Undergraduate Course: Morality through the Social Sciences (DIVI08035)
Course Outline
| School | School of Divinity |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Values are often seen as a 'positive' force in society and central to the identities of individuals and groups. What does it mean to think about the values and moral dimensions of life from a social scientific perspective, though? Drawing on different concepts and approaches from sociology and anthropology, this course will introduce you to how we might think about the relationship between values and morality to different processes, interactions and structures in personal and social life. Through the course, you will be encouraged to make connections between these ideas and approaches and how you understand the role of values and morality in social worlds, networks and movements around you. |
| Course description |
Academic Description
This course aims to introduce students to concepts and methods from sociology and anthropology which approach ethics, values and morality as social and cultural phenomena and to enable them to use these to analyse their own social and cultural contexts and experiences. It also seeks to make students aware of how these approaches from sociology and anthropology can be thought about in relation to other relevant disciplinary perspectives, such as neuroscience, moral psychology and normative ethics. Whilst drawing on longer traditions of social scientific thought, the course particular aims to help students understand approaches and debates within more recent work on the anthropology of ethics/moral anthropology and the sociology of values. Examples of broad questions that may be examined in the course are:
- What are values and morals, and what does it mean to think about them as social and cultural phenomena?
- What roles and functions do values or moral discourses play in social communication and the construction of individual and group identities?
- How might we study changes in values over time within a society, or similarities and differences in values between societies and cultures?
- How do values and moral meanings intersect with social experiences of privilege, exclusion or injustice?
- How are values and morality used to build meaningful lives or address challenges in particular social contexts?
- Are values and moral meanings simply ideological expressions of deeper social structures and interests, or can they play an active role as factors shaping social life?
- Is 'evil' socially constructed and what social roles and uses do concepts of evil perform?
- How do societies become morally polarized and how might social groups move beyond this?
Outline content
The course will blend content which introduces students to key concepts and methods, opportunities to learn from using these approaches to current social examples and activities that develop students' learning capacities in relation to this material (e.g. thinking about what constitutes a good argument, appropriate use of evidence or ways of understanding relevant assessment criteria). The course will make students aware of the different levels of social analysis at which these approaches can be applied, i.e. micro-level inter-personal communication and interactions, meso-level organisational cultures and practices and macro-level social processes and change, and reflect on how these levels can interact as they proceed further into the course. Examples of topics that may be covered in the course are:
- Sociological and anthropological approaches to theorising 'values', and the relationship of these to other disciplinary approaches (e.g. neuro-science, normative ethics);
- The role of values and moral discourses in inter-personal and public communication;
- The nature of moral identities and subjectivities and their relationship to social actions;
- Studying values, morals and social change through repeated surveys (e.g. the British Social Attitudes or World Values Surveys);
- The sociology of evil and the construction of imagined moral communities;
- The social structures and dynamics of culture wars and alternative forms of moral interaction in social groups (e.g. 'ordinary ethics')
- 'Sin', 'salvation' and the uses of morality to address problems of living in particular social contexts;
- Moral cultures of modernity (e.g. humanitarianism and the 'empire of trauma');
- The relationship between moral commitment and social scientific study (e.g. 'critical social science' and the implications of concepts of human flourishing for social scientific study).
Student Learning Experience
The student learning process in this course will involve an iterative process of: a) developing understanding of relevant concepts and methods; b) refining understanding of these concepts and methods through learning how to use them to analyse specific social and cultural phenomena; and c) developing broader academic competencies that underpin this work, such as being able to read, understand and critique academic literature, make effective use of relevant evidence and present analytical arguments. Although some students might be familiar with a minority of concepts and approaches explored in the course through other pre-Honours courses that they are taking, most students are likely to have little or no prior knowledge of this field. The course will therefore be run without assuming any prior knowledge of key concepts and methods. Relevant material will be clearly explained in class and additional online supplementary material will be provided. During class sessions, students will also be given exercises that will help them to identify the key elements of how to interpret and analyse material through relevant social scientific approaches (e.g. how do we decide what's relevant for our focus and what counts as appropriate evidence within different social science approaches to support an argument?).
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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 |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 33,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
151 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
1,000 word review of a piece of academic writing from a set list (35%)
2,500 word portfolio of four short pieces of writing on set topics (65%) |
| Feedback |
Formative feedback on students' comprehension and development of key skills will be provided by a) interactive exercises in lectures and seminars (including using online tools such as Slido where appropriate); b) feedback on short informal presentations on their portfolio writing in seminars; and c) feedback on short informal presentations on their summaries and analysis of a set reading in seminars. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- understand a range of ways in which values and morality have been thought about as social phenomena, including their relationship to identity, power, communication, the construction of individual subjectivities and social imaginaries, and the role of moral meanings in shaping social life;
- understand and draw on different social scientific methods to studying values and morality as social phenomena, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches;
- utilize relevant concepts and approaches to analyse specific examples of the social dimensions of values and morality in contemporary society;
- reflect on insights that emerge from thinking about their own values or moral contexts from a social scientific perspective.
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Reading List
Illustrative reading:
Alexander, Jeffrey. The Meanings of Social Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Fassin, Didier (ed). A Companion to Moral Anthropology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 2022.
Hitlin, Steven, and Stephen Vaisey (eds). Handbook of the Sociology of Morality. New York, Springer, 2010.
Hitlin, Steven; Shai Dromi, and Aliza Luft (eds). Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2. New York: Springer, 2023.
Lambek, Michael (ed). Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, Action. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.
Robbins, Joel. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinean Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.
Sheldon, Ruth. Tragic Encounters and Ordinary Ethics: Palestine-Israel in British Universities. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The course will contribute to Graduate Attributes in the following ways:
- It will provide students with the opportunity to learn and apply concepts and methods that they will be able to use to make sense of social interactions, contexts and conflicts in wider society, and aim to instill in them an on-going sense of the value of using critical and analytical frameworks to interpret and respond to their social environments (enquiry and lifelong learning)
- It will make students more aware of their own moral cultures and the personal commitments they draw from these and help them to reflect about how these might have a positive and negative bearing on their social interactions and decisions (aspiration and personal development)
- It will make them more aware of the moral environments and conflicts they experience in wider society and help them to think how to engage thoughtfully and constructively with them (outlook and engagement)
- It will help them to begin to cultivate skills (appropriate to pre-Honours level study) in thinking critically about ideas and data (personal and intellectual autonomy)
- It will provide them with opportunities to articulate their perspectives on relevant materials and wider social issues and to learn from their own self-reflection, others' feedback and examples of others' communicative practices. By listening carefully to others' ideas and perspectives, they will develop a clearer understanding of their own perspectives and of the value of learning through difference (communication). |
| Keywords | Values,Ethics,Sociology,Morality,Anthropology |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Gordon Lynch
Tel:
Email: glynch2@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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