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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

Information in the Degree Programme Tables may still be subject to change in response to Covid-19

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh Futures Institute : Edinburgh Futures Institute

Postgraduate Course: Exclusion and Inequality (fusion online) (EFIE11041)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh Futures Institute CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)
Course typeOnline Distance Learning AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryWhere do social, political, cultural, and economic exclusions and inequalities come from, and what are their effects? We will answer these questions from two interdisciplinary perspectives to examine intersecting fields of inequality, with the objective of integrating different forms of data and knowledge. Students will use evidence and analytical approaches that address exclusions and inequalities relating to class, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, geography, and citizenship. This course will develop a conceptual toolbox: students will be able to mobilize the appropriate bodies of knowledge and data when looking at new cases. They will be able to think through complex societal challenges at multiple scales while mobilising their awareness of structural/historical and relational/experiential perspectives.
Course description The course examines several fields that manifest profound inequalities (such as between the global north and global south; within labour markets; and within public institutions) and two interdisciplinary tracks for examining A) relational/experiential and B) historical/structural dynamics. Examining each field will uncover the intersecting issues of class, race, gender, age, ability, citizenship, and more. Students will form groups by field, and each group will have students assigned to each interdisciplinary perspective. For instance, students examining the field of global inequalities in Track A will look at poverty from the daily experiences of marginalised people as they navigate oppressive power relations, while students in the same group in Track B will analyse contemporary public policies that address or exacerbate poverty and colonial relations of wealth extraction.

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Fusion Course Delivery Information:

The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.

As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.

As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Demonstrate a critical awareness and extensive knowledge of key concepts and debates surrounding multiple facets of inequality in society.
  2. Evidence an in-depth understanding of the power relationships, socio-structural features, and lived experiences that underpin inequality and exclusion in micro and macro contexts, and how these intersect.
  3. Identify how different forms of data represent different aspects of inequality, the ways in which data is harnessed to portray inequality in particular ways, and the role of data in deepening or challenging inequalities.
  4. Mobilise a critical conceptual toolkit to analyse systematically any societal question or challenge.
Reading List
Indicative Reading List:

Aaronson, D., D. Hartley, & B. Mazumder. 2017. 'The effects of the 1930s HOLC 'Redlining' maps'. Working Paper No. 2017-12, Federal Reserve bank of Chicago.

Atkinson, T. 2015. Inequality: what can be done? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Alvaredo, F., Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E. and Zucman, G. eds., 2018. World inequality report 2018. Belknap Press.

Banerjee, A.V., & Duflo, E. 2007. The economic lives of the poor. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(1): 141.

Bay, A.H. and Pedersen, A.W. 2006. The limits of social solidarity: Basic income, immigration and the legitimacy of the universal welfare state. Acta Sociologica 49(4), 419-436.

Benjamin, R. 2019. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. New York: Wiley.

Beteille, A. 2003. Poverty and inequality. Economic and Political Weekly 4455-4463.

Browne, S. 2015. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Buolamwini, J. & T. Gebru. 2018. 'Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification'. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 18: 1-15. https://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18abuolamwini18a.pdf.

Crenshaw, K. 1989. 'Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics'. University of Chicago Legal Forum 8: 139-167.

Crenshaw, K. 2019. On Intersectionality: Essential Writings. New York: New Press.

Dean, H. and L. Platt, eds. 2016. Social Advantage and Disadvantage. Oxford: OUP.

Dolan, C., M. Johnstone-Louis, & L. Scott. 2012. Shampoo, saris and SIM cards: seeking entrepreneurial futures at the bottom of the pyramid. Gender & Development, 20(1): 33-47.

Eubanks, V. 2018. Automating Inequality: How High-tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Farrell, M. 2016. Counting Bodies: Population in Colonial American Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Federici, S. 2004. Caliban and the Witch Women: The Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York. Autonomedia.

Gangadharan, S.P. 2012. 'Digital inclusion and data profiling'. First Monday 17(5).

Gangadharan, S.P, V. Eubanks, & S. Barocas. 2014. Data and Discrimination: Collected Essays. Washington, DC: Open Technology.

Graeber, D. 2011. Debt: The First 5000 Years. New York. Melville Publishing

Hickel, J. 2017. The Divide: A Brief Guild to Global Inequality and its Solutions. London: William Heinemann.

Hurley, M. & J. Adebayo. 2017. 'Credit scoring in the era of big data'. Yale Journal of Law and Technology 18(1): 148-276.

Johnson, J.M. 2018. 'Markup bodies: Black [life] studies and slavery [death] studies at the digital crossroads'. Social Text 34(4): 57-79.

Karim, L. 2011. Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh. University of Minnesota Press.

Koch, I. 2017. Towards an anthropology of global inequalities and their local manifestations. Social Anthropology 26(2): 253-268.

Mattern, S. 2015. 'Mission control: A history of the urban dashboard'. Places Journal, March.

Melamed, J. 2015. 'Racial capitalism'. Critical Ethnic Studies 1(1): 76-85.

Milanovic, B. 2016. Global Inequality: A new approach for the age of globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Morduch, J. 1999. The microfinance promise. Journal of economic literature 37(4): 1569-1614.

Mosse, D. 2010. A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power. Journal of Development Studies 46(7): 1156-1178.

Noble, S.U. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: NYU Press.

O'Neil, C. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction. New York: Broadway Books.

Perez, C.C. 2019. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. New York: Random House.

Piketty, T. 2013. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Piketty, T., 2020. Capital and ideology. Harvard University Press.

Platt, L., 2019. Understanding inequalities: Stratification and difference. John Wiley & Sons.

Robinson, C. 1983. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Rosanvallon, P., 2013. The society of equals. Harvard University Press.

Shakya, Y. B., & K. N. Rankin. 2008. The politics of subversion in development practice: an exploration of microfinance in Nepal and Vietnam. Journal of Development Studies 44(8), 1214-1235.

Shukla, N, ed. 2016. The Good Immigrant. Unbound.

Simon, P. 2012. 'Collecting ethnic statistics in Europe: A review'. Ethnic and Racial Studies 35(9): 1366-1391.

Spade, D. & R. Rohlfs. 2016. 'Legal equality, gay numbers and the (after?)math of eugenics'. Scholar & Feminist Online 13(2).

Wright, E.O. 2009. Understanding class. New Left Review, Nov-Dec.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Knowledge and Understanding:
- A critical understanding of a range of specialised theories, concepts and principles.
- Extensive, detailed and critical knowledge and understanding in one or more specialisms, much of which is at, or informed by, developments at the forefront.
- A critical awareness of current issues in a subject/discipline/sector and one or more specialisms.

Applied Knowledge, Skills and Understanding:
- Ability to use a significant range of the principal professional skills, techniques, practices and/or materials associated with the subject/discipline/sector.
- Ability to plan and execute a significant project of research, investigation or development.
- Ability to demonstrate originality and/or creativity, including in practice.

Generic Cognitive Skills:
- Development of original and creative responses to problems and issues.
- Capacity to critically review, consolidate and extend knowledge, skills, practices and thinking across disciplines, subjects, and sectors.
- Ability to deal with complex issues and make informed judgments in situations in the absence of complete or consistent data/information.

Communication, ICT, and Numeracy Skills:
- Communication, using appropriate methods, to a range of audiences with different levels of knowledge/expertise.
- Communication with peers, more senior colleagues and specialists.
- Use of a wide range of ICT applications to support and enhance work at this level and adjust features to suit purpose.
- Critical evaluation of a wide range of textual, numerical and graphical data.

Autonomy, Accountability, and Working with Others:
- Responsibility for own work and/or significant responsibility for group work.
- Demonstration of leadership and/or initiative and make an identifiable contribution to change and development and/or new thinking.
- Practice in ways which draw on critical reflection on own and others' roles and responsibilities
- Management of complex ethical and professional issues and informed judgement on issues not addressed by current professional and/or ethical codes or practices.
KeywordsExclusion,Inequality,Society,Social Science Theory,PGT,EFI
Contacts
Course organiserMr Jean-Benoit Falisse
Tel: (0131 6)51 1632
Email: JB.Falisse@ed.ac.uk
Course secretary
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