Postgraduate Course: Researching Global Social Change (SCIL11029)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course explores various approaches to researching sociological topics and issues in a global framework. The emphasis is on engaging with actual instances of research, in the readings and as presented by staff, to better understand the challenges of studying social processes that are spatially diffuse, and sometimes temporally extended. By focusing attention on such research it aims to help students think more concretely about dissertation work, especially when concerned with global and international issues.
This course combines lectures by the convener and guest lectures by sociology staff with student-led presentation and discussion (again, perhaps supported through a course linked blog, as in Nationalism Studies). The course progresses from problematising what it means to do global research in the first half, to exploring approaches taken by various sociology staff, to researching topics of global scope in the second half.
Aims and Objectives
This course explicitly aims at: (1) preparing students for their dissertations, (2) helping them to think about issues of (desk-based) research design, (3) sensitizing them to the challenges of doing research that is transnational/global in scope, (4) introducing them to examples pertinent research done in Edinburgh sociology, (5) teaching them how to search for literatures (broadly defined) and produce literature reviews and annotated bibliographies.
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| Course description |
1. What are the challenges in researching global processes of social change?
2. Research strategy 1: Making global comparisons across societies, states, and cultures
3. Research strategy 2: Placing the local within a global context
4. Research strategy 3: Tracing inter-connections in global processes
5. How to do literature reviews and compile bibliographies (workshop)
6. Selected topic/guest lecture: e.g. on global migration,
7. Selected topic/guest lecture: e.g. on global social movements,
8. Selected topic/guest lecture: e.g. on global cities,
9. Selected topic/guest lecture: e.g. on global inequality
10. Student presentations on preliminary plans for dissertation topics (including reflections on research strategies)
NB: The guest lectures in the second half of the course would vary according to staff availability.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 15 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Students will produce either: (a) an extended literature review, or (b) an organised and annotated bibliography. These two options aim to develop skill central to a successful masters dissertation. The first, (a), involves an essay of 3600 to 4400 words in which students survey an area of literature agreed with the course convener, and write an essay over-viewing that literature and describing its main divisions and debates, and identifying the most important works within it. The second, (b), involves compiling a list of between 40 and 50 bibliographic references, again on a topic agreed with the course convener, organising these under major headings each with a paragraph of text explaining what defines the category. The final result is something like an upper level course syllabus, demonstrating an understanding of the scope and variation within a field of literature. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course students should be able to:
- Discriminate critically between different forms of global social analysis
- Assess the appropriate use of a range of research strategies and methods in gaining sociological knowledge in a global context.
- Set their own sociological research agenda in relation to global and international issues.
- Present their ideas about their own research to a group of peers for critical discussion.
- Prepare and present scholarly work for public seminars, and where appropriate, submit work for publication.
- Use library and IT resources to produce surveys of academic literatures that can provide a basis for postgraduate level work.
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Reading List
Alcoff, L. M. and Mendieta, E. (2003) Identities: Race, Class, Gender and Nationality, Oxford: Blackwell. [See esp. parts V and VI, ¿National/Transnational Identities¿ and ¿Reconfigurations¿.]
Boyes, R. (2009) Meltdown Iceland: How the Global Financial Crisis Bankrupted and Entire Country, London, Berlin and New York: Bloomsbury.
Hannerz, U. (1996) Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge.
Inglis, T. (2010) ¿Sociological Forensics: Illuminating the Whole from the Particular¿, Sociology 44(3): 507-22.
Knorr Cetina, K. and Bruegger, U. (2002) ¿Global Microstructures: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets¿, American Journal of Sociology 107(4): 905-950.
Tilly, C. (1984) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Torpey, J. 1999. The Invention of the Passport. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The Urban Sociology Reader, Jan Lin and Christopher Miele (eds), London: Routledge, part (2005), part 5, ¿Globalization and Urban Change¿.
Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) ¿Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction¿, Annual Review of Sociology 35: 493-511.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Liliana Riga
Tel: (0131 6)51 1853
Email: l.riga@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Jade Birkin
Tel: (0131 6)51 1659
Email: Jade.Birkin@ed.ac.uk |
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