Sociology (Placement Year) BA Hons - 2021 Entry

Course Structure

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 to complement your main specialism. 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 please visit our Teaching and Learning section.

The following courses do not offer modules outside of the subject area due to the structured nature of the programmes: Architecture, Law, Physics, Engineering, Medicine, Sports and Exercise Science, Biochemistry, Biology, Biomedicine and Biomedical Science.

Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research.

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 support you to make the strongest applications for placement opportunities.

  With the help of our experienced 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 blend of face-to-face sessions and online learning, you will sharpen your job seeking skills such as researching job opportunities, and creating professional application documents. Our online learning platform provides an introduction to psychometric testing, advice on how to set up a LinkedIn profile, and information and support in relation to interviews and assessment centres. You will have the opportunity to 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.

  This module is not credit-bearing, however you will need to pass the module assessment in order to continue on the Placement Year scheme.

• 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 module is organised into different ‘blocks’ that connect 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 module 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 ongoing research undertaken at Lancaster, giving you access to current 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 module 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.

  This full-year module is organised into different ‘blocks’ underpinned by key themes, such as: 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.

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

  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.

  This full-year module is organised into different ‘blocks’ underpinned by themes, such as: 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.

  Over the year, the course is designed to help you build up knowledge and skills. Small-group seminars are used to encourage discussion and debate, and you will be able to choose from a range of topics for your subsequent assignments and assessments.

• 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.

  This full-year 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.

  This module is divided into a number of blocks, focusing on a variety of important topics such as: Media and Representation, Media and Practice, Media and Participation, 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.

  One advantage of this full-year course is that it is carefully designed to help you develop skills at presenting your analysis and ideas in different ways, including in group discussions, 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, and be 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 designed around active learning – helping you to develop skills to do your own research.

  Lectures address cross-cutting methodological debates as well as established methods (such as interviewing, discourse analysis, ethnography and quantitative surveys). Most of your time, however, is spent in seminars where you will try out methods such as interviewing, analysing media texts, and doing observation on campus.

  There are ample opportunities for feedback as you develop ideas for your project-based final assessment, and build diverse skills to support your final year dissertation.

• Sociological Thought for Our Times

  This module introduces the development of social theory from the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century to contemporary debates about the character of knowing. This module will introduce 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. It 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. You will critically consider different current understandings of the role of social theory as privileged knowledge, tool of social control, ideology, and discourse. You will explore critically the theme of everyday life in modernity.

  This module 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

  During your second year you will apply for placement positions. A range of positions will be available in different types of organisations, and you will be able to decide which are of interest to you. While a placement role may not be available in a field or organisation that is directly related to your academic studies, all placement roles offer valuable experience of working at a graduate level and gaining a range of professional skills.

  A placement year provides the 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 can provide, including any formal elements such as Professional Development Reviews (PDR) and opportunities 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 will need to successfully complete the assessment for this module 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.

  The University will use all reasonable effort to support you to find a suitable placement for your studies. If you are unsuccessful in securing a suitable placement for your third year, you will be able to transfer to the equivalent non-placement degree scheme and would continue with your studies at Lancaster, finishing your degree after your third year. The University offers a range of shorter placement and internship opportunities for which you would be welcome to apply.

Optional

• Climate Change and Society

  This 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 you 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?
• Digital Cultures

  This module explores the question of how information and communications technologies, in their multiple forms, figure in our everyday lives. The aim of the module 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 module 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.

• 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's 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.

• Global Families and Intimacy

  Family and intimate relationships form a crucial part of everyday social life. We are born into family and intimate relationships. We establish, maintain and dissolve family and intimate bonds over the life course. We navigate our changing relationship with parents, siblings, and relatives. We establish, maintain and re-establish intimate ties with partners and perhaps children.

  But what are ‘families’? What makes intimate relationships ‘intimate’? How do people date, marry, separate, divorce, and re-partner? How do people ‘do’ families and intimacy in the everyday vicissitudes of match-making, romance, conflicts, care, money, domestic labour, and power? Why do people practise families and intimacy as they do? How do broader social, economic, political and cultural institutions configure our ‘private’ lives? How do the ways in which we relate to family members and intimate others shape the societies in which we live?

  In an increasingly interconnected world, family and intimate relationships — personal and private as they are — are increasingly shaped by social forces operating on a global scale. The changing forms and practices of families and intimacy also help shape social trends as grandeur as globalisation.

  In this module, we explore theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the resilience and transformation of family and intimate relationships in a global context.

• 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 module will introduce theories and practices that have addressed these questions. Examples of topics studied include:

  • 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 have the opportunity to 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.

• Media, Bodies and 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. You will be required to arrange and pay for your own travel to and from any field trips, which are highly recommended but not compulsory. If you are unable to attend then alternatives can be discussed.

  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.

• Racisms and Racial Formation

  This module focuses on racism and racial formations in the world today in both historical and contemporary perspectives. We will consider how ideas of race are historically constructed and look at how racism takes on different forms. Topics may include: the slave trade, colonialism and imperialism; ‘everyday racism’; structural racism; the social construction of ‘whiteness’; anti-racists politics and movements. The aim of the course is for you to gain an overview of various sociological approaches to explaining ‘race’, but also to gain an understanding of how such theories make a difference in the world today.

Year 3

Core

• Work Based Learning Placement

  As well as developing skills and experience that are specific to your placement position and industry, your placement year should 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.

  During your placement year, although you will be working away from the University campus, you will be able to be in regular contact with other students via our online learning platform and with your Lancaster University tutors.

  You will be asked to review your experience on the placement and this will form the module assessment.

  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.

  The University will use all reasonable effort to support you to find a suitable placement for your studies. If you are unsuccessful in securing a suitable placement for your third year, you will be able to transfer to the equivalent non-placement degree scheme and would continue with your studies at Lancaster, finishing your degree after your third year. The University offers a range of shorter placement and internship opportunities for which you would be welcome to apply.

Year 4

Core

• Independent Dissertation Project

  This module provides an opportunity to bring together knowledge and skills you have developed into an 8,000 word dissertation that you complete in your final year. You will have the opportunity to undertake an independent piece of research (under supervision) and to apply your general understanding of the research process to real world examples that are of particular interest to you. There is the option of conducting your dissertation as part of a placement with an appropriate organisation or group.

  You will plan, present and design a dissertation proposal in tutorial groups, with a detailed, step-by-step web-based guide available for extra support. This will help you develop an idea for a research project, work out what is possible, which methods to use, and begin to plan it. You will have opportunities to get feedback from other students and your supervisor during regular meetings. After carrying out your own data collection and analysis, you will then write it up as a dissertation.

• 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 were enhanced by the real-world experience they were able to 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 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.

  This is an assessed module that 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 module we offer the opportunity to have an intimate encounter with one of the classics, texts that are often referred to in the social sciences. The text will change on an annual basis. Past examples include Zygmunt Bauman’s prize-winning book Modernity and the Holocaust (1989) and Jean Baudrillard’s America (1988). The chosen text will be used as a point of departure for exploring some central debates and themes in sociology and media and cultural 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 module investigates gender inequalities within society through a focus on historical and contemporary debates in feminist theory and activism. The module 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 module 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 reflect upon your experience of the research process.

  We will also 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 module you will have been given the opportunity to become familiar with some of the key debates within feminism today. We aim for you to be able to make connections between feminist theory and forms of feminist practice. The module engages you in debate, original research and feminist activism through analysis of varied media including academic texts, advertising, art, film, news media and social media.

• Living with Capitalism: Class, Distribution and Recognition

  Economic inequalities have widened in advanced capitalist countries and yet many people are reluctant even to acknowledge the existence of class. The module analyses how inequalities of class and status are generated, how they relate to other kinds of inequality, and how they are experienced. It explores how the social forms and mechanisms of capitalist economic organisation interact with other sources of inequality, not only producing an unequal distribution of resources and opportunities but affecting the ways in which people value themselves and others. Linking social structure to personal experience, the course applies social theory, including that of Pierre Bourdieu and Henri Lefebvre, to the ‘common sense’ about class and to their people’s everyday experiences.

• 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 some of the many ills of modern western capitalist society, such as alienation, reification and domination; environmental exploitation, pollution and the destruction of nature; media supersaturation, cultural commodification and ideological manipulation; technocracy, instrumentalism and ‘scientism’; violence, genocide and the perpetual threat of nuclear extermination.

  This module provides an opportunity for you to engage with perspectives in the social sciences that 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 module considers not only how to interpret the world in various ways, but also how 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.

  You will explore how notions of 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, the issues raised will be of interest to all students concerned with the effects of nationalisms and ideas of belonging and entitlement, which many countries of the contemporary world are presently debating in the context of the 'Age of migration' (Castles and Miller 1998).

• 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

• Sociology goes to Hollywood

  This module addresses contemporary debates in sociology and cinema 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.

• 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.