Undergraduate Course: Contemporary Issues in Sociology (SCIL10080)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This rapid response sociology course will deal with the latest social issues, focusing on current or recent events and analyzing them via a range of sociological approaches. |
| Course description |
The substantive content of the course will change each year depending on topical issues and will be taught by specialists in that field from amongst permanent and postdoctoral staff. For example, in the year of a general election the course could centre around political engagement and disengagement as a sociological issue. What is provided here is a framework within which different issues can be taught each year, thus maintaining a coherent learning experience via which students can be familiarized with key concepts and arguments within the discipline. This framework is likely to include considerations of why the issue is important from a sociological perspective, what classical sociology can contribute to understanding it and the historical context in which this issue has emerged. The course may also examine diverse manifestations of and responses to the issue in different societies, its different impact on different social groups and its relationship to forms of social inequality. The sociological framework of the course will allow examination of the extent to which the issue upholds social order or produces social conflict and how it is affected by processes of globalization. The course will encourage reflection on how sociology can assist in critically assessing the alternative options for addressing this issue. Such a framework is indicative, and will potentially need to be adapted depending on the specific issue being covered. The specific topic for the following year will be announced at latest by the end of semester 2 of the previous year and communicated by email (a title and blurb) to all honours students in the school.
2023-24 topic detail: Sociology of Health in Times of Pandemics
This course brings a sociological understanding of health in times of pandemics. For a long time, sociologists have been investigating health to highlight its social dimensions. They have explored how diseases are socially constructed, how health and wellbeing are unevenly distributed based on social determinants, how institutions play a role in shaping health and diseases, and how social movements for the recognition of new conditions affect medical sciences. While in the past decades sociology has focused on showing the social construction of health, the Covid-19 pandemic has fostered the opposite movement in social debates. Many recent works highlight how deeply health issues shape societies, and how health contestations (whether they are led by patients, activists, or healthcare workers) can be powerful drivers of social transformation. Recent pandemics (e.g. HIV and Covid-19) have crystallised already-existing inequalities, provoked the rise of new social movements, and led to significant political transformations in our societies. This course will explore the social aspects of pandemics and what recent pandemics have done to social sciences, especially when it comes to the articulation between society and health.
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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 | Visiting students should have at least 2 social science courses (such as Sociology, Politics, Social Policy, Social Anthropology, etc) at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 36 |
| 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) |
25% short essay
75% long essay |
| Feedback |
All students will receive formative feedback on essay outlines for short and long essays and through a short essay (1500 words, worth 25%). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of some of the main terminologies, theories and disciplinary boundaries in Sociology
- Apply this knowledge by using methodological and theoretical skills to make sense of materials at the forefront of sociological thinking.
- Critically identify, define, conceptualise and analyse complex sociological problems and issues
- Present and convey information about contemporary issues in sociology to informed audiences
- Show in depth knowledge of the topic.
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Reading List
The course will come across several topics that I am listing here: introduction to the sociology of health, health inequalities and pandemics, institutions and pandemics, capitalism and pandemics, approaches to endogenise pandemics through investigations of human/nature interactions, the Covid-19 pandemic and the care crisis, the transformative power of social movements.
Indicative reading list:
- Abeysinghe, Sudeepa (2015) Pandemics, Science and Policy: H1N1 and the WHO, London, Palgrave Macmillan.
- Adler-Bolton, Beatrice, and Vierkant, Artie (2022) Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto, London, Verso.
- Dowling, Emma (2021) The Care Crisis: What Caused it and How Can We End It?, London, Verso.
- Fassin, Didier (2007) When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa, Berkeley, UC Press.
- Fraser, Nancy (2016) Contradictions of Capital and Care, New Left Review, 100.
- Germov, John (2019) Second Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Jasanoff, Sheila, Hilgartner, Stephen, Hurlbut, Benjamin, Ozgode, Onur, and Rayzberg, Margarita (2021) Comparative Covid Response Interim Report, Boston, Harvard. Url: https://compcore.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Comparative-Covid-Response_Crisis-Knowledge-Politics_Interim-Report.pdf
- Marya, Rupa and Patel, Raj (2023) Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, London, Macmillan.
- Sunder Rajan, Kaushik (2017) Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine, Durham (NC), Duke University Press.
Other sources of information:
- The Death Panel podcast: https://www.deathpanel.net/episodes
0 The Goldsmiths Political Economy Research Centre's (PERC) blog series on Covid-19: https://www.perc.org.uk/project_pages/covid-19/
- You can also watch Robin Campillo's 2017 movie BPM (Beats Per Minute) on AIDS activism in the LGBT community in the 1990s. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Contemporary issues,rapid-response sociology,topical,sociological approaches,current social life |
Contacts
| Course organiser | |
Course secretary | Mr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: Ewen.Miller@ed.ac.uk |
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