Liz Moor

This module is a core part of the MA Brands, Communication and Culture programme, but is available to a limited number of students from other MA programmes in the Media and Communications department as an option module.

It provides a critical exploration of the history and practice of branding, from developments in markets, consumer culture and intellectual property law to current uses of brands and branding in commercial organisations, charities and the public sector. Students are assessed via an essay of 5000-6000 words.

Reading:

• Lury, C. (2004) Brands: the Logos of the Global Economy, London: Routledge
• Moor, L. (2007) The Rise of Brands, Oxford: Berg
• Arvidsson, A. (2006) Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture, London: Routledge
• Julier, G. (2000) The Culture of Design, Oxford: Berg
• Aronczyk, M. and Powers, D., eds. (2011) Blowing Up the Brand, New York: Peter Lang
• Kornberger, M. (2010) Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management, Cambridge: CUP
• Bently, L,. et al., eds (2011) Trade Marks and Brands: An Interdisciplinary Critique, Cambridge University Press
• Woodham, J. (1997) Twentieth Century Design, Oxford: OUP
• King, S. (2008) Pink Ribbons Inc., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

The second core module focuses in more depth on key themes in contemporary branding, such as intellectual property rights, globalisation, place branding, the concept of brand ‘value’ and the impact of digital communications and marketing technologies. Throughout this core component of the degree, you will examine the very wide range of ways in which branding is used, from large media organisations and corporations to public sector bodies, charities, sports organisations and educational establishments. You will be encouraged to develop your critical and analytical skills, and to think creatively about how brands relate to their social and political contexts.

This module will examine how ‘ethnicities’ and ‘nations’ are constructed within the media. Our aim will be to analyse how the media constructs ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nations’ over time; to reflect on the role of the media in shaping nations and ethnicities; and to explore the ways formations of ethnicity and nationhood affect practices. We will examine a range of contemporary media forms, and situate these forms in relation to longer histories of Western imperialism, from the mid-19th century onwards. Our task in mapping this ‘history’ as a ‘history of the present’ is to explore how contemporary racial and national formations (ideas about ‘Britishness’, ‘whiteness’, and so on) exist in a complex and intimate relationship to much longer histories of empire. The module will introduce you to key concepts in black cultural studies and postcolonial studies, including colonial discourse, colonial fantasy, othering, hybridity and diaspora.

This option combines urban sociology with cultural studies to provide insight and understanding of key aspects of city life and urban experience. Of key significance is the rise of the urban creative economy and the growth of new forms of work and careers in design, retail, art, media and culture.
Throughout the module, close attention is paid to the significance of spatiality and its consequence for networking and for sociality in the ‘urban hub.’ We start the module with a focus on urban social and cultural theory and the scholarship associated with the ‘LA School’ ie David Harvey, Ed Soja, Mike Davis and A.J. Scott. We then backtrack a little to the ideas of urban modernity (Marshall Berman) including the development of the department store, and the participation of women in city life, from the prostitute, to the middle-class lady of leisure. This is followed by one session on the global city and the emergence of new categories of service workers, in particular migrant workers including nannies and care workers. In the second part of the module we consider recent forms of gentrification (Zukin), the impact of the work of Richard Florida in the field of urban public policy, the rise of the ‘hipster’ (Andrew Ross and Richard Lloyd), changes in the retail landscape and finally we consider some case studies of urban fashion ‘start ups’ (Berlin, Montreal) and job creation in times of economic austerity.

Lisa Blackman

Within the humanities, sciences and outside the academy we are witnessing a ‘turn to the body’. That is, from practices such as neuromarketing, through to the amplification of the senses, attention and perception within simulated realities, contagious forms of communication which spread virally and the modulation of emotion and the creation of mediated intimacy on reality TV, the body and its capacity for mediation is central to understanding communication. This module will take a field of study known as body-studies in order to examine the place of the body and embodiment within sense-making.

The module will ask how the media work and create appeal by engaging a number of concepts, including affect, body-without-an- image, enactment, performativity, entanglement, abjection, suggestion, diasporic vision, mediated perception and bodies-without-organs.

These concepts will be put to work in the context of a number of case-studies which have been the subject of both science and humanities debate; somatic feeling, affective transmission, enactment, performativity, contagion, body image, body-without-image, movement vision and mediated perception, in the context of debates surrounding our perception of film, photographic images, the senses and bodily integrity, abjection and otherness, kinesthetic intelligence, networked virality (social media), health and illness, body image and media images, diasporic media, queer and gender variant bodies, and mental health and the media. 

Assessment:

MC71051B (30 credits): one project-based examined essay (5,000 words) and a submitted journal for assessment (1,000 words max). MC71051A (15 credits): one project-based extended journal (3,000 words).

Reading:

• Blackman, L (2008) The Body: The Key Concepts, Berg
• Blackman, L and Walkerdine, V (2001) Mass Hysteria: Critical Psychology and Media Studies, Palgrave
• Blackman, L and Venn, C (2010) Special issue of the Journal Body & Society on Affect (issue 16:1- includes articles by Couze Venn, Lisa Blackman, Valerie Walkerdine, Julian Henriques, Erin Manning, Patricia Clough and Mike Featherstone)
• Cho, G (2008) Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, Silence and the Forgotten Korean War, Minnesota Press
• Clough, P (2007) The Affective Turn, Duke University Press

Watch a video about this module

Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives (including cultural studiesand anthropology) this module will address the role of ‘tele’-technologies (technologies of distance - such as the telegraph, telephone, and television) in constructing the post-modern geography of the contemporary era, The module takes a non ‘media-centric’ perspective, focusing on the different
historical and cultural contexts within which these technologies operate and on the articulation of material and virtual geographies We begin by focusing on the ‘moral panics’ that have always accompanied each new medium - from the radio, to the cinema, etc. The module highlights the role of what we have come to know as ‘television’ - as the most important medium of the last half century, with a particular focus on its contexts and modes of consumption. The question of technological change will be approached from a historical perspective, for instance, in relation
to the late 19th century – as a period featuring a particularly rapid rate of technological change, compared with our own times. We shall review a range of micro-studies of the household (and public) uses of communications and information technologies, and the module will offer a critical approach to the futurological discourses concerning the supposed powers and effects of today’s ‘new’ communications technologies. We conclude by examining the role of various media (big and small) in processes of identity/boundary construction (at different geographical scales) within the broader context of processes of globalisation. We will also address the role of the media in articulating the private and public spheres, in the construction of national,
disaporic and transnational identities, and in relation to the various mobilities (not only of information, but also of people and commodities) that characterise our era of ‘time-space compression’.

This module is about practical campaigning issues and is primarily taught by a campaign expert. Students taking this module are encouraged to also take ‘Structures of Contemporary Political Communications’ (15 or 30 Credits versions) but it is not essential. The module is convened by Aeron Davis, but mostly taught by Mike Kaye, an external campaign expert with 20 years experience, and who has taught the module for the last six years. The module curriculum covers: Essentials in advocacy, Working with decision makers and parliamentary lobbying, Campaigning for change – mobilising public opinion, International pressure – using the United Nations, Formulating and implementing a campaign.

Assessment:

The module is assessed by work on a campaign chosen by students. This involves students undertaking a short, group-based practical project, which is assessed by a mixture of group presentation (40%) and 3,000 word personal log/detailed campaign outline (60%).

Nick Couldry/Veronica Barassi

This module aims to explore how the media operate as a focus of ritual action, symbolic hierarchy and symbolic conflict. In particular, it explores to what extent theoretical frameworks already developed in anthropology and social theory can help us analyse contemporary media and mediated public life. The module begins with a general introduction to debates on the media’s social impacts (integrative or otherwise). Key theoretical concepts are then outlined: sacred and profane, symbolic power, ritual, boundary, and liminality (two lectures). Specific themes relating to the media’s contribution to public life and public space are then explored: celebrity and ordinariness; fandom and media pilgrimages; media events and public ritual; mediated self-disclosure (from talk shows to the Webcam); ‘reality’ television and everyday surveillance (total five lectures). The module concludes with a review of ethical questions arising from the media’s role in public life and public space.

Assessment:

MC71088A (30 credits): One 5,000-6,000 word essay. MC71088B (15 credits): One 3,000 word essay.

Reading:
Bell, Catherine (1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press;
Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity;
Carey, James (1989) Communication as Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman;
Couldry, Nick (2000) The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses of the Media Age. London: Routledge;
Couldry, Nick (2003) Media Rituals: A Critical Approach, London: Routledge;
Dayan, Daniel and Katz, Elihu (1992) Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press;
Durkheim, Emile (1995) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life tr. K. Fields. Glencoe: Free Press;
Rothenbuhler, Eric (1998) Ritual Communication. Thousand Oaks: Sage;
Rothenbuhler, Eric and Coman, Mihai (eds) (2005) Media Anthropology. Thousand Oaks: Sage

Watch a video about this module

How can sound – as distinct from images, code and text - be used to understand society, culture and technology? What can music tell us about the non-representational qualities of the communication process? How can auditory be used as a critique of the conventions of visual dominance and visual culture? What does music have to say about our experience of the world and our creativity? This module explores how musical meanings are conveyed and understood and how this is mediated through the cultures and technologies of production, recording and consumption. We will consider how music communicates mood and meaning, not only through associated imagery and the lyrical content of songs, but as sound itself. How for example do we recognise that music means love, anger, sadness, terror, or patriotism? We will also think about the processes that link production, circulation and consumption, as well as explore the ways that music connects with individual and collective identities

Assessment:

One 5-6,000 word essay

Reading:

• Bull, Michael and Back, Les, eds (2003), The Auditory Culture Reader, Berg
• Cox, Christoph and Warner, Daniel, eds (2005), Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, London: Continuum
• Attali, Jacques (1985), Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Manchester University Press
• Chion, Michel (1990), Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press
• Eshun, Kodwo (1998), More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, London: Quartet
• Henriques, Julian (2011), Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques and Ways of Knowing (2011) New York: Continuum

Watch a video about this module

This module looks at the rise of promotional culture (public relations, advertising, marketing and branding), promotional intermediaries and their impact on society. The first part of the module will look at the history of promotional culture and will offer some conflicting theoretical approaches with which to view its development. These include: professional/industrial and economic, political economy and other critiques, post-Fordist and postmodern perspectives, audience and consumer society accounts. The second part will look at specific case areas, investigating the ways promotion intervenes, interacts and mediates social relations and organisations. These sector studies include: fashion and taste, hi-tech commodities and innovation, news media and conflict in civil society, popular culture and creativity (film TV, music), celebrities and public figures, political parties and representation, and markets and value. In each of these areas questions will be asked about the influence of promotional practices on the production, communication and consumption of ideas and products as well as larger discourses, fashions/ genres and socio-economic trends.

Assessment:

MC71128A (30 credits) – One 6,000 word essay
MC71128B (15 credits) – One 3,000 word essay

Reading:
S Cottle ed (2003) News, Public Relations and Power, Sage; M Lee ed. (2000) The Consumer Society Reader, Blackwell;
S Lash and C Lury (2007) Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Polity, Cambridge;
W Leiss, S Kline, S Jhally and J Botterill (2005) Social Communication in Advertising: Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace, Routledge;
J Turrow and M McAllister eds. (2009) The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader, Routledge, New York;
R Sassatelli Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics; G Sussman ed. (2011) The Propaganda Society: Promotional Politics in Global Context, Peter Lang, New York;
A Wernick (1991) Promotional Culture, Sage.

Watch a video about this module

Tim Crook

The module investigates the nature of media law and ethical regulation for media practitioners primarily in the UK, but with some comparison with the situation in the USA and references to the experiences of media communicators in other countries. You will be directed towards an analysis of media law as it exists, the ethical debates concerning what the law ought to be, and the historical development of legal and regulatory controls of communication. The theoretical underpinning involves a module of learning the subject of media jurisprudence- the study of the philosophy of media law, media ethicology- the study of the knowledge of ethics in media communication, and media ethicism, the belief systems of media communicators. The module evaluates media law and regulation in terms of its social and cultural context. It is taught in one and a half hour lectures and two-hour seminars that involve the discussion of multi-media examples of media communication considered legally and/or morally problematical. The module delivers considerable practical knowledge of how to navigate media law and apply it to multi-media publication.

Reading:

• The module book is Comparative Media Law & Ethics written by the convenor with a companion website at http://www.ma-radio.gold.ac.uk/cmle
• Media Law (Fully Revised 5th Edition 2008) by Andrew Nicol and Geoffrey Robertson: Harmondsworth, Penguin Boo
• McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists (21st Edition 2012) by David Banks and Mark Hanna, Oxford, Oxford University Pres
• Law for Journalists by Francis Quinn (3rd Edition 2011) London, Pearson Longma
• Journalism Ethics and Regulation by Chris Frost (3rd Edition 2010) London, Pearson Longma
• Ethics for Journalists by Richard Keeble (2nd Edition 2008) London, Routledge
• The Ethical Journalist by Tony Harcup (2007) London, Sage; Media and Entertainment Law by Ursula Smartt (2011) London: Routledge.

Angela Phillips

You will be introduced to the major theoretical debates in the study of journalism. We will cover: the current crisis in journalism, questions of political power and the public sphere; ownership forms and how they are changing; the role of audience: as well as regulation and representation. We will also look at journalism as a narrative form. All these debates will be situated firmly in a current and practical context and you will be encouraged to make connections between formal lecturers, seminar presentations and practical discussions of the day’s events and how they are reported. Sessions will be 1 hour followed by a seminar of 1 hour. This course will provide practice students with a theoretical underpinning for your work, which you will develop via personal study later in the year. Those taking this course as a theory option will find it provides a challenging insight into journalism as a practice.

Assessment:

One 3,000 word essay

Reading includes:

• Benson, Rodney and Eric Neveu (2005), Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, Polity: Cambridge
• Fenton, Natalie (ed) (2010), New Media, Old News, Sage
• Lee Wright, Peter, Angela Phillips and Tamara Witschge (2011), Changing Journalism, Routledge
• Hindman, Matthew (2009), The Myth of Digital Democracy, Princeton University Press: Princeton
• Manning, Paul (2001), News and News Sources: A Critical Introduction, Sage: London
• Curran, James (2002), Media and Power, Routledge
• Jarvis, Jeff (2009), What Would Google Do?, Harper Collins
• Auletta, Ken (2011), Googled: The end of the world as we know it, Virgin

This module examines the actors and communication processes involved in contemporary political communication. Its core concern is to explore notions of ‘crisis’ in mature democracies as voter turnouts and ‘trust’ in formal political institutions steadily drop, national economies struggle, and news media decline. It combines theoretical insights and case examples from the fields of media studies, journalism, sociology and political science. It mainly focuses on democracies, particularly in the US and UK, but literature and examples are also drawn from other types of political system and country. Weekly topics combine political communication themes and contemporary examples, with discussions of related theory and concepts. Topics covered include: The crisis of politics and media in established democracies; comparative political and media systems; mass media and news production and regulation; political parties, citizen relations and political marketing; government media management, war and propaganda; symbolic and cultural political communication; forms of public participation and public opinion; media effects and audiences; policy-making, lobbying and power; economic policy and the financial crisis; digital media and online politics; globalisation and international political communication. Much of the material for this module is highly contemporary, so students are encouraged to maintain an awareness of current developments in political communication in the UK and elsewhere.

This module offers an introduction to practical research methodologies and their deployment in various different specialist journalism fields. The module evolves a critical approach to the many different sources journalists use, the compromises involved and constraints within which they work. Subjects to be covered can change according to outside events and the availability of professional speakers, but are expected include sourcing and using data, the use of the Freedom of Information Act, investigative journalism, economic and political journalism, the problems and pitfalls of reporting conflict, managing human, particularly vulnerable, human sources.

This course is the core course for the MA Critical & Creative Analysis programme. It aims to provide a detailed, intensive introduction to some of the key thinkers who have been influential on the development of cultural theory and analysis. It is necessarily selective, with an emphasis on 20th century European thought, but has its focus on the different cultural critiques and critical cultures that have emerged through different perspectives. Through lectures and group discussions, we will explore the interventions of Simmel, Benjamin, Foucault, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Alexander, Stengers, Haraway and Serres, among others. The course will appeal to students who wish to spend time deepening their appreciation of theoretical interventions, and who enjoy discussing the implications of theoretical analysis for both sociological research and political critique.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Module convenor: Martin Savransky

This module introduces key debates and developments in feminist theory, cultural theory and in particular feminist cultural theory. It introduces both early debates which defined these fields and contemporary developments and departures. This core module does not attempt to map the field of gender scholarship chronologically, nor can it be exhaustive, but instead extrapolates a number of themes around which some of the most influential and defining work has emerged.

• while taking this course, you'll be introduced to topics such as:
• social constructivist and post-structuralist  perspectives
• debates on feminism, ethnicity and the critique of universalism
• key questions in relation to feminism, biology and reproductive technology
• debates on family, kinship, and psycho-analysis
• the emergence of post-colonial feminism
• debates on gender and promotional culture to debates on post-feminist popular culture

Students will also be introduced to the emergence of queer theory and debates regarding the relationship between queer theory and feminist theory.  

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Module convenor: Nirmal Puwar

This module addresses significant issues in the contemporary organisation of urban landscapes, urban life and connections between cities as well as the interface between human and architectural fabric. Drawing on specific empirical examples in based in China, Hong Kong, the US, London and parts of mainland Europe this module examines key debates in urban sociology and research. There is a strong focus on visual apprehension of cities and ways of accessing and researching cities through photography. The following sessions have been offered in previous years: 

• A tour of 'urban theory' from the Chicago School to the present day. This sets up the conceptual basis for the session following which, although empirically focused on specific cities, illuminate different conceptual frameworks for understanding urbanism.
• Whose City? This examines debates concerned with the social production of space and rights to the city. An examination of ghetto urbanism in the US through Wacquant, Bourdieu, Bourgeois and the research through which this kind of urban knowledge is generated.
• Pastness and Urban Landscape. This examines discrepant and linear notions of time/interpretations of pastness, collective memory, and how pasts are inscribed within urban landscapes. We will draw mainly on visually-led investigation of Hong Kong and London to explore these themes.
• Post-Colonial Cities. This session examines the intersections between globalisation and colonialism in Hong Kong and in the lives of ‘skilled’ migrants from the global North. It makes extensive use of photographic narratives of Hong Kong as an iconic city landscape and the use of environmental portraiture to capture migrants’ relationships to the city.
• Globalisation, Migration and Urban Life. Drawing on visual empirical research on mosques and African churches in London this session examines the impact of recent and current migration on commerce, religion and city landscape. It sets this in broader debates about globalisation and cities developed from the previous session.
• Material Cultures and Multiple Globalisations. This session draws on some of the more ordinary trajectories of commodities and collaborations composing the global world through small trade between China/Hong Kong and Africa, and Europe and Africa. 
• Mega-Cities and Non-City Zones. This session is set in China. It examines architecture, the generic city, land speculation and the dynamics between mega-cities and economic and technical development zones through some of the lives that are lived in them.
• Urban Regeneration. This session examines the politics, debates, conceptualisation and social divisions generated and sustained in urban renewal projects. Who benefits from these projects? How do they reconstruct cities? We will draw specifically on Olympic-related redevelopments in Athens, London, and Beijing.
• Architectural and Planning Politics. This session examines ways in which political and military decisions are embedded in architecture and planning. It draws on Weizman’s Hollow Land and asks questions about whether this involves a radical re-conceptualisation of space.
• Mobilities. This session is concerned with movement and routes as well as the infrastructure and technologies of mobility such as bridges, roads, airports, stations, tunnels, trains, motor transport, and shipping. It asks critical questions about whether these approaches to space generate information about social morphology or social life more generally.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Convener: Dr Emma Jackson

This module examines the theoretical and practical relationships between urban photography and urban ethnography focusing on city environments. Through a series of interconnected lectures and seminars, the module asks questions about the nature of ‘sociological seeing’, of the relationship between walking and urban detouring, on object-hood, ‘thing-ness’ and materiality, on how the city is both imagined and imaged, and on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Students will be expected to read widely on the subject both from sociological and visual textual sources, and to actively relate learning to image-making processes and outcomes.

Assessment: 2,500-3,000 WORD ESSAY

This 5-week MA module focuses on ‘sociology-in-the-making’, examining the processes of social research rather than its products. It follows the ‘empirical cycle’, providing an overview of key formative moments of sociological research, from formulating research questions, to producing and analysing data, to the public presentation of results.

It pays specific attention to how sociology may be transformed in the age of visual, digital and other empirical technologies, and examines the ‘doubling of social research’: partly as a consequence of the proliferation of social research tools and practices across social life, key empirical tasks of social research now refer both to social practices ‘out there’ as well as to our own work as social researchers.

The module also examines the the techniques, objects and settings in and with which social research is performed, both in and outside the academy.

Assessment: One 2,500 word essay
Convener: Nina Wakeford

Sensory Sociology: Imagining Digital Social Research takes an integrated approach to teaching digital sociology: it combines advanced training in sociological thinking with a practice based approach to methods teaching. Such an approach is challenging, as it requires you to think across the divide between social theory and social methods, and to adopt an active role in formulating social research approaches that are adequate to digital and contemporary contexts. In these contexts, the forms of social life as well as the methods of sociological research are undergoing constant change. This makes it necessary to adopt a creative approach to devising concepts, methods and techniques for the analysis of social life. Finally, it should be noted that this module is meant as an introduction to the Digital Sociology programme as a whole, and subsequent core and option modules in the Programme will enable you to explore in further detail several of the theories, methodologies and issues presented in this introductory module. 

Assessment: One 3,500 word essay (70%) and one report (30%)

Convener: Evelyn Ruppert

This is a core module of the MA Visual Sociology programme and incorporates practical workshops which will enable to you carry out visual and inventive projects. The practical sessions are geared towards understanding media and materials in terms of sociological research problems. In line with the inventive approach of the MA, the module will challenge you to think about the appropriateness of different kinds of visual and sensory materials when addressing sociological questions, conducting research projects, and presenting their outcomes.

The resulting skills will enable you to carry out your own projects. The module is organised as a series of workshops where you will be introduced to various forms of practice (e.g. photography, video, sound) and be asked to think about how they may be mobilised to do sociological research. In and between these workshops you will experiment with an expanding set of sociological media and materials.

Assessment: 2,500-3,000 word report on research process including diary samples and documentation of practical work.

Convener: Kat Jungnickel

Visual sociology has taught sociology that text is not the only medium. This module introduces you to the problems of visuality and representation in sociology, beginning with classical debates in visual sociology, but including more recent debates surrounding the notions of media, translation and the studio to discuss how sociology can represent the social. The module will introduce you to the complexity of decisions to be taken in inventive sociology once the primacy of text is relinquished.

The module has two aims: first to introduce you to key fields of inventive sociology, and second to key problems of doing inventive sociology. We discuss the cooperation of sociologists with other specialists, such as photographer or videographers, the relationship between self-representations of research subjects and those of the sociologist, the problem of representing objects which are not visual or textual in nature, combining different media, and finally how to address specific audiences.

Assessment: One 2,500 word essay

Convener: Rebecca Coleman

This module examines visual advertising media and the proliferation of neo-liberal philosophies of consumer citizenship. In the milieu from which universal rights are disappearing, consumer citizenship imposes a moral obligation on subjects to make provision for themselves and their families well into the future. The logical implication here is that autonomous consumers come to adopt a certain entrepreneurial form of practical relationship to their selves. Enterprise is represented here as playing a vital translating role, promising to align general political-ethical principles, with the goals of industry and the self–regulating activities of individuals. Within this politico-ethical environment, consumers are constituted as both objects of enterprise and instruments of enterprise as they make 'entrepreneurs of themselves, seeking to maximize their ‘quality of life’ through the artful assembly of a ‘life-style’ put together through the world of goods’ (Miller and Rose 2008:49). 

Divided into four main sections. Part One: examines reflexive modernity and the linking of postmodern visual culture with citizenship as part of the development of political consumerism. Part Two: is informed by Michel Foucault's 1978-1979 lectures at the College de France, in conjunction with Miller and Rose (2008), so as to provide an account of the entrepreneurial self. Central objective of Part Two is to examine the 'governing of humanity', in the context of Neoliberal governmental rationality and market reform of public sector services (with emphasis on recent healthcare market reform). Part Three raises pertinent issues about visual media: the embodiment of consumer citizenship; the body as a site of self-discipline; body praxis and life-politics; and cultural political resistance to the commodity-sign. Part Four: examines Fairtrade branding and the geopolitics of ethical consumerism in the context of global advertising media.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Module convenor: Pam Odih

Autumn Term

This module explores the global politics of human rights in the present moment, paying particular attention to the way the power of “human rights” is mediated by institutional forms, discourses, and devices. Beginning with an intellectual and institutional history of the particular ways the concept of human rights is understood today, we will examine a number of sites that are central to the circulation of human rights today (local and international NGOs, courts, media organizations, states). We will also examine how a number of current political issues intersect with the language of human rights (undocumented migration, workers' rights, gendered forms of domination). Throughout we will pay attention to the intellectual and political benefits and costs of approaching political issues through the lens of human rights and consider what a politics of the forms of mediation of human rights might look like. Throughout, we will also imagine research questions and research strategies that would allow us to speak to the most pressing concerns in this area of investigation.

Assessment: One short essay (3,500 words) and a portfolio of responses to the class readings (1,500 words)

Convener: Monika Krause

This module examines the place of affect and the body in feminist theory and feminist practice. It will first examine and engage the place of the body within the field of arts, culture and representation; feminist theatre practice; gender, passing and ethnicity, in feminist writing; and in feminist film theory.

Secondly it examines and critically engages the field of emotion, the politics of ‘happiness’, contemporary feminist scholarship on affect, and also the politics of science, technology and transformation in women’s/human bodies.

Third it will consider the issues which arise from old and new flows of migration and other kinds of bodily movement; and finally examine the role and value of narrative in feminist writing. This module therefore offers instruction in cutting edge issues in contemporary feminist cultural theory.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Module convenor: Sara Ahmed/ Yasmin Gunaratnam

In nearly every century over the last millennium, London has been a crucial node within the networks of commerce and cultural exchange that spanned the world. In the 21st century , London remains a site of intense activity, sat atop innumerable junctions of capital, migration, culture and commodities. As such London presents the ideal focal point for developing an understanding of the pressing questions facing cities today and into the future. However, while it is important to understand the long history of London’s place within global networks of power and exchange, it is also impossible to ignore the extent to which, in recent years, forces that shape the contemporary city are visibly shifting. That is, the roads that meet at the city’s junction are arriving from new destinations, carrying new opportunities and risks for the city and precipitating new developments.  Accordingly, this course seeks to understand how London is being re-made amidst the re-wiring of global circuitry.

Focusing on specific examples – drawn from the Centre for Urban and Community Research’s activity across London – the module illuminates the impact of new technologies, markets, mutations in governing ideologies, novel patterns of mobility and new technologies of surveillance on the city and its inhabitants. Beyond understanding how these developments impact on London the module aims to develop an understanding of London through its relatedness to other urban locations, situating London’s connectedness to elsewhere as integral to the ways in which the city is being re-made.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay or multimedia presentation (visual, audio, audio visual or digital interactive) supplemented by 2,000 word essay.

Module Convener: Alex Rhys-Taylor

Contemporary readings of urbanity stress the manifold unfolding’s of city environments. Pushing beyond geographical territories, urbanity requires us to work across different ideas of time and space and apprehend these from the perspective of ongoing process and change. Urbanities give rise to differential forms of practice – we engage cities and their infrastructures, institutions, governances, capitals and cultures in diverse and irreducible ways.  Given the dynamic relations that make up the urban and the people that inhabit and move through it, how do we begin to explore and comprehend questions of city life and our interventions in it?

This course investigates and experiments with a series of methods that can be employed to think about the urban. To engage the complex questions of the urban we require creative sociological methods through which we can observe, make sense of and analyse what we experience without fixing it in place. This course takes as its foundation artistic and sensorial innovations in the social sciences. It groups these over five weeks through themes of Observing, Listening, Assembling, Writing and Intervening. Such methodological innovations allow us to think about the urban in ways that engage multiplicitous publics, voices and forms of participation and practice. Drawing from interdisciplinary developments in visual, sonic and sensory sociologies, this course brings together theoretical literature with practical application and critical reflection.

This module focuses on the relationship between urban spaces and identities. Students will examine how sociological, psychological and anthropological theories of self relate to notions of culture, community, personal space and identity. The module will reference theoretical and critical sources exploring and questioning notions of selfhood and collective identity constructions such as gender, ‘race’, class, sexuality, aging and other  cultural formulations, in relation to photographic image-making. Students are encouraged to relate the theoretical readings, lectures and seminar discussions to ongoing visual and urban research practices, and where appropriate, to provide a critical framework for their own image-making.

Assessment: 2,500-3,000 essay

This module will focus on a series of conversations with international photographers and artists whose visual projects relate to a critical examination of urban spaces. The speakers will reflect a wide range of practices, including landscape, portraiture, community, and other forms that relate to the developing field of urban photography and visual urbanism. The main aim of this module is to explore and reflect critically on how urban photographic practices speak to sociological, geographic and cultural debates about the nature of contemporary urban life.

You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with the speakers’ visual projects prior to the presentations, and to use the opportunity of discussing your work within the context of critical urbanism and sociological debate. You will select a photographer presenting during the module, or, with the agreement of the module convenor, another relevant photographer/artist, and then write a short essay reflecting on a project or wider oeuvre pertaining to that particular visual author.

Assessment: 2, 500 word essay focusing on either one of the photographer’s work in relation to core sociological and urban research issues, or select a relevant urban photographer/artist working in a related area as the subject for the module essay.

Convener: Paul Halliday

This module introduces students to social research methods that have special salience in the digital context: ethnography, network analysis and online textual analysis and issue mapping. The module offers an advance introduction to computer­‐enabled sociological methods and then proceeds to examine specific methods and their digitisation on a case­‐to­‐case basis. The module provides an overview of the central principles of these sociological methods, and then offers a hands­‐on introduction to correlated online research tools and platforms. The module provides experience of a range of current searching and database technologies, and techniques and commands for the analysis of online social content. Finally, the module explores the sociological implications of the changing status of social research methods in the digital environment, as methods are materialised in search engines, data visualisation tools, and so on.

In this course, you will be expected to build on your understanding of media and materials in terms of sociological research projects by addressing a particular research theme. You will respond to a theme to create a visual, sensory or experimental object or media.

The course asks you to think about the appropriateness of different kinds of visual and sensory materials when addressing sociological questions, conducting research projects, and presenting their outcomes. It combines lectures and seminars with presentation and feedback workshops at which each student is expected to present their work-in-progress. The course has a practice-based outcome, and will finish with an exhibition/public event at which student work will be shown.

Assessment: 2,500-3,000 word report on research process including diary samples and documentation of practical work.

Convener: Michael Guggenheim

What is subjectivity? The module will explore this concept by engaging with questions around health, disease, illness and medicine. ‘Subjectivity’ implies a reference to the subject/object dichotomy that has traditionally been mapped onto the distinctions between ‘mind’ and ‘body’, ‘illness’ and ‘disease’, ‘meaning’ and ‘cause’, ‘value’ and ‘fact’. We start with a historical perspective on how these dichotomies informed the construction of (bio)medical knowledge and sociological approaches to health and illness. In this framework ‘subjectivity’ can point to the experience of illness as distinct from the factuality of disease, and to the ways in which this experience can disrupt (or inform) the construction of selves. We will then move on to problematise these distinctions by looking at a range of phenomena – such as ‘unexplained symptoms’, the placebo effect, suggestion – and theoretical perspectives that invite us to consider subjectivity as intrinsic to material bodies, rather than external and different from it. One of the underlying questions for the module will be how to think about the dynamic relationship between matter (or biomedical ‘facts’) and value (or cultural and social ‘norms’), and how ‘subjectivity’ in this sense might be studied empirically. While a wide range of sources can be brought to bear on these questions, the module will be based on close engagement with a selection of examples and texts each year.

Assessment: One 5-6,000 word essay

Convener: Monica Greco

Taking its cue from Fredric Jameson’s concept of ‘cognitive mapping’, this module explores contemporary efforts to provide social and political ‘cartographies’ of capitalist society, with particular attention to the intersection between social theory and narrative aesthetic forms (both literary and visual). Beginning from Jameson’s inquiry into the possibility of visual and theoretical orientation within capitalism as a complex totality, and his understanding of ‘conspiracy theory’ as the failure of such an endeavour, the module will investigate different approaches to ‘mapping capitalism’: Franco Moretti’s use of maps in the study of the social content of the nineteenth-century novel; the analysis of commodity-chains and containerization, as explored in the photographic work of Allan Sekula; the attempt in recent cinema and television to track the conflicts in capitalist economies; the thematisation of landscape as a site of power relations and social transformations; the network as a sociological tool, a political reality, and an aesthetic object. Throughout, we will try to think of how a 'cartographic turn' in contemporary theory, art and political activism challenges our presuppositions about the relationship between social inquiry and aesthetics.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Module convenor: Alberto Toscano

Autumn Term

Cultural policy, especially at local level, has been called on to play an increasing set of functions in recent decades. Cities, in particular post-industrial cities in the West, have seen in ‘culture’ a lever for regeneration, one that could be harnessed by targeted policies. However, all the main concepts at play – city, culture and policy – have been subjected to increasing scrutiny in social theory and research: expansion but also problematisation of the notion of culture; diversification and renewed centrality of the city as physical, social and political context; reformulation of cultural policy beyond regulations and policy process towards wider issues of governmentality, democracy and participation.

The module will present recent theoretical advances as well as empirical findings on these topics, focusing on key themes such as culture-led regeneration, place branding, cultural taste, and others relevant to the understanding of contemporary cities. These key themes will also be explored through a case study approach, aimed both at providing a space for in-depth investigation, and inspiration for students to identify and select contemporary cases to be developed for their final essay.

Designed with humanities-inclined students in mind, this module is a chance to do some collective close study of key texts that you may have been meaning to read but didn’t quite get around to, ones that you would like to understand and discuss more thoroughly,  and some of the most provocative and creative recent interventions. Older philosophical texts – Nietzsche, William James, Fanon, may feature – as well as some key readings from recent debates – Deleuze, Stengers, Connolly, Butler, Rancière – are to be discussed, together with some of the most contemporary voices in debates on politics and difference. We’ll also engage with some recently published articles.  Relevant journals for the module would be Public Culture, Critical Inquiry, Theory, Culture & Society, Hypatia. This is my favourite teaching of the year, and every year the students impress me with their dedication and inventiveness.  Join the module if you would like to explore questions of ethics, of how subjectivities, notions of difference, and diverging realities arise, how the politics of difference is lived in contemporary worlds, where contemporary modes of thought arose, and if you like to study hard and ruminate with others. 

NB: There may not be time to cover all the authors I’ve mentioned here, and I reserve the right to add others!  So email me if there is something or someone in particular you want to be sure we cover this year.

Assessment: 5-6,000 word essay

Module convenor: Martin Savransky

This option will function as an intense reading and discussion group tasked with ‘forcing thought’ (Stengers, 2005) on a series of contemporary problems/issues linked to developments in the fields of biomedicine, biotechnology and science. Our aim will be to reframe how we might approach emergent phenomena in these fields, taking into account the work of various technologies active in their current and possibly altered realisation. Observational technologies ranging from genetic screening, ultrasound and magnetic imaging to the quantitative techniques used in visualising pharmaceutical efficacy increasingly offer up more intimate and more seemingly substantive evidence (data/images) of who and what we are, what we can and should (not) do. Yet, while promising more certainty, these technologies are also unsettling core concepts of human identity and the bases on which human life is organised. Within social theory, there are some who see these new developments as generating new modes of personhood and, with this, new modes of activism; for others it has become imperative to rethink such technologies as not merely observing or acting on an object, but as embedded in their object and hence ethically implicated in and affected by it.  Within this latter approach the very notions of data and flesh begin to bleed and, in this wake, it becomes possible to pose a host of questions notably on ethics, representation and the possibilities for social science engagement. 

Assessment: One 5-6,000 word essay

Convener: Marsha Rosengarten