Sociology (Placement Year) BA Hons - 2020 Entry

Course Overview

Have you ever wanted to know the full story behind the important issues in our society? Are you interested in understanding more about gender inequalities in our societies and women’s experiences of everyday sexism? What can sociology teach us about disasters, and when things go wrong with technology? How can we think sociologically about the future? How important is what we consume to our sense of identity and social relationships? How have the financial crisis and austerity measures impacted on people’s daily lives?

Here at Lancaster you can engage with these questions and have chance to ask your own by studying on our BA Sociology course.  We help you to make the familiar strange, to ask critical questions, to understand a wide range of classic and contemporary sociological writing, and to develop skills that allow you to carry out independent research.

Since being established in 1969, Lancaster Sociology has developed an excellent reputation and today we are one of the best departments in the UK and the world. Both our staff and students contribute to important public discussions through lectures, blogs, media appearances and social media.

Our Department offers a range of opportunities to foster your personal and professional development. You can participate in field trips, film screenings, public events, seminars, and major international conferences. All this makes for a vibrant and supportive atmosphere.

The unique structure of our degree courses allows you to personalise your own learning. Whether you have diverse interests or aren't quite sure what you want to major in, we are here to help you make the most of your time at Lancaster.

You will have the opportunity to spend Year 3 on placement with a public, private or voluntary organisation in the UK or overseas.  This experience will boost your employment prospects and will help you to decide on your career direction and the kind of organisation in which you want to work once you graduate. You will be doing a real, responsible job – with all the satisfaction that brings.  Our Placements Team will support you in finding and applying for a suitable placement that will support your professional development. Applying for a placement is a competitive process and the preparatory modules you will complete in years one and two are designed to give you the best chance of success in your placement applications.  You will also be provided with dedicated workshops, 1:1 appointments with careers professionals as well as opportunities to speak with employers here on campus.

During the placement year you will remain a Lancaster University student which means that you will still be eligible for a student loan, have access to facilities such as the library and receive discounts on transport and council tax.  Your tuition fee will be reduced to 20% during the placement year. 

The placement will enhance your understanding of the connections between theory and practice and this will benefit your final year of study.  This is an exciting opportunity to build up experience and transferable skills, as well as to make contacts with potential employers, which will place you a step ahead in the graduate recruitment market.

Entry Requirements

Grade Requirements

A Level ABB

IELTS 6.5 overall with at least 5.5 in each component. For other English language qualifications we accept, please see our English language requirements webpages.

Other Qualifications

International Baccalaureate 32 points overall with 16 points from the best 3 Higher Level subjects

BTEC Distinction, Distinction, Merit

We welcome applications from students with a range of alternative UK and international qualifications, including combinations of qualification. Further guidance on admission to the University, including other qualifications that we accept, frequently asked questions and information on applying, can be found on our general admissions webpages.

Contact Admissions Team + 44 (0) 1524 592028 or via ugadmissions@lancaster.ac.uk

Course Structure

Many of Lancaster's degree programmes are flexible, offering students the opportunity to cover a wide selection of subject areas to complement their main specialism. You will be able to study a range of modules, some examples of which are listed below.

Year 1

Core

• Placement Preparation

  Your placement year is a terrific opportunity to gain experience in the workplace and to develop your skills and knowledge. This short module has been designed to help you find a suitable placement position and make sure that you get the most benefit from your placement year.

  With the help of our expert tutors, you’ll find out about the graduate job market, including what employers expect from the graduates they employ, as well as the specifics of Lancaster’s placement year scheme and how this can support your career development.

  Using a range of tools, you will sharpen your job seeking skills such as researching job opportunities, and professional CVs, application forms and cover letters that are tailored for specific employers and sectors.

  An understanding and experience of the application and interview process is essential to successful job-seeking. The module includes an introduction to psychometric testing as well as practice for face-to-face and video interviews, and assessment centres. You will develop a greater awareness of your personal attributes, set up a LinkedIn profile, and consider how to present yourself effectively to employers.

  The skills and practice gained during this module, and the professional feedback and support you receive, will prepare you for your second year when you will start applying for placement positions.

  While this module is not credit-bearing, you will need to pass the two assignments in order to continue on the Placement Year scheme. The first assignment is designed to develop your skills in answering application form questions. For the second assignment you will develop a graduate standard CV and covering letter, and take part in a practice interview and mock assessment centre.

• The Sociological Imagination

  What does it mean to ‘think sociologically’? When there are so many academic disciplines and non-academic areas of professional expertise, what is unique and important about starting with the social? This module begins with fundamental questions about the value of sociology in understanding the contemporary world and goes on to explore how the significance of our questions and everyday experiences are transformed when investigating all kinds of contemporary social problems, from inequality to globalisation, sociologically.

  This full-year course is organised into different ‘blocks’ that connect key themes in sociology – such as the relationship between self and society or between self and power – to both long-standing and newly emerging research. Whether or not you have studied sociology before, this structure will introduce you to new areas of sociology, as well as demonstrating how key themes such as consumption, identity, social justice, or culture and media intersect with different sociological questions and sites of enquiry. Lecturers draw upon the world-renowned research undertaken at Lancaster, giving you access to cutting-edge insights that are inspiring change in policy and professional organisations.

  The benefit of having multiple topics and themes addressed within one year-long module is that the assessments are carefully designed to slowly build up your research and study skills over your first year of study, whilst still giving you the flexibility to write major essays on the topics that are most interesting to you. The course provides you with a fantastic opportunity to explore new ideas and find new inspiration for understanding how we lead our lives today, and what possibilities there are for change tomorrow.

Optional

• Contemporary Social Problems

  This module challenges you to think about why some private troubles become public concerns or social problems while others do not. It considers how certain issues are constructed as ‘problems’ and the factors that contribute to this. It helps you to understand more about both why we study social problems and the various ways in which we can do so.

  Throughout the module we explore broad historical and contemporary responses to social problems. In particular, we will seek to understand how contemporary social problems reflect and reproduce economic and social inequalities and how those inequalities are constructed through different welfare ideologies and approaches.

  The module is underpinned by five key themes: need, community, citizenship, rights, and equality and social justice. We look, for example, at research and conceptual ideas that can help us understand poverty in contemporary society: we explore different ways of defining and measuring poverty, explanations of why people are poor, how the state attempts to tackle poverty and how it impacts upon the lives of individuals.

  Small-group seminars are used to encourage discussion and debate, and you will be able to choose from a wide range of topics for your subsequent assignments and assessments.

• Gender and Women's Studies: Identities, Inequalities and Politics

  This module is taught by lecturers from a range of disciplines and considers how gender emerges and matters in society. It explores the gendering of identities, relations and institutions and the links between gender and power. It also examines challenges and resistances to the classifications, processes and consequences of gendering: forms of resistance and protest. It is a course which is concerned with the ways in which gender is constructed, lived, challenged and studied, and makes connections between academic work and sexual and gender politics and activism.

  This first year module is suited for anyone with an interest in issues pertaining to women and gender relations, the different social conditions in which women live, especially in relation to differences amongst women, and the way that this leads to a diversity of feminist politics.

• Transformations: From Mass Media to Social Media

  From mass media to social media, from debates on authenticity and representation in reality-tv to struggles between users and the creative industries on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

  The Media and Cultural Studies 101 module enables you to critically examine and analyse a range of media and cultural practices, texts, and technologies in a wide variety of contexts. It introduces you to a number of key concepts and theories that deal with media and culture, and it enables you to become a creative, critical, and confident consumer and producer of media in an ever-changing cultural and technological landscape.

  Media and Cultural Studies 101 is divided into a number of blocks, focusing on a variety of important topics such as: Media and Representation, Media and Consumption, Media and Power, Media and Technology, and Media and Reality. These topics will be discussed and explored with help of a range of contemporary examples, cases, and debates in television, digital games, film, advertisement, popular music, and social media.

  You will present your analysis and ideas in different ways, including essays and exam answers. By the end of the module you will be able to interpret and analyse different contemporary media and cultural phenomena with confidence, being able to support your views and opinions with plenty of academic sources.

Year 2

Core

• Skills for researching social and cultural life

  This module is organised around a range of cross-cutting methodological issues that are addressed in relation to established methods (such as interviewing and quantitative surveys). Discussions and activities incorporate a range of methodological approaches using visual, qualitative, and quantitative data. Students are provided with a clear outline of the module structure and topics at the outset, and in-class activities will be designed to engage students in active learning with ample opportunities for formative feedback.

• Sociological Thought for Our Times

  This course introduces the development of social theory from the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century to contemporary debates about the character of knowing.

  • Introduces the most important models developed by classical social theorists (and especially Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel) for analysing modern societies and considers how they have been adapted, updated, or displaced by recent social theories.
  • Explores how these theories have been shaped by social and political change in eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century Europe. Particular stress is placed on relating theories to contemporary social life.
  • Critically considers different current understandings of the role of social theory as privileged knowledge, tool of social control, ideology, and discourse.
  • Explores critically the theme of everyday life in modernity.

  This course offers the opportunity to learn skills in reading, analysing, comparing, and critically evaluating major social theories of the rise of modern societies.

• Work Based Learning Preparation

  A placement year provides a valuable and safe opportunity to find out more about yourself and the type of career that is right for you. The aim of this module is to prepare you to maximise the opportunities for learning and development that your placement will provide, including formal elements such as Professional Development Reviews (PDR) and options for informal learning.

  You’ll consider your individual strengths and preferences through completion of a personality type assessment. This will be useful when we move on to looking at your aspirations for the placement. Working with others in the group and your tutors, you will be asked to develop strategies for achieving your goals and to record these in an action plan.

  You’ll be encouraged to think about challenges that you may encounter during your placement, such as management structures, working relationships, time management, work/life balance, and ethical considerations. You’ll also consider your role and responsibilities during the placement, as well as that of your employer and the University, and this awareness should help you to navigate any issues that arise once the placement has started.

  During your placement year you will be expected to create a Professional Placement Portfolio and your tutors will provide guidance on how to do this.

  There are two assessed elements to this module, the first is preparing an action plan for your placement year and the second is to complete the personality assessment exercise. You will need to successfully complete both elements in order to continue on the Placement Year scheme.

  This module provides 10 credits towards the 30 credits which successful completion of your placement year provides. These 30 credits are on top of the 360 credits of a standard degree, meaning that you will graduate with 390 credits; 30 more than if you took the same degree without a placement year. The additional credits recognise and reward the additional skills and experience that you will develop during your placement year.

Optional

• Bodies in Society

  Social and cultural theories of the body have transformed thinking in the last two decades. Indeed, accounts of the body and embodiment have moved from being a marginal aspect of social and theory to a central feature of how we understand and experience media culture and society. Through a series of case-studies, this module explores some of the key developments in sociological accounts of the body and the body politic (or the nation state). Throughout this module we will focus on issues of inequality, stigma, power, in/visibility, surveillance, disability, 'race' and ethnicity. Examining the body as a site of social control, and as a repository of shifting classifications, we will consider bodies which do not easily fit prevailing social and cultural norms, bodies which are perceived to be ‘out of place’, abject or deviant and bodies imagined and employed as sites of resistance and protest.

  As well as gaining an understanding of some key social, cultural and political issues you will develop critical thinking, reading, writing skills and practical skills. We will go on course field-trips (for example to Lancaster Castle in order to think about the history of punishment) and you will participate in lively and challenging workshops. As part of the assessment for this course you will make a short film in response to themes and issues examined or provoked by lectures, screenings, reading and seminar discussions. This course is interdisciplinary and is open to students from any discipline, but has been particularly designed for Sociology, Media and Cultural Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies students.

• Climate Change and Society

  This half-unit module will introduce students to sociological thinking on climate change. Debates about climate change are shifting, and beginning to make much stronger links between a vast and complex planetary perspective (a globe in crisis) and the private sphere (the home, low-carbon lifestyles, urban living, consumer demand, etc.). In this context, social theorists have been considering what sociological thinking can offer to contemporary debates on climate change issues. The module aims to introduce students to a range of new and emerging sociological analyses which examine: climate change and social change; new subjectivities, institutions and collectives under climate change; climate activism; dynamics of crisis and denial; the contested politics of climate change science; the global political economy of climate change; utopias and dystopias of climate change.

• Consumer Culture and Advertising

  This module explores how consumption, advertising, branding and promotion shape society. In the module we will ask questions such as:

  • Why do many people find shopping so appealing?
  • How does consumption relate to our identities, our hopes and our futures?
  • What is consumption doing to the world? Are we shopping ourselves to death?
  • Does consumption shape inequalities – both at a national and global level?
  • How does advertising and branding speak to us?
  • Do we now live in a ‘promotional culture’ in which we must ‘sell ourselves’?
  • Why do some people resist consumer culture?
• Critical Cultural Theory

  This course focusses on the relationship between media, representation and power. We engage closely with the most influential cultural theories of modern times, putting them to work to understand how power operates through forms of mediation in late capitalist societies. We address these issues through analysis of a contemporary cultural phenomena ranging from the food poverty to the spectacular brand management of the British royal family, from Pride parades to our culture’s obsession with weight. We focus on a range of media including advertising, film, photography, multimedia art, theme parks, news media, social media and the internet.

  Topics covered include:

  • Photography, beauty and ‘truth’
  • Nationalism and spectacle
  • Bodies and representation
  • Capitalism, consumer culture and the branded self
  • Art and the politics of representation
  • Postmodern culture, simulation and war
  • Queer theory and queer cultures
  • Marxist theory, media and work
• Digital Cultures

  This course explores the question of how information and communications technologies, in their multiple forms, figure in our everyday lives. The aim of the course is to develop an appreciation for the range of experiences affected by digital media, including the progressive expansion of life online, and the increasingly intimate relations between life online and off. We’ll explore global divisions of digital labour; hactivism. The course will consider the new possibilities that the changing social infrastructure of digital technologies afford, while also learning to look at the rhetorics and practices of the virtual with a questioning and critical eye. Throughout the course we’ll be attentive to issues of gender, race and other marks of sameness and difference as they operate among humans, and between humans and machines.

• Friendship, Intimacy and Society

  This module explores the role of friendship in society. Classical and contemporary sociological accounts often claim that social bonds have been eroded or that personal relationships and community have become less stable and more fluid. Sociology has focused most attention on family ties and kinship in exploring these questions. But a focus on friendship can offer new perspectives on society.

  This module will ask: What does friendship mean today? What form of social bond is friendship? Has social change impacted on friendship and vice versa?

• Gender and Media

  Do we need to take Rachel Dolezal’s claim to ‘identify as black’ seriously? How does the visibility of figures like Caitlyn Jenner help ordinary trans* people? Does Rihanna’s video for Bitch Better Have My Money glamorise violence against women? Is Beyonce, as bell hooks argues, a ‘terrorist’ for her affect on young women of colour, or does her argument disempower Beyoncé’s huge female audience? Is fan culture reshaping the media landscape, or are fans just dupes of consumer capitalist media corporations?

  The relationship between gender and representation has never been more contentious or more contested than it is today, as a new generation of feminists take on media images of gender. This course does not attempt to give answers, but instead focuses on asking questions. Our focus will be on engaging closely and critically with media through feminist scholarship and activism.

  Media studied include TV dramas ( Orange is the New Black, Game of Thrones, Cucumber), reality TV and (RuPaul Drag Race,America’s Next Top Model), images of masculinity from the camp gay stereotype of the 20th century to lad culture, and the changing nature of celebrity from Marilyn Monroe to Beyoncé.

• Gender, Sexuality and Society

  Contemporary women’s and men’s lives are vastly different from previous generations, yet there are certain patterns of inequality, gender difference, and normative sexuality that continue to be reproduced. This course explores and interrogates the workings of gender and sexuality in contemporary society by considering a range of sociological and feminist explanations. The focus is on multiple formations of gender, sexuality, identity and embodiment. The course will analyse power relations among women (differentiated by class, ‘race’, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality) as well as between men and women. The course is taught in workshop format and involves lively debate and lectures and analysis of readings, films, images and news and popular media. In term 2 you complete and present a group project based on independent research.

  The course is divided into 4 thematic sections.

  1. Formations of Gender(s) and Sexualities , including emphasis on the social construction of bodies and identities and introducing key debates and the work of feminist and queer theorists.
  2. Intersectionalities 1, is a series of lectures/workshops about how gender and sexuality are performed within and through everyday spaces and materials of difference and inequality, for example technology, childbirth and medicine.
  3. Intersectionalities 2, considers how gender and sexuality intersect with other identity categories, such as class and religious identity.
  4. Citizenship, considering contemporary feminist and queer approaches to, for example, marriage, intimacy practices and the military.

  You will have the opportunity to: 1) learn skills in reading, analysing, and critically evaluating theories of gender difference and inequality; 2) to practice formulating your own sociological questions about gender and sexuality; 3) develop your skills in group work and oral presentation.

• Living with Capitalism: Work and Profit

  This half unit module relates contemporary forms of employment to basic structures and pressures of capitalism.

  Beginning with an analysis of markets and employment relations in capitalist organizations, it proceeds, through a number of case studies, to examine how workers’ subjective experience of employment is influenced by wider social and economic forces. It focuses particularly on jobs involving a service element, including jobs involving care work and emotional labour. It explores how political economic theories of paid work and empirical analyses of the subjective experience of employment might relate to one another.

• Media and Visual Culture

  Everyday life is often described as bombarding us with images, and contemporary culture is therefore frequently understood as a visual culture.

  • What do such statements actually mean?
  • How far is our culture a visual culture?
  • What role do media play in a visual culture?
  • How is vision linked to practices – including representation, the gaze and embodiment – of power and inequality?
  • In what ways might these practices be challenged or resisted? Does vision only involve seeing, or is visual culture multi-sensory?

  This course will introduce theories and practices that have addressed these questions. It will cover topics including:

  • The relationship between vision and knowledge
  • The gaze and power (eg the gaze as gendered and raced)
  • Media, representation and identity
  • Technologies of vision
  • Material practices of vision
  • Vision as multi-sensory.

  On this module you will gain a critical understanding of recent and ongoing themes in Media and Cultural Studies and Sociology on the topic of vision and visuality, media and culture, develop different reading and writing skills and participate in lively discussions and analytical exercises.

• Socio-Cultural Approaches to Advertising

  This module introduces a range of debates about the social and cultural status and impact of advertising.

  From a sociological perspective it explores:

  • Advertising in the nineteenth century
  • The practices of contemporary advertising agencies
  • Advertising controversies
  • Advertising regulation
  • Methods of textual analysis for advertisements
  • Gender and advertising
  • Challenges to advertising and the subversion of advertisements
  • Sociological accounts of branding and ‘promotional culture’

  Students on this module will gain a critical understanding of sociological and cultural perspectives on advertising, methods of analysing advertising, and the role of advertising and discourses of consumerism in shaping identities.

• Sociology of the Environment

  Is ‘the environment’ a matter of sociological concern? How is it treated in sociological thinking? Can sociological thinking give us a ‘critical’ view of environment-society relationships? This half-unit module aims to draw out our (often implicit) ideas about environment-society relationships in order to scrutinize them sociologically. We will examine a variety of ordinary social practices that entail particular ideas and assumptions about the environment. We will see, for example, how the environment is present within issues of identity, consumerism, the media, fashion, activism, commodification, risk, protection, citizenship, and inequality. Through lectures, readings, films, popular and academic texts, and based around many class discussions, this module will offer students: first, an overview of various sociological approaches to ‘the environment’; second, a sense of the contested and contradictory ways in which ‘the environment’ is present in contemporary social practices; third, a confidence in using sociological thinking to think critically about the status-quo and to assess the possibilities for socio-environmental change.

• Viral Video Production

  Want to "go viral"? In this module you will make stuff: tweets, blogs, videos, GIFs, wikis, music mash-ups, photo essays, machinima, memes. We will hang out in social media worlds like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pirate Bay, 4chan, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Know Your Meme, tumblr. You will learn to tie all of these media and platforms together into a viral video and social media campaign. You will become digitally literate while at the same time exploring the most cutting edge new media theory. When you complete this module you will know how to make most types of simple digital media, you will develop a portfolio of content that may assist you in entrepreneurial work in the new media industries, and most importantly you will understand how new media are challenging existing forms of culture, politics, law, and business.

Year 3

Core

• Work Based Learning Placement

  A Lancaster University placement year is very different from any work experience you may have done at school or college. It is an exciting opportunity to be employed in a graduate level position for nine-twelve months, working in the type of environment and role you might be considering for after you graduate. You will develop a range of skills and experience both through doing the job and through accessing formal and informal development opportunities, as well as making industry contacts, and these should put you in a strong position when you enter the competitive graduate job market.

  During your placement year, although you will be working away from the University campus, you will be in regular contact with other students via our online learning platform and with your Lancaster University tutors. If your placement is in the UK, one of the placement team will visit you to discuss your progress towards your placement goals.

  As well as developing skills and experience that are specific to your placement position and industry, your placement year will also provide the opportunity to gain broader experience and professional skills in several areas:

  • analytical thinking, problem solving and decision making;
  • planning and negotiation;
  • prioritisation and time management;
  • critical engagement with theories and frameworks through applying them to real situations.

  There are two assessed elements to this module, the first is to develop a Learning Agreement during your first few weeks in the job, and the second is to evaluate and reflect on the development of your skills and knowledge through keeping a personal learning log during the placement.

  You will also collate materials for your Professional Placement Portfolio on an ongoing basis as a record of your learning and development, and this will form your final assessment that is handed in during your final year at Lancaster.

  Your tutors will provide guidance, support and templates for all of these elements.

  This module provides 10 credits towards the 30 credits which successful completion of your placement year provides. These 30 credits are on top of the 360 credits of a standard degree, meaning that you will graduate with 390 credits; 30 more than if you took the same degree without a placement year. The additional credits recognise and reward the additional skills and experience that you will develop during your placement year.

Year 4

Core

• Independent Dissertation Project

  This module comprises a 10,000 word dissertation that students complete in their final year. It offers students the opportunity to undertake an independent piece of research (under supervision) and to apply their general understanding of the research process to real world examples that will inform their choice of dissertation topic.

  Students will plan, present and design a dissertation proposal in tutorial groups, with a detailed, step-by-step web-based guide available for extra support. They will develop an idea for a research project, work out what is possible, which methods to use, and begin to plan it. They will then communicate their dissertation proposal to other students and then write it up in a way that clearly states their research topic, aims and methods, and where it situates within wider sociological debates. Students will carry out data collection and analysis, and write it up as a dissertation. They will meet regularly with their supervisors to discuss their progress.

• Work Based Learning Reflection

  In your final year you’ll return to Lancaster to complete your degree. Feedback from previous students is that their final year studies are enhanced by the real-world experience they can now draw on.

  Whatever your career path, having the skills to critically evaluate your own learning and development will considerably enhance your effectiveness in the workplace. During your final year, you will be asked to reflect on your experience of work based learning. Did you take part in any formal training relating during your placement? How did this benefit your work? What kinds of informal learning opportunities arose? What did you learn about your own preferences for professional development? How do your experiences compare to those of other placement students?

  You will be asked to consider your future career aims and identify areas for further development using models of learning to analyse strategies. Finally, you will develop a personal action plan for continuing your personal and professional development in your final year and beyond.

  There is one assessed element to this module, which is completion of the Professional Placement Portfolio that you started during your placement year. The portfolio should reflect on your placement and highlight your key successes, challenges and development points.

  This module provides 10 credits towards the 30 credits which successful completion of your placement year provides. These 30 credits are on top of the 360 credits of a standard degree, meaning that you will graduate with 390 credits; 30 more than if you took the same degree without a placement year. The additional credits recognise and reward the additional skills and experience that you have developed during your placement year.

Optional

• Classic Encounters

  All sociologists are supposed to know their classics but most only know them from second or third hand summaries. In this course we offer the opportunity for advanced students to have an intimate encounter with one of the core texts by one of the classics, texts that are referred to all the time in the social sciences. The text will change on an annual basis and in 2014/15 the module studied Zygmunt Bauman’s prize-winning book Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). In this collection of closely interlinked essays, Bauman makes the disturbing claim that, far from being some momentary regression to barbarism by a brain-washed population, the Holocaust was very much a ‘creature’ of modern society. Indeed, he argues that the social and personality structures that enabled the Holocaust to occur are very much a part of systems, processes and logics which continue into the present. In provocatively challenging our comfortable, complacent ‘civilised’ existence today, Bauman poses fascinating and vital questions about responsibility, ethics, co-operation and conformity, and our individual and collective courage to confront authority and violence. We will use Bauman’s book as a point of departure for exploring some central debates and key writings in Holocaust studies.

• Disasters: Why do things go wrong?
  • What counts as a disaster?
  • Is it still reasonable to speak of ‘natural’ or human-made’ disasters?
  • Do disasters have a beginning, middle and end?
  • Is it possible to make disaster-proof systems?

  This module uses case studies of disasters (technical and social) to explore these questions and what sociology can teach us about them.

• Feminism and Social Change

  This challenging course investigates gender inequalities within society through a focus on historical and contemporary debates in feminist theory and activism. The course has an `intersectional` focus that means we will consider gender inequalities as bound up with other forms of discrimination and marginalisation, particularly racial and ethnic inequalities, disability and social class.

  The first term will challenge you to think about `what feminism means today` through a consideration of key aspects of feminist thought and activism from the late 1960s onwards. We will consider the continued relevance of the idea of ‘The Personal is Political’ and ‘consciousness raising’. We will overview feminist approaches to social research and explore feminist interventions in practices of gender inequality, for example inequalities in paid and unpaid work, childcare and women’s health. You will complete an intergenerational interview research project on ‘women, work and social change’ through which you will analyse and present your findings in a group presentation and reflect upon your experience of the research process.

  During the second term we will take the feminist manifesto as a central document which expresses lived experiences of gender inequalities and collective desire for social change. Through some practices of inequalities, such as art, beauty contests, capitalism and patriarchy we will explore the contemporary resonance of ideas such as black feminisms, art activism, the occupy movement and backlash.

  By the end of the course you will be familiar with some of the key debates within feminism today and be able to make connections between feminist theory and forms of feminist practice. The course engages you in lively debate, original research and feminist activism through analysis of varied media including academic texts, advertising, art, film, news media and social media.

• Health, Life and Bodies

  This module introduces contemporary health issues and the sociological questions that arise from them: What is ‘health’ and how do we try to achieve it in contemporary societies? Why are some people healthy and others not? What role do sex/gender, race, ethnicity and class play in producing healthy and unhealthy bodies and lives? We study contemporary research on a wide range of health issues, including smoking, genetics, HIV/AIDS, cancer and alternative therapies. In discussing these examples, we explore conceptual issues around bodies and selves, and think about how people form new relationships around questions of health, including relationships between patients and doctors, within families, and between individuals and the state. We also analyse new forms of activism around health, illness and bodies. In Term 2 this module uses an innovative teaching method – problem based learning – which is fun and interactive – not the usual lecture/seminar format.

• Modernity and its Discontents

  This module introduces and explores the writings of a number of key twentieth-century social and cultural theorists, and radical thinkers offering perceptive and provocative critiques of the many ills of modern western capitalist society.

  Building on some of the theories and concepts encountered in the module ‘Understanding Social Thought’, this module provides an opportunity for students to engage with some of the most stimulating and challenging perspectives in the social sciences, ones which interrogate our common and comfortable assumptions about the supposedly benign and beneficent character of contemporary capitalism, scientific development, technological innovation, and affluent consumer lifestyles. In so doing, the very concepts of historical enlightenment, progress and civilisation are called into question.

  This is an essential module for those for whom sociology is not just intended to interpret the world in various ways, but concerned to change it.

• Nations and Migration

  Belonging to a nation is widely seen to be as natural as belonging to a family or a home. This module will explore how such assumptions about national belonging come about by introducing students to a range of theoretical approaches and debates.

  Students will explore how notions belonging are socially constructed, how the nation is defined, who belongs and who doesn’t. The module addresses these notions by examining what everyday practices, discourses and representations reveal about the ways people think about, and inhabit, the nation. The module also pays particular attention to nation formation in relation to debates about multiculturalism, diversity and migration and asks: What are the impacts of migration and multiculturalism on definitions of the nation? How is multiculturalism defined and perceived?

  Although focus will be on the example of Britain, issues raised will apply to many countries of the contemporary world.

• Social Media and Activism

  This module will explore how the politically powerful and the politically radical use the internet to consolidate and revolutionise the distribution of power around the globe.

  Like many communication platforms before it, the internet is mobilised by the politically and economically powerful as well as those seeking radical change. However, unlike other platforms, it has created an almost universally accessible platform for public dialogue. Pro-democracy revolutionaries, freedom hackers, feminist mediasmiths, anti-capitalists, data leakers, and others use the internet to organise their social movements. Conversely, those opposed to the liberal project, such as authoritarians and extremist groups, also use the affordances of the internet to distribute their message and rally their supporters.

  This module examines these issues and investigates the implications of “big data” control by governments and corporations. The module looks also at the understanding social networkers and other content uploaders have of this “big data” control along with the consequences it comes with.

• Society and Drugs

  This module considers ‘what a drug is’, alongside how and why we take drugs, by exploring the relationship between society, culture and intoxication. Together we will examine classic and contemporary literature on 'drugs' and the 'drug experience', including drug ethnographies, critical drug studies, and narcocultural studies (eg. literary works and media on drugs). We will also analyse how certain forms of drug use are produced as ‘social problems’ to develop a critical understanding of the aims, efficacies and inadequacies of societal responses to drug use, including drug education programmes, public health policies, treatment regimes, recovery work, and criminal sanctions. Other topics covered include club drugs in post-rave dance cultures; continuity and change in drug markets/distribution systems; drug prohibition, its consequences, and its alternatives; illicit drugs, globalisation and securitisation; gender, sexuality and drugs; researching drugs/drug use (theoretical concepts, research methods and ethics); risks, harms and pleasure; and mapping drug futures in the digital age.

• Sociology goes to Hollywood

  This module addresses contemporary debates in sociology and cinema together by focusing on a single film each week. Its overall aim is to employ cinema for the purpose of social diagnosis.

  The module engages with cinema as a social fact, before linking together cinema (producing images of the social) and sociality (socialisation of the image) for analysis. Against this background, the module seeks to broaden the range of topics for study within Sociology.

• Sociology of the Future

  We live in societies in which forecasting and planning for the future is an important activity for governments, institutions, businesses and individuals. We live in societies in which imaginings of the future as a better time or as a more fearful one circulate in the here and now, calling us into action or invoking threats or desires. This module considers how we should understand the future from sociological and cultural perspectives. The module will address both how we can look into the future through various techniques in order to gain a foresight into what might happen, and we will look at the future – how images of the future circulate in the present through the work of scientists, artists, filmmakers, writers, academics, politicians and others.

• Violence and Society

  The module explores varying sociological approaches to the analysis of violence and society. It covers key concepts, theories and empirical material before encouraging students to evaluate and contrast the varying perspectives on the issue.

  Topics will include: violence and social change; violence from below and from above; violent crime and socio-economic inequality; gender-based violence against women; hate crime and genocide; criminal justice system; war, democracy and power; old and new wars; militarism and gender; peace processes; terrorism; securitisation; increases and decreases in violence over time.

Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and others which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme. We divide academic study into two sections - Part 1 (Year 1) and Part 2 (Year 2, 3 and sometimes 4). For most programmes Part 1 requires you to study 120 credits spread over at least three modules which, depending upon your programme, will be drawn from one, two or three different academic subjects. A higher degree of specialisation then develops in subsequent years. For more information about our teaching methods at Lancaster visit our Teaching and Learning section.

Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, but changes may be necessary, for example as a result of student feedback, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes, and new research.

Careers

With a degree in Sociology from Lancaster University, which is a Top 10 UK university and a top university globally, your career opportunities are exciting and diverse. They include working in the charitable sector, community engagement organisations, social enterprises, the caring professions, the civil service, research organisations, teaching, specialist recruitment, media and creative industries, human resources, and graduate trainee management. 

Fees and Funding

Fees

We set our fees on an annual basis and the 2020/21 entry fees have not yet been set.

As a guide, our fees in 2019 were:

Channel Islands and the Isle of Man

Some science and medicine courses have higher fees for students from the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. You can find more details here: Island Students.

Funding

For full details of the University's financial support packages including eligibility criteria, please visit our fees and funding page

Students also need to consider further costs which may include books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation it may be necessary to take out subscriptions to professional bodies and to buy business attire for job interviews.