policing and the police since the 18th century
• the occupational and organisational cultures of the police
• the governance and accountability of the police
• police powers
• specialisation in policing, for example, crime detection, traffic policing, public order policing, terrorism and political policing
• policing strategies and tactics
• policing and the media
• police ethics
• policing social diversity
• the pluralisation of policing

Study the relationship between imprisonment and society, paying specific attention to the England and Wales prison estate and UK society. This module addresses both incarceration (routes to, reasons for, and justifications given for enforced removal of liberty and confinement) and prisons (social and institutional characteristics of imprisonment).

The module requires reading, questioning, and evaluating of the following topics:

• The aims and organisation of the prison system
• The pains of imprisonment
• Prisoner societies and culture 
  
• Prisons and moral order
• Prison staff
  
• Prisons and the political economy of punishment
• Solitary confinement and the maximum security estate
• Indeterminacy and long prison sentences
• Prisons in international perspective

This course aims to develop critical understandings of the concepts of:

• ‘offender’ rehabilitation and the changing nature of rehabilitative enterprises over time
• the role of risk in the organisation of the criminal justice system and responses to offending
• research about desistance from crime and its relationship to rehabilitation and risk

The module will explore the role of key agencies involved in rehabilitation including the Probation Service and the experiences of those subject to community supervision.

This module seeks to connect the historical and more contemporary debates in education to a critical understanding of society. The main focus is through a discussion of sociological, philosophical and policy based issues to explore the purpose of education in a modern globalised world. This however only becomes possible if we question more neutral and instrumental approaches to education and seek to more explicitly explore its connection to more normative values and concerns.

In this respect, the module will seek to connect ideas in education to a diversity of ways of conceiving of citizenship now and within the past. Most of the module is informed by European, North and South American traditions within sociology although it will also draw on examples and ideas from elsewhere.

Using different genres of film, this module examines contemporary theoretical and empirical debates in relation to a host of issues closely associated with the production and contestation of identity, culture, and everyday life, by underpinning the central theoretical theme of cultural production, consumption, and practices.

The module will illustrate the problematics of culture through the sociological exploration of social condition; identity; consumerism; consumption; consumer culture; slavery; choice; voluntary simplicity; intimacy; body; embodiment; sexual culture; desire; sexuality; bisexuality; transgenderism; dress; fashion; multiculturalism; human rights; and social inclusion/exclusion.

Introducing feminist approaches to social policy, this module considers how social policy and the development of the welfare state have been underpinned by ideas around gender difference and the structure and responsibilities of the family.

We will examine feminist perspectives on welfare, considering how policy might reflect and perpetuate the gendered division of labour in the family and society more broadly. For example, we will examine whether the 'male breadwinner' model has been replaced by a policy commitment to gender equality.

The module will thus examine how social policy excludes or incorporates women at the intersection of the public/private divide, problematising the terms 'justice', 'citizenship' and 'inequality' in relation to gender. Throughout, we will also consider how gender intersects with other axes of difference and inequality, such as 'race' and class.

The module’s goal is to invite students to make connections between what they learn in university and the places in which they live, work and study.  The module explores some of the defining issues of contemporary urban life in the UK today, with this further reinforced through the presence of external speakers who will give students an insight into the challenges of balancing goals and deliverability.

The module considers questions posed by urban theory and research of belonging, urban policy and politics, space and place, as well as methods for studying urban areas. The module will focus on areas including particular economies, histories, policy agendas, social networks, and urban imagery, which will be supplemented with key theoretical and research developments from around the world that have shaped contemporary urban life in the UK.

This module serves as an introduction to the study of new religious movements (NRMs)—including groups sometimes referred to as ‘cults’—and the theoretical concepts used to understand them. We will consider how issues discussed more broadly in sociology—such as deviance, authority, violence, modernity, and group dynamics—bear on our understanding of NRMs.

Lectures will cover topics such as religious innovation, group membership, and how NRMs are led and organised. Our coverage of NRMs will be motivated by questions such as what members believe, how they were formed, and what their histories have been.

A key focus of the module will be on how NRMs have been presented in the media. Seminars will give students the opportunity to explore each week's topic in more detail, along with how the various groups featuring in the module have been presented in documentaries. 

This module examines key issues and concepts connected to the movement and settlement of people in Europe and beyond. Informed by a transnational studies perspective, the module considers migration debates and practices in a critical, comparative and historically informed manner.

The first part of the module explores the political, social and economic factors that cause people to move in an increasingly interconnected world. The second part of the module is dedicated to the examination of the different theories of integration and settlement and processes of inclusion and exclusion.

The key issues and concepts addressed will include those of transnationalism and diaspora; gender and intersectionality; transnational families and global care chains; multiculturalism, integration and assimilation; identity, home and belonging.

This module introduces you to the criminological study of cyber crime. It draws on key literature and current research to consider the ways in which new and emerging forms of digital media and information and communication technologies provide opportunities for a variety of deviant and criminal behaviours. The module will typically cover the following broad themes:

• Criminological definitions and theories of cyber crime
• Case studies of types of cyber crime, including, for example: fraud, identify theft, hacking, revenge porn, sexting, online harassment, trolling and cyberstalking
• Victims’ experiences of cyber crime
• Why individuals commit certain types of cyber crime
• Cyber crime in a global world
• The policing, surveillance and regulation of cyber crime
• The implication of the ‘internet of things’ for privacy and security

This module places an in-depth focus on the study of war, state violence and crimes against humanity. The focus is to explore explanations of current and historical examples of war, drawing on a range of criminological, philosophical and zemiological (harm) theories.  

Module content will introduce you to key theorists, such as Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, Stanley Cohen, and Judith Butler. The module places a specific focus on injustices faced by the Global South, aiming to provide you with the tools to identify and understand colonial systems, structures, and relationships – both within the module and beyond.  

Key debates will include how the violence of war and atrocity are made possible; how war intersects with issues of ‘race’, class, and gender; and what reconciliation efforts of ‘truth’ and justice might involve after events of mass suffering. The module will also introduce emerging debates on the impact of delivering such violence for state agents (eg soldiers).

This module will cover the following broad themes:

• State crime, corporate crime, state-corporate crime, harm, green crime
• State-facilitated and state-initiated corporate crime
• Capitalism, neoliberalism, austerity and indifference
• Crimes of commission and omission
• Command and control regulation vs. business self-regulation

In this module, you will learn about human trafficking. Over the semester, you will develop an understanding of human trafficking by exploring the different forms of trafficking as well as patterns and trends in trafficking internationally, with a focus on Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

You will examine topics ranging from the causes of trafficking, different methods used to prevent trafficking and popular understandings of this transnational crime. You will be introduced to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and explore some of the issues surrounding media representations of trafficking and rescue-based approaches as you learn to think critically about human trafficking.

Criminologists are beginning to recognise how knowledge about crime and criminal justice tends to have been produced in and for the countries of the Global North, and Western Europe and North America in particular.   

This module looks at new southern and decolonial perspectives in criminology that question the dominance of this knowledge and its application in the Global South (broadly speaking the continents of Africa, Asia, Central and South America and Oceania).  It examines southern and decolonial theories, what they have to say, how they relate to each other, and how they can help us to understand crime problems, and criminal justice institutions, policies and practices not just in the Global South but in the North as well.   

It does this by examining case studies drawn from the Global South, case studies that may involve crime problems like genocide, human trafficking and urban violence, and justice practices that involve the transfer of policies from North to South, such as community policing, or result in the over-representation of indigenous people in prison.  A central theme that runs through the module is the idea that criminology can be seen as a form of 'imperial reason' closely associated with colonialism, and that colonialism itself continues to have a profound impact on how we experience and know about the contemporary world.

This module will chart the evolution of the social construction of the victim and presence in criminal justice policy by examining the historical, theoretical and research material in victimology. The module will cover the following broad themes:

• Theoretical underpinnings of ‘victimology’
• The victim’s movement
• Key issues and debates in the field of victimology
• Various approaches to responding to victim needs by both governmental and non-governmental organisations