Studying diversity at LSE

AN100 Introduction to Social Anthropology 

This course provides a general introduction to Social Anthropology as the comparative study of human societies and cultures. The Michaelmas Term will focus on questions that ordinary people in a wide range of human societies might ask - and that are thus of anthropological significance - including questions about the past and the present, about art, about the animality of mankind, etc. The Lent term will address institutions and concepts that shape society in various contexts including: love and kinship, space, place and belonging, ethnicity and migration and different forms of inequality and hiearchy. 

AN102 Anthropology, Text and Film

This course provides training in the reading and interpretation of visual and textual anthropology. It introduces students to detailed, holistic study of social and cultural practices within particular geographic and historical contexts, and develops skills in bringing together the various elements of cultural and social life analysed by anthropologists. By the end of each term, successful students will have both a detailed knowledge of three important texts, and also have a rounded view of the three settings studied. They will also have developed the capacity to think critically about ethnographic writing and film-making. In addition, the course aims to enable students to examine in detail the process by which ethnographic texts are produced. The course brings students to a closer understanding of anthropological fieldwork and evidence, and the way in which it relates to the forms of knowledge and insight generated by other genres of social scientific enquiry, documentary, and art. Students will usually read three book-length ethnographic accounts (or the equivalent) per term, and will study a film (or pictorial, architectural or other visual material) associated with each text.

AN200 The Anthropology of Kinship, Sex and Gender 

It aims to equip students with the analytical tools to engage in theoretical debates concerning core concepts such as 'kinship', 'marriage', 'gender', 'sex', 'the person', and the relationship between 'nature' and 'culture', as well as exploring how the experiences of kinship, sex and gender vary according to the regimes of politics, law and materiality in which they are embedded. 

AN205  The Anthropology of Melanesia 

This course provides an introduction to selected themes in the anthropology of the region in the Southwest Pacific Ocean known as Melanesia.  It gives students a grounding in the contemporary anthropology of the region, primarily through a close reading of three book-length ethnographies. These ethnographies not only provide students with focused accounts of three very different contexts in Melanesia, they also address histories, dynamics, and concerns familiar to people living throughout the region.  Furthermore, because the three authors draw on different intellectual antecedents and disciplinary traditions, their work provides an entree into the most influential theoretical debates animating Pacific anthropology today. Topics to be traced throughout the course include personhood and bodies, kinship and sociality, religion and cosmology, technology and infrastructure, development, globalization, and the state.

AN223 The Anthropology of South East Asia 

By providing a strong grounding in regional ethnographic materials, this course will equip students to critically evaluate such contributions and to consider possible further contributions that studies of Southeast Asia might make to anthropological debates. The course will also examine how anthropologists have responded to the interpretive challenges presented by selected aspects of Southeast Asia’s social and political life, such as the legacies of mass violence (e.g. the Cambodian genocide, the Vietnam War, or Indonesia’s massacre of suspected communists), its ethnic and religious pluralism, and the impact of international tourism. 

AN226 Political and Legal Anthropology

The anthropological analysis of political and legal institutions as revealed in relevant theoretical debates and with reference to selected ethnography. The development of political and legal anthropology and their key concepts including forms of authority; forms of knowledge and power; political competition and conflict; colonial transformation of indigenous norms; writing legal ethnography of the 'other'; folk concepts of justice; the theory of legal pluralism; accommodation of religious practices in secular laws of European states.

AN237 The Anthropology of Development 

The anthropology of planning and policy; actor-centred perspectives on development; NGOs and participatory approaches; microcredit and gender; and religion and development, are among the topics explored. 

AN238 Anthropology and Human Rights 

The tension between respect for 'local cultures' and 'universal rights' is a pressing concern within human rights activism. For well over two decades, anthropologists have been increasingly involved in these discussions, working to situate their understandings of cultural relativism within a broader framework of social justice. This course explores the contributions of anthropology to the theoretical and practical concerns of human rights work. The term begins by reading a number of key human rights documents and theoretical texts. These readings are followed by selections in anthropology on the concepts of relativism and culture as well as other key frameworks, such as identity and violence. 

AN240 Investigating the Philippines: New Approaches and Ethnographic Contexts 

The course will be framed within the colonial, religious and social history of the archipelago, and will consider both new interpretations of Philippine history, and topics on contemporary social issues, as well as using classic works on the Philippines. Topics in any year are likely to be drawn from the following list (although obviously only ten topics can be offered in one year) ; Migration, 'mail-order' brides, and the Philippine diaspora ; New religious movements: Philippine colonialism and the processes of conversion: Healing, spirit possession, midwifery and local medicine: The contemporary Catholic Church; Violence in the Philippines; Ecology, landscape and environmental politics: Kinship and its transformations; Gender, Philippine queer theory and Philippine transvestitism: Ritual, drama and local performance traditions: Philippine architecture and material culture.: Philippine cinema: Colonial politics, tribal politics and issues of self-representation: Magic, sorcery and "anitismo"; Tourism, symbolic economies and the impact of international capitalism. 

AN247 The Anthropology of Ontology 

In Western thought, the study of the nature of being itself (Greek ontos), including theories about how things come into being and how they are related to one another, is known as ontology. Building on, but broadening the scope of this Western tradition, the growing anthropological literature on questions of being seeks to document ethnographically and model theoretically the many different ontologies, or lived realities, that shape social practice in diverse historical, geographic, and cultural contexts. Through ethnographic readings from such contexts as Aboriginal Australia, Amazonia, Central Asia, China, Melanesia, Native Alaska, Polynesia, and the history of science, the course takes a comparative approach to the exploration of different ontologies and their relationship to practice, cultural change, ethics, and social conflict. 

AN250 - The Anthropology of South Asia 

This course will aim to address issues of citizenship, inequality, political participation and democratic governance in rural and urban India. The course will cover both classic and current literature and weekly sessions will be organised thematically. We will start by looking at Indias place in the world as a democracy and emerging economy and the many paradoxes that the country throws up - alongside some of the highest rates of economic growth, India also has one of the lowest performances on development indicators; despite 40% adult illiteracy, India has among the highest voter turnout rates in the world; despite local institutions having the least power compared to state level or the central government, ordinary people feel most invested in local elections; India remains largely rural yet India will hold the largest urban population in the world in less than ten years and so on. In order to understand these paradoxes, it is essential that issues of caste and class be examined in some detail, through the anthropological literature produced on these topics over the past 60 years or so. The changing caste dynamics will be examined through everyday practices of discrimination, violence and endogamy as well as institutional innovations of affirmative action for jobs and education. Class relations have also dramatically changed with land reforms in rural India as well as a substantial middle class has emerged in urban India. Economic reforms introduced since the 1990s have altered modes of retail and consumption in both urban and rural India creating new inequalities and entrenching old ones. In the political arena, these changing practices and dynamics have led to a democratic upsurge from below, leading to a greater participation in the electoral process by members of the lower castes and classes of India. 

AN277 Topics in the Anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa

This course gives students a critical understanding of ethnographic and theoretical writing on sub-Saharan Africa. Grounded in some classic debates around tradition and modernity (kinship-based polities vs states; studies on occult knowledge vs rationally-oriented political economy approaches; relationality and communality vs developmentally-oriented progress; ‘objective’ class vs forms of identification such as tribe or race), it explores questions about how the sub-continent’s societies orient themselves, and respond to new precarities, in a postcolonial and neoliberal age. Are there specifically African forms of knowledge – and what is the role of the occult? What is postcolonial about the ‘postcolony’? Do youth have a future of work in post-industrial Africa, or are familial or welfare dependencies the only way forward? Is Europe ‘evolving towards Africa’, as has been maintained?

AN301 The Anthropology of Religion   

This course covers selected topics in the anthropology of religion, focusing upon relevant theoretical debates. In the Michaelmas term, the focus will also be on understanding through specific ethnographic and empirical case-studies, the ways in which lived religious practice, and the understanding of religion, get constituted inside and outside ‘Western’ and modern contexts. We will also pay attention to cases in which (as in all post-colonial settings, and in relation to so-called fundamentalisms) ‘Western’ and the ‘non-Western’ definitions are emerging in interplay with each other, including their relation to understandings of modernity and the secular. Current approaches to and reconsiderations of classic topics in the anthropology of religion are also presented; these may include  ritual, belief,  spirit mediumship, relations with the dead, sacrifice, and the fetish. In the Lent term, we will consider topics such as shamanism, cargo cults, initiation, witchcraft and sorcery, cosmology, and human-nonhuman relations, primarily with reference to ongoing transformations of the indigenous traditions of Melanesia, Africa, Amazonia, Australia, and the circumpolar north. Recurring themes will be: transformations in the definition of ‘religion’ in relation to ‘science’; the nature of rationality; and the extent to which anthropology itself can be either – or both – a religious and a scientific quest to experience the wonder of unknown otherness. 

AN402 The Anthropology of Religion 

This course covers selected topics in the anthropology of religion, focusing upon relevant theoretical debates. In the Michaelmas term, the focus will also be on understanding through specific ethnographic and empirical case-studies, the ways in which lived religious practice, and the understanding of religion, get constituted inside and outside ‘Western’ and modern contexts. We will also pay attention to cases in which (as in all post-colonial settings, and in relation to so-called fundamentalisms) ‘Western’ and the ‘non-Western’ definitions are emerging in interplay with each other, including their relation to understandings of modernity and the secular. Current approaches to and reconsiderations of classic topics in the anthropology of religion are also presented; these may include ritual, belief, spirit mediumship, relations with the dead, sacrifice, and the fetish. A recurrent theme will be the relationship between religion and ‘modernity’. In the Lent term, we will consider topics such as shamanism, cargo cults, initiation, witchcraft and sorcery, cosmology, and human-nonhuman relations, primarily with reference to ongoing transformations of the indigenous traditions of Melanesia, Africa, Amazonia, Australia, and the circumpolar north.  Recurring themes will be: transformations in the definition of ‘religion’ in relation to ‘science’; the nature of rationality; and the extent to which anthropology itself can be either – or both – a religious and a scientific quest to experience the wonder of unknown otherness.

AN405 The Anthropology of Kinship, Sex and Gender  

The course charts the history of anthropological debates on kinship, relatedness, sex and gender, and familiarises students with a range of contemporary approaches to these themes, placing ethnographic materials into a critical dialogue with recent developments in feminist theory, queer theory, the anthropology of colonialism, cognitive science, and psychoanalysis. 

AN420 The Anthropology of Southeast Asia 

The alleged distinctiveness of Southeast Asian gender relations, political leadership, and experiences of self and emotion have led to ethnographic studies of the region making major contributions to the anthropology of the state, sovereignty, globalisation, gender, identity, violence, and mental health. By providing a strong grounding in regional ethnographic materials, this course will equip students to critically evaluate such contributions and to consider possible further contributions that studies of Southeast Asia might make to anthropological debates. The course will also examine how anthropologists have responded to the interpretive challenges presented by selected aspects of Southeast Asia’s social and political life, such as the legacies of mass violence (e.g. the Cambodian genocide, the Vietnam War, or Indonesia’s massacre of suspected communists), its ethnic and religious pluralism, and the impact of international tourism. 

AN436 The Anthropology of Development 

From anthropological work which seeks pragmatic engagement to that which deconstructs development as an oppressive and power laden discourse, the course aims to give students a broad background to the field. Topics covered include the role of the state, participation and farmer first approaches; gender and development; development as discourse and 'aidnography'; neo liberalism and global capital; corporate social responsibility; markets and micro credit; and the relationship between 'tradition' and modernity. 

AN439  Anthropology and Human Rights 

The tension between respect for 'local cultures' and 'universal rights' is a pressing concern within human rights activism. For well over two decades, anthropologists have been increasingly involved in these discussions, working to situate their understandings of cultural relativism within a broader framework of social justice. This course explores the contributions of anthropology to the theoretical and practical concerns of human rights work. The term begins by reading a number of key human rights documents and theoretical texts. These readings are followed by selections in anthropology on the concepts of relativism and culture as well as other key frameworks, such as identity and violence. Students will then be asked to relate their understandings of human rights to the historical and cultural dimensions of particular cases, addressing such questions as the nature of humanity, historical conceptions of the individual, colonialism and imperialism, the limits of relativism, and the relationship between human rights in theory and in practice. Case studies focus on Africa and Latin America. 

AN444 Investigating the Philippines: New Approaches and Ethnographic Contexts 

The course will be framed within the colonial, religious and social history of the archipelago, and will consider both new interpretations of Philippine history, and topics on contemporary social issues, as well as using classic works on the Philippines. Migration, 'mail-order' brides, and the Philippine diaspora ; New religious movements: Philippine colonialism and the processes of conversion: Healing, spirit possession, midwifery and local medicine: The contemporary Catholic Church; Violence in the Philippines; Ecology, landscape and environmental politics: Kinship and its transformations; Gender, Philippine queer theory and Philippine transvestitism: Ritual, drama and local performance traditions: Philippine architecture and material culture.: Philippine cinema: Colonial politics, tribal politics and issues of self-representation: Magic, sorcery and "anitismo"; Tourism, symbolic economies and the impact of international capitalism. 

AN447 China in Comparative Perspective  

The main object of the course is to help students develop ways of putting the politics, economy and social life of China into a framework in which they can compare and juxtapose it with other major examples. Students will bring whatever theoretical approaches they have already learned and are continuing to learn in the disciplines they bring to the course. They will be expected to demonstrate and explain how they are using them as well as to listen to other approaches and disciplinary perspectives. The topics for each week are as follows: 1. Introduction; 2. The Imperial Bureaucracy; 3. Great and Little Tradition; 4. Chinese religions; 5. Long-term history and political economy comparisons; 6. Economic and demographic transitions; 7. Nationalism and the Modern State; 8. Revolution and Maoism; 9. Socialism; 10. Postsocialism; 11. The Countryside; 12. The City; 13. Family and Gender; 14. Property rights; 15. Consumerism; 16. School and ideology; 17. Civil society; 18. The Rule of Law; 19. Democracy and Political Reform; 20. Transnational China. 

AN461 The Anthropology of Ontology 

In Western thought, the study of the nature of being itself (Greek ontos), including theories about how things come into being and how they are related to one another, is known as ontology. Building on, but broadening the scope of this Western tradition, the growing anthropological literature on questions of being seeks to document ethnographically and model theoretically the many different ontologies, or lived realities, that shape social practice in diverse historical, geographic, and cultural contexts. Through ethnographic readings from such contexts as Aboriginal Australia, Amazonia, Central Asia, China, Melanesia, Native Alaska, Polynesia, and the history of science, the course takes a comparative approach to the exploration of different ontologies and their relationship to practice, cultural change, ethics, and social conflict. 

AN250 The Anthropology of South Asia 

This course will aim to address issues of citizenship, inequality, political participation and democratic governance in rural and urban India. The course will cover both classic and current literature and weekly sessions will be organised thematically. We will start by looking at Indias place in the world as a democracy and emerging economy and the many paradoxes that the country throws up - alongside some of the highest rates of economic growth, India also has one of the lowest performances on development indicators; despite 40% adult illiteracy, India has among the highest voter turnout rates in the world; despite local institutions having the least power compared to state level or the central government, ordinary people feel most invested in local elections; India remains largely rural yet India will hold the largest urban population in the world in less than ten years and so on. In order to understand these paradoxes, it is essential that issues of caste and class be examined in some detail, through the anthropological literature produced on these topics over the past 60 years or so. The changing caste dynamics will be examined through everyday practices of discrimination, violence and endogamy as well as institutional innovations of affirmative action for jobs and education. Class relations have also dramatically changed with land reforms in rural India as well as a substantial middle class has emerged in urban India. Economic reforms introduced since the 1990s have altered modes of retail and consumption in both urban and rural India creating new inequalities and entrenching old ones. In the political arena, these changing practices and dynamics have led to a democratic upsurge from below, leading to a greater participation in the electoral process by members of the lower castes and classes of India.

AN402 The Anthropology of Religion 

This course covers selected topics in the anthropology of religion, focusing upon relevant theoretical debates. In the Michaelmas term, the focus will also be on understanding through specific ethnographic and empirical case-studies, the ways in which lived religious practice, and the understanding of religion, get constituted inside and outside ‘Western’ and modern contexts. We will also pay attention to cases in which (as in all post-colonial settings, and in relation to so-called fundamentalisms) ‘Western’ and the ‘non-Western’ definitions are emerging in interplay with each other, including their relation to understandings of modernity and the secular. Current approaches to and reconsiderations of classic topics in the anthropology of religion are also presented; these may include ritual, belief, spirit mediumship, relations with the dead, sacrifice, and the fetish. A recurrent theme will be the relationship between religion and ‘modernity’. In the Lent term, we will consider topics such as shamanism, cargo cults, initiation, witchcraft and sorcery, cosmology, and human-nonhuman relations, primarily with reference to ongoing transformations of the indigenous traditions of Melanesia, Africa, Amazonia, Australia, and the circumpolar north.  Recurring themes will be: transformations in the definition of ‘religion’ in relation to ‘science’; the nature of rationality; and the extent to which anthropology itself can be either – or both – a religious and a scientific quest to experience the wonder of unknown otherness. 

AN405 The Anthropology of Kinship, Sex and Gender  

The course charts the history of anthropological debates on kinship, relatedness, sex and gender, and familiarises students with a range of contemporary approaches to these themes, placing ethnographic materials into a critical dialogue with recent developments in feminist theory, queer theory, the anthropology of colonialism, cognitive science, and psychoanalysis. 

AN420 The Anthropology of Southeast Asia 

This course will introduce students to selected theoretical and ethnographic issues in the history and contemporary life of Southeast Asia (including Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam). The alleged distinctiveness of Southeast Asian gender relations, political leadership, and experiences of self and emotion have led to ethnographic studies of the region making major contributions to the anthropology of the state, sovereignty, globalisation, gender, identity, violence, and mental health. By providing a strong grounding in regional ethnographic materials, this course will equip students to critically evaluate such contributions and to consider possible further contributions that studies of Southeast Asia might make to anthropological debates. The course will also examine how anthropologists have responded to the interpretive challenges presented by selected aspects of Southeast Asia’s social and political life, such as the legacies of mass violence (e.g. the Cambodian genocide, the Vietnam War, or Indonesia’s massacre of suspected communists), its ethnic and religious pluralism, and the impact of international tourism. 

AN436 The Anthropology of Development 

From anthropological work which seeks pragmatic engagement to that which deconstructs development as an oppressive and power laden discourse, the course aims to give students a broad background to the field. Topics covered include the role of the state, participation and farmer first approaches; gender and development; development as discourse and 'aidnography'; neo liberalism and global capital; corporate social responsibility; markets and micro credit; and the relationship between 'tradition' and modernity.  

AN439  Anthropology and Human Rights 

The tension between respect for 'local cultures' and 'universal rights' is a pressing concern within human rights activism. For well over two decades, anthropologists have been increasingly involved in these discussions, working to situate their understandings of cultural relativism within a broader framework of social justice. This course explores the contributions of anthropology to the theoretical and practical concerns of human rights work. The term begins by reading a number of key human rights documents and theoretical texts. These readings are followed by selections in anthropology on the concepts of relativism and culture as well as other key frameworks, such as identity and violence. Students will then be asked to relate their understandings of human rights to the historical and cultural dimensions of particular cases, addressing such questions as the nature of humanity, historical conceptions of the individual, colonialism and imperialism, the limits of relativism, and the relationship between human rights in theory and in practice. Case studies focus on Africa and Latin America. 

AN444 Investigating the Philippines: New Approaches and Ethnographic Contexts 

The course will be framed within the colonial, religious and social history of the archipelago, and will consider both new interpretations of Philippine history, and topics on contemporary social issues, as well as using classic works on the Philippines. Migration, 'mail-order' brides, and the Philippine diaspora ; New religious movements: Philippine colonialism and the processes of conversion: Healing, spirit possession, midwifery and local medicine: The contemporary Catholic Church; Violence in the Philippines; Ecology, landscape and environmental politics: Kinship and its transformations; Gender, Philippine queer theory and Philippine transvestitism: Ritual, drama and local performance traditions: Philippine architecture and material culture.: Philippine cinema: Colonial politics, tribal politics and issues of self-representation: Magic, sorcery and "anitismo"; Tourism, symbolic economies and the impact of international capitalism. 

AN447 China in Comparative Perspective 

The main object of the course is to help students develop ways of putting the politics, economy and social life of China into a framework in which they can compare and juxtapose it with other major examples. Students will bring whatever theoretical approaches they have already learned and are continuing to learn in the disciplines they bring to the course. They will be expected to demonstrate and explain how they are using them as well as to listen to other approaches and disciplinary perspectives. The topics for each week are as follows: 1. Introduction; 2. The Imperial Bureaucracy; 3. Great and Little Tradition; 4. Chinese religions; 5. Long-term history and political economy comparisons; 6. Economic and demographic transitions; 7. Nationalism and the Modern State; 8. Revolution and Maoism; 9. Socialism; 10. Postsocialism; 11. The Countryside; 12. The City; 13. Family and Gender; 14. Property rights; 15. Consumerism; 16. School and ideology; 17. Civil society; 18. The Rule of Law; 19. Democracy and Political Reform; 20. Transnational China. 

AN461 The Anthropology of Ontology 

In Western thought, the study of the nature of being itself (Greek ontos), including theories about how things come into being and how they are related to one another, is known as ontology. Building on, but broadening the scope of this Western tradition, the growing anthropological literature on questions of being seeks to document ethnographically and model theoretically the many different ontologies, or lived realities, that shape social practice in diverse historical, geographic, and cultural contexts. Through ethnographic readings from such contexts as Aboriginal Australia, Amazonia, Central Asia, China, Melanesia, Native Alaska, Polynesia, and the history of science, the course takes a comparative approach to the exploration of different ontologies and their relationship to practice, cultural change, ethics, and social conflict. 

AN466 Understanding Religion in the Contemporary World  

There will be a focus on contemporary issues in the study of religion including the organization of religion in a range of different societies, its relationship to broad social change including the rise of modernity/capitalism, global political-economy, and its codification in institutions such as the family, law, gender and the state.  

AN467 The Anthropology of South Asia 

This course will aim to address issues of citizenship, inequality, political participation and democratic governance in rural and urban India. The course will cover both classic and current literature and weekly sessions will be organised thematically. We will start by looking at India's place in the world as a democracy and emerging economy and the many paradoxes that the country throws up - alongside some of the highest rates of economic growth, India also has one of the lowest performances on development indicators; despite 40% adult illiteracy, India has among the highest voter turnout rates in the world; despite local institutions having the least power compared to state level or the central government, ordinary people feel most invested in local elections; India remains largely rural yet India will hold the largest urban population in the world in less than ten years...and so on. In order to understand these paradoxes, it is essential that issues of caste and class be examined in some detail, through the anthropological literature produced on these topics over the past 60 years or so. The changing caste dynamics will be examined through everyday practices of discrimination, violence and endogamy as well as institutional innovations of affirmative action for jobs and education. Class relations have also dramatically changed with land reforms in rural India as well as a substantial middle class has emerged in urban India. Economic reforms introduced since the 1990s have altered modes of retail and consumption in both urban and rural India creating new inequalities and entrenching old ones. In the political arena, these changing practices and dynamics have led to a democratic upsurge from below, leading to a greater participation in the electoral process by members of the lower castes and classes of India. 

AN469 The Anthropology of Amazonia 

The course will introduce students to selected themes in the anthropology of Amazonia. It will provide a grounding in the ethnographic literature of the region while seeking to engage with current theoretical debates, highlighting their potential importance to the discipline of anthropology. Topics to be covered include history, myth and colonialism; indigenous social movements; sexuality and gender; cosmology and shamanism; trade and inter-ethnic relations; language and power; illness, well-being and death. Students will be encouraged to reflect on the broader relationship between ethnography and theory, to challenge common stereotypes of Amazonia and its inhabitants, and to explore ways in which the region has inscribed itself on the imagination of anthropologists and laypersons alike. 

AN470 Anthropology of Religion: Current Themes and Theories 

Through readings in contemporary ethnography and theory, this course will explore phenomena and questions classically framed as the anthropology of religion.  We will consider topics such as shamanism, cargo cults, initiation, witchcraft and sorcery, cosmology, and human-nonhuman relations, primarily with reference to ongoing transformations of the indigenous traditions of Melanesia, Africa, Amazonia, Australia, and the circumpolar north.  Recurring themes will be: transformations in the definition of ‘religion’ in relation to ‘science’; the nature of rationality; and the extent to which anthropology itself can be either – or both – a religious and a scientific quest to experience the wonder of unknown otherness. 

The Department of Anthropology note that diversity is a theme that runs through all courses offered. You can explore the Undergraduate course guides here, and the Graduate course guides here.

EH408 International Migration, 1500-2000: From Slavery to Asylum 

The course examines major issues in international migration over the last 500 years. The course will consider free and coerced migration in the early modern period, the emergence (and eventual decline) of mass migration in the later 19th century, and the rise of "managed" migration in the post World War II period. The course will examine the economic foundations of indentured servitude and slavery in the early modern period, and the interactions between these two types of labour. The contribtion of economic and demographic forces to the rise of mass migration on destination and source labour markets, the determinants of immigrant destination choice, and the interplay between migration and exogenous crises in Europe. In the post World War II environment, the focus will be on the political impact of mass migration on developing economies in the present day. In this part of the course, we will consider how historical episodes of migration can inform the present day. 

EC410 Public Economics for Public Policy  

Topics include issues of equity and efficiency and alternative theories of the role of the state. Models of public goods and externalities, including environmental policy. Who really pays taxes: issues of tax incidence and tax evasion. Income inequality, poverty alleviation and the role of welfare programmes in theory and in practice. Health and education policy. The effects of taxes and transfers on labour supply and migration; The optimal taxation of commodities and incomes. 

EC423 Labour Economics 

Topics include: labour supply, labour demand, market power of firms and workers, wage determination, unemployment, minimum wage, compensating differentials, returns to schooling, discrimination, role of non-cognitive skills in the labour market, and immigration. 

EC454 Development Economics 

These include political economy, trade liberalization, growth, access to finance, technology adoption, education, health, infrastructure, property rights, land reform, gender, environment, mass media and political accountability.  

EC465 Economic Growth, Development and Capitalism in Historical Perspective 

Topics at the forefront of economics and economic history will be covered. These include political economy, technological change, economic growth, education, demography, the economics of law and property rights, gender, culture, and the distribution of income.  

EU424 The Idea of Europe 

Among other topics, students will examine the origins of Europe in Ancient Greece and Christendom; the idea of the territorial and historical ends of Europe; the distinction between 'civilisation' and 'barbarism'; the emergence of European rationalism; the idea of 'The West'; the idea of 'The Other' in the formation of a European identity; and the development of the idea of universal human rights. All these ideas will be assessed for their role in the development of the 'European Project' since World War 2.  

EU457 Ethnic Diversity and International Society 

This course will consider problems and practices of ethnic diversity in a world of nation-states including the rights of minorities and migrants, self-determination, ethnic cleansing and genocide, humanitarian intervention, and the role of the media in (de)constructing narratives of difference. In analysing these issues, particular attention will be paid to processes of securitization, desecuritization and security management. 

EU458 Identity, Community and the Problem of Minorities 

This course is concerned with the politics of membership and belonging in contemporary states. The securitization of minorities and migrants has coincided with a growing rejection of multiculturalism in favour of new discourses that place a greater emphasis on social cohesion predicated upon a shared nation-state identity. This course will examine the ways in which different constructions of membership and belonging underscore contested narratives on diversity and the competing policy responses this has engendered. 

EU463 European Human Rights Law 

This course will offer an introduction to the law of the Convention, in particular by studying and critically analysing the case law on certain important rights. In the final sessions we will take a more abstract perspective and study cutting-edge scholarship on the theory of European human rights law. Topics include: An introduction to the European Convention. Positive and negative obligations in Europe and the U.S. Proportionality and the margin of appreciation. Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the issue of deportation and extradition. The right to private life and the protection of morals. The right to freedom of religion and the issues of religious dress and religious symbols. The right to freedom of expression, especially: blasphemous speech, obscene speech and hate speech. The right to freedom of association and 'militant democracy'. Theories of European human rights law.  

EU464 International Migration: EU Policies and Politics 

This course examines the management of ‘unwanted migration’ to Europe.  In particular, it deals with the European Union’s governance of migratory flows of migrants such as asylum seekers and irregular migrants whose immigration states often seek to prevent or discourage.  As the willingness of sovereign states to advance global governance in this area remains very low and unilateral national policy-responses are increasingly seen as limited in their effectiveness, interest in regional governance has grown.  The European Union is without any doubt the front-runner in developing such regional initiatives.  

EU475 Muslims in Europe 

Muslims are a well established minority in Europe, constituting approximately 5% of the European population. This course embraces an anthropological approach focuses on diverse experiences of Muslims in different West European countries, such as the UK, Germany, France where they came as migrants, and in East European countries, such as Bulgaria and Bosnia, where they are indigenous populations. We will especially focus on how Muslim life is heavily shaped by questions fundamental to European politics such as secularism, citizenship, racism, and gender relations. The last section of the class will be devoted to transnational connections Muslim communities in Europe have with Muslim communities outside Europe.  

GI200 Gender, Politics and Civil Society 

The making of the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’; the ways in which ideas about these identities were formed by moral discourses ; the emergence of cults of domesticity and family life. The campaigns and the circumstances that changed ideas about gender and the making of the gendered citizen. The part that ideas, and ideals, about citizenship and the nation were informed by expectations about gender. Politicising gender : the ways in which gender difference became a matter of politics and access to power. Fighting for, and against, transformations of gender roles and identities. The British campaign for suffrage and its connections with distinct traditions of social reform. Representing gender : accounts , visual and written, of women and men; changing views about the body and sexuality . Sexuality and religion, the expression of symbolic power.  

GI402 Gender, Knowledge and Research Practice: Research Workshop 

This course introduces students to the central issues at stake in designing and carrying out gender research at graduate and postgraduate level and beyond. The course maps the history of debates about gender and feminist research, and asks what difference it makes to take gender as the subject or object of research. Of particular concern are the ethical and political issues arising from doing gender research with respect to representing others and seeking to influence and engage with broader social contexts. Students will be introduced to debates about subjectivity and objectivity, the relationship between researcher and researched, and asked to evaluate the usefulness of particular methods and approaches. 

GI403 Gender and Media Representation 

This course aims to enable students: to think critically about representations of gender in a range of different media; to apply a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the media; to examine changing representations of gender in the context of wider social changes and to explore questions concerning the interpretation and use of different media formats and content. The course focuses on examples largely drawn from Anglo-American media and usually includes topics such as news media and gender; gendered approaches to contemporary cinema; online environments and gender and critically explores terms such as 'postfeminism' in relation to media content. The course also considers themes such as the nature of contemporary celebrity and questions of media representations of gender in relation to dimensions such as sexuality, class, race, age and (dis)ability. 

GI407 Globalisation, Gender and Development 

This course will provide students with a thorough knowledge of two key interconnected and intersecting literatures: gender and development and gender and globalisation. The first part of the course provides students with an introduction to these fields of study; considers contemporary theories of gender, development and globalisation alongside critical engagements and understandings of development.  The second half of the course deals with theories relating to policy, politics and power in the field of gender and international development.  

GI409 Gender, Globalisation and Development: An Introduction 

This course will provide students with a thorough knowledge of two key interconnected and intersecting literatures: gender and development and gender and globalisation. The first part of the course provides students with an introduction to these fields of study; considers contemporary theories of gender, development and globalisation alongside critical engagements and understandings of development. A particular focus is on how globalisation is associated with widening social, spatial, gender and racial inequalities, illustrated by case studies of  global integration and uneven development, changing working patterns and gender divisions, and the association between rapid economic change and continuing social divisions. 

GI411Gender, Postcoloniality, Development: Critical Perspectives and New Directions 

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the growing body of scholarship that critically interrogates contemporary gender relations at various postcolonial sites. . It provides an opportunity for students to encounter and engage with canonical works within postcolonial theory alongside those of gender, feminist and critical theory in order to examine the historical and contemporary policy and practices in relation to gender. As such, the course combines a study of the historical/textual/cultural/political and philosophical in relation to and alongside the political-economic  in order to explore  questions of development, subalternity, orientalism, neoliberalism,, globalisation,  human rights,  humanitarianism, representation, agency and globalisation. Finally, the course also points to new directions in contemporary theoretical thinking that have arisen in the wake of and in response to postcolonial scholarship  for e.g. writings on Empire and Multitude,  Cosmopolitics/Cosmopolitanism, Ethics and Transnationalism with a view to explore how these might open up new ways of conceptually capturing and imagining our present. 

GI413 Gender and Militarisation 

This course will provide students with an overview of militarisation and its gendered basis and effects. Students will be introduced to social critiques of militarisation; the concept of militarised masculinities; different gendered experiences of conflict, violence and war; 'diversity' issues within a variety of national militaries; representations of gender and terror; peacekeeping; and the politics of peace and anti-militarisation activities. 

GI414 Gender and Social Policy: Theory and Practice 

This course aims to equip students with the knowledge and theoretical tools that will allow them to critically engage with social policy issues and debates.  It begins with an overview of theoretical explanations for the structure and evolution of social policies in a wide range of settings. Feminist perspectives on welfare are explored, while notions of justice, citizenship and inequality are applied as analytic tools to critically examine real world social policy issues such as micro-credit, conditional cash transfers (CCT), and the parental leave policies. The use of gender as a category of analysis is examined and attention is paid to the potentially modifying effects of categories such as race and class. Policy-making and political institutions are analysed, in part, to illustrate how assumptions (or aspirations) about gender roles and the form, function and responsibilities of the family are reflected in the framing, design, and evaluation of policies. The course also explores the gendered impact of economic on labour market opportunities and inequalities in access to economic resources. 

GI417 Gender, Population and Policy 

Although population change cannot be described, understood, or responded to without taking into account the wider -- and profoundly gendered -- social, political and economic context,  gender theory has had relatively limited impact on the development and direction of demographic research. This course explores the implications both theoretically and practically. Examining the complex inter-relationship between population issues and policy, students will develop an appreciation of the potential contribution and impact that a feminist and gendered perspective has to offer. It will also explore the ways that feminists can use demographic tools and research to redress social and gender injustices. 

GI418 Feminist Economics and Policy: An Introduction 

Recent decades have seen the emergence of gender equality as a key policy concern and Feminist Economics as a sub discipline. The purpose of the course is to consider the provenance and key tenets of Feminist Economics and how these ideas have been used to provide analytical understandings of gender issues with respect to economic processes and policies operating at macro and micro levels. At the macro level the course will analyse the implications of contemporary economic and financial governance from a gender perspective. At the micro level the course will engage with the economic foundations and analyses of gender inequality within employment and within the household focusing on wage and productivity differences and the gender division between ‘productive’ and ‘reproductive’ work. Attention to gender as economically significant marker of identity will be paid in the context of,  intersectionality with other lines of difference, including race, social class, sexuality and migrant status. Individual well-being is also influenced by the level of development and transnational economic relations. Accordingly, the course aims to bridge the macro-micro divide by drawing together the gendered critique of existing biases in economic thinking and provide an analytical foundation for alternative approaches to policies that aim to contribute towards securing sustainable development and gender-equitable well-being. 

GI420 Globalisation, Gender and Development: Theorising Policy and Practice 

This course will provide students with a thorough knowledge of theoretical and policy debates in the field of gender and development at local, national and international levels in an era of rapid globalisation. The first deals with theories relating to policy, politics and power in the field of gender and international development. This is followed by three separate blocks, each organised around the feminist struggles over recognition, redistribution and representation as they play out in relation to various policy issues, including gender-based violence, the care economy, gender mainstreaming, social protection, land rights, gender quotas and collective action.

GI421 Sexuality, Gender and Culture 

This course introduces students to historical and theoretical components of the field, and explores case studies of the development of sexual cultures, identities and social movements from the late 19th century to the present. The course provides theoretical foundations in this area through a case-study based approach. Indicative topics include: colonialism and sexuality, sexualisation of culture; abortion and migration; transgender studies and disability; queer theory and social movements.

GI422 Sexuality, Gender and Globalisation 

This course takes a case-study approach to questions of sexuality, gender and culture (in the first term) and a broad range of sexual formations in relation to nation and globalization (in the second). The full unit considers a variety of ways in which sexuality is central to the social sciences in today’s globalised world.  

GI423 Globalisation and Sexuality 

Starting from the assumption that 'sexuality matters' in today's globalised world, the course considers histories, theories and contexts within which the role of sexuality is pivotal. Since sexual identities, rights and health are central to citizenship and to how nations and states relate to one another contemporarily, this course combines theory and case study to think through how as well as why sexuality has become so important.  

GI424 Gender Theories in the Modern World: An Interdisciplinary Approach 

The course aims to enable students to: become familiar with the fullest range of gender theories with particular attention to the intersections of gender, sexuality and race; develop a critical appreciation of these different theories of gender; use gender theories to inform their appreciation of existing work in their own disciplines and in an interdisciplinary context; use the analysis of gender relations as a basis for case study evaluation and research.

GI425 Women, Peace and Security 

The course provides a critical examination of peace and security issues affecting women in a global world.  In particular, the course is influenced by the focus of the UN Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda from UNSCR 1325, 2000 onwards, which aims to prevent sexual and gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict settings, through making visible the experiences of women who have often been obscured from political focus and denied legal or other redress.  Consequently, the agenda sets out to increase the participation of women within both the processes of peace and reconstruction and in the security sector more generally.

GY100 Environment, Economy and Society 

The course is divided into three sections. Section 1: Geography and nature; Global and local environmental problems; Urban sustainability and the compact city. Section 2: Economy: The changing location of economic activity, inequalities within and between countries, regions and cities. The rationale, objectives and tools of local and regional development policies in a globalizing world. Section 3: Society: Contested geographies and histories of globalization and contemporary development. Global mobilities, culture and place. Transnational communities. Migration and development. 

GY103 Contemporary Europe 

The course covers issues such as economic integration, competitiveness, cohesion, growth, enlargement, ageing, migration, employment trends, social polarization and the emergence of regionalism and nationalism. Particular stress is laid upon the spatial constitution of these themes, at various levels of geography: supranational, national and subnational (regional) level. 

GY200 Economy, Society and Space 

From a global perspective this course examines the inter-relatedness of economy and society and the spatiality of social and economic phenomena in contemporary societies. Issues covered include: political economy and theories of uneven development; changing working conditions and patterns of inequality at different spatial scales; gentrification and displacement; and urbanisation in comparative perspective. We will examine relationships between economic and social restructuring; the geographies of privilege, exclusion and marginality; as well as responses through urban regeneration, urban renewal and city planning. 

GY202 Introduction to Development in the South 

An introduction to analysing global development,focussing on key development, theories, strategies, problems and trajectories. In Michaelmas Term we cover concepts and ideas of development, colonial development, theories of development including modernization, dependency and post-development, the rise of the neoliberal project, the debt crisis, structural adjustment and PRSPs, participatory development and NGOs. 

GY205 Political Geographies, Policy and Space 

An introduction to the relevance of a geographical perspective for explanation of contemporary political processes, and of a political perspective for explanation of contemporary geographies, at scales from the local to the global. Topics covered include: states; geopolitics; empires and national states; citizenship rights, migration and national 'closure'; nationalism, territory and identity; geographies of elections and representation; democratization; globalisation, neo-liberalism and governance. 

GY301 The Political Geography of Development and the South 

A critical analysis of the politics of contemporary development processes in the South and the global interests which influence them. The course considers development as both practical pursuit and as a series of discourses and representations. 

GY303 The Geography of Gender: Global Perspectives

An analysis of the geography of gender at a global scale covering high income countries, emerging economies and developing nations. The course focuses on the variability of gender roles and relations and their socio-spatial implications in different geographical contexts.

GY325 Environment and Development 

This course explores the complex relationships between development, poverty and the environment. It covers a range of important natural resource and environmental issues in developing countries, and provides students with the necessary tools to critically evaluate how these issues have been addressed by different stakeholders and at different levels of governance. Using concepts and analytical tools grounded in political ecology and economics, the course will examine a range of topics, including: the politics of sustainable development; property rights and governance; the food-energy-water nexus; the resource curse; critical resource issues (including forestry, fresh water, and fisheries); biofuels; and urbanization. 

GY421 Gender and Development: Geographical Perspectives 

An analysis of gender roles, relations and inequalities in developing world regions, with particular emphasis on the variability of these in different geographical contexts, and their intersections with poverty, especially in urban areas. Specific themes include: the incorporation of gender into development analysis and practice; indicators of gender inequality; households and families, domestic inequalities and carework; fertility, family planning and reproductive rights; health, healthcare and housing; gender divisions in urban labour markets; female labour force participation; internal and international migration; Gender and Development (GAD) policy; 'Smart Economics'; female empowerment and participation; girls in GAD;  men and masculinities in GAD; gender, climate change and disasters.  

GY431 Cities, People and Poverty in the South 

The course examines the patterns, processes and implications of urbanisation in developing societies, with particular reference to the survival and well-being of low-income groups, and the variability of urban life and poverty in different geographical contexts. The conceptual and empirical focus of the course revolves around strategies adopted at individual household and community levels to ensure sustainable livelihoods, and the interrelations of grassroots processes with policy interventions on the part of governments, international development agencies and NGOs. Specific themes include: trends in urban development in the 20th and 21st centuries; population and rural-urban migration; shelter and housing; land and tenure; urban services; the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty; the 'urbanisation' of poverty; the 'feminisation of poverty'; poverty reduction strategies; employment and informality in urban labour markets; urban livelihood strategies and economic restructuring; households and gender; women-headed households; health and healthcare; participatory urban governance, civil society, and UN-Habitat agendas past, present and future. 

GY441 The Politics of Housing 

The aim of this course is to examine the politics of housing from a transnational and comparative perspective. The course will link the empirical analyses on housing to theoretical discussions on class, community, gender, ethnicity and design. It will analyse housing issues ranging from informality, homelessness and gated communities to housing tenure, architectural design and housing as a humanitarian tool. This is an interdisciplinary course, drawing upon debates in fields such as Architecture, Urban Planning, Geography, Sociology, Anthropology and Development Studies. 

GY448 Social and Political Aspects of Regional and Urban Planning 

The course will explore the impact of key social and political processes on the activity of urban and regional planning. These processes will be explored at the international, national, and local scale by looking at the impacts of both globalisation and neo-liberalism on the planning of cities and regions. The main focus is on the relationship between planning as a function of governance, urban politics and the market. Key concepts covered in the course include: claims for and against urban planning; and the politics of planning - including community politics and the effect of institutional structures on the nature and form of the planning system. These concepts are supported by an introduction to the development of planning practice (primarily in the UK) and a review of key strands of planning theory. 

GY449 Urban Futures 

The course will critically analyse how the future of cities, and the cities of the future, have been thought about and acted upon in different times and places. Students will learn to adopt a geographical and historical approach to urban futures by exploring how ways of envisioning the future of cities differ across time and space. Treating the future as a social, cultural, and political reality with a profound influence on the present, the course will examine how urban areas are planned, built, governed, and inhabited in anticipation of the city yet to come. Each week will be organised around a particular model for the future of the city: the ideal city, the dystopian city, the modernist city, the (post)colonial city, the capitalist city, the (post)socialist city, the organic city, the global city, and the secure city. These models will be examined through concrete case examples and will enable the discussion of broader theoretical perspectives in urban studies, with a specific focus on the critical analysis of urban futures. Though grounded in urban geography, this course will draw upon texts and other materials from anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, literature, film, philosophy, social theory, architecture, art, and city planning. Its primary objective is to equip students with sophisticated, critical ways of thinking about the future of cities, since doing so has real significance for the kind of city we want to, and eventually will, ourselves inhabit. 

GY459 Urban Theory and Policy in the Global South 

This course aims to provide a grounding in key debates in urban studies and policy with reference to the Global South. It highlights the interconnections between evolving urban ideas and research and policy. Topics include The City and Urban Bias; the State and 'Public' Policy; Social Life of Cities; Gender and Poverty, Inequality, Slums and Elite spaces;  Governance and Participation; Rights to the City; violence and conflict cities. Dedicated lectures will draw from staff research, with particular emphasis on Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, India, The Gambia, South Africa. 

GY464 Race and Space 

This postgraduate course considers the relationship between race and space linking critical race, colonial and postcolonial studies and critical human geography. The question of race cannot be meaningfully delinked from other identity politics such as gender, class, caste and religion, hence, this course studies these in tandem with each other. We consider a series of events at the interface of racial and spatial control, through themes such as  colonialism, immigration, forms of apartheid, segregation and varieties of 'ghettos' and the political economy of incarceration. The course uses social theory to develop a situated, comparative analysis of racial geographies in the contemporary world, . It will also draw on recent work in colonial, postcolonial and critical race studies. The central questions of the course are: How have racial geographies been made, reproduced, and transformed in connected ways, and what critical tools are necessary for the linked work of anti-racism and spatial justice? 

GY467 Global Migration and Development 

The aim of this course is to examine the relationship between migration, diaspora and development with a particular focus on migrants’ and diasporas’ contributions to development in the Global South. The course encourages students to develop a critical understanding of the role of different diasporas in political, social and economic development. This is achieved through (i) a critical consideration of theoretical debates in geography, sociology, anthropology and development studies on diaspora, migration and development, (ii) an engagement with contemporary migration and development policies, (iii) an examination of diasporas' developmental work including economic and social remittances, and political activities. The final part of the course examines these debates in the context of the African diaspora. 

GY480 Remaking China: Geographical Aspects of Development and Disparity 

The recent decades have seen China emerging as one of the most important global economic and political players. The course aims to offer opportunities to gain comprehensive and yet critical insights into China’s development in urban, regional and global dimensions by reflecting upon the significance of China’s role in the world economy as well as the challenges emerging within China. Tentative topics are as follows: China's rise in the global capitalism; Uneven development and regional disparities; Governing China and the role of the state; Speculative urbanisation; Mega-city regions; Gender and China; Factory of the World and work inequalities; Migration, hukou and local citizenship; Public participation and rights activism.

GV247 Theories and Problems of Nationalism 

There are three principal concerns: 1. Theories of nationalism and ethnicity, including  primordialist, ethno-symbolic, modernist and post-modernist approaches.  These will be compared and critiqued. 2. The development of various kinds of nations, nation-states and nationalisms from pre-modern Europe to the global present, and a consideration of various concepts (e.g. civic/ethnic, political/cultural, Asian and African forms of nationalism) frequently used to understand as well as evaluate these historical and contemporary phenomena. 3. Nationalism and transnational politics, including problems of state sovereignty, secession and national self-determination; the European union, globalisation and religious fundamentalism.

GV248 Power and Politics in the Modern World: Comparative Perspectives 

The course will treat a wide variety of themes, including ethnic and political violence, the political impact of natural resources in developing countries, social movements and revolution, the political economy of distribution, and political ideologies.  

GV262 Contemporary Political Theory 

This course provides an advanced introduction to contemporary political theory. The course is divided into two parts. The first focuses on key political concepts, such as liberty, equality, justice, rights, authority and democracy. The second turns to particularly pressing ethical questions characterizing the political domain. Some of these questions arise within the domestic political arena (e.g., civil disobedience; animal rights; respect for minority cultures), others in the international/global one (e.g., global poverty relief; terrorism; global climate change). Although the course will be concept and problem-driven, along the way, students will also be exposed to the views of leading contemporary political theorists, including John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin and many others. This course will provide students with a good grounding in the methods and substantive concerns of contemporary political theory as well as familiarity with the works of major thinkers in the field. 

GV302 Key Themes in the History of Political Thought 

Examples of such themes: different views on the nature of "man" and the consequences for political agency of different perspectives on human reason, will, desire; debates on the origins of law and the purpose of legislation; changing conceptions of justice; different views on government and the state's relation to the individual; on the sources of public authority and the nature of legitimate sovereignty; on the relation of property ownership to personal identity and to participation in collective governance; the historical and socio-political presuppositions behind the different constitutional regimes: democracy, monarchy, republic etc; on the role of religion in politics; the changing perspectives on the relationship between life in the family and a life of active citizenship; theories of natural law and natural rights; social contract theories; idealist political theory; utilitarianism; nationalism; liberal, conservative and socialist traditions of thought; anarchism and feminism. 

GV316 Advanced Issues in Applied Political Theory 

Taking as a starting point a pressing social and political challenge, the course instructs students to systematically apply different political theories to approach the problem, to understand and critically discuss different normative viewpoints, and to develop and defend their own position in these debates. Examples of such themes include environmental and climate change, free speech, multiculturalism and toleration, poverty and global justice, colonialism, or surveillance and privacy. The topics are selected each year to reflect current debates and the interests of the course convener.  

GV335 African Political Economy 

This course is available on the BSc in Government, BSc in Government and Economics, BSc in Government and History, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, BSc in Politics and International Relations and BSc in Politics and Philosophy. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

GV408 Contemporary Disputes About Justice Seminar 

The course offers a critical analysis of some of the debates about distributive justice following the publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in 1971. We shall consider the philosophical distance between Western liberal and modern African thinking on issues concerning society and the state, human rights, the global economic context, and specific institutional challenges faced by post-colonial societies. 

GV427 Democracy in East and South Asia 

We look at how democracy as a dynamic political project has interacted with forces of market, nationalism, modernization and globalization, with class, gender, ethnic, religious, and spatial identities, and with diverse local and cultural traditions. We examine conflicts, crises and uncertainties in political ideologies and policy processes relevant to the competing interpretations and alternative conceptions of democracy. Comparatively tracing contemporary developments in the region, we learn how democracy in theory and practice is informed by discursive struggle, contentious politics, social movements and newer information technology; and why democracy must be studied historically and critically. 

GV432 Government and Politics in China 

Often in comparison with other postcommunist transitions, other Asian states and other developing countries, discussions of China will cover its historical and international contexts, geopolitics and political demography, central and local state power, central-local relations, and semi-federalism; bureaucracy as tradition and as invention; political economy and market transition and broader liberalisation and global integration; social structure and organisation, and class, ethnic, and gender relations; ideology, culture and cultural politics, issues concerning democracy and legitimacy; nationalism, “one country, two systems”, and the Taiwan question; and China’s military, foreign relations, and changing global position. 

GY444 Democracy and Development in Latin America

It starts mid-point through the period under study, in 1994, when there was a strong consensus about the mutually reinforcing benefits of liberal democracy, free market economics and hemispheric trade integration. It then traces back the origins of this consensus to the 1980s and discusses how it was generated  by looking at the role of ideas, interests and institutions in processes of economic change. The second part of the course looks at the backlash against free market economics (also know as neoliberalism) and the rise of the left in the early 21st century as an alternative to neoliberalism. The final three sessions look at the social and economic transformation of the region in the 21st century, including the impact of the commodity boom, the rise of a new middle class and the increasing importance of economic relations with China and other Asian countries. 

GV479 Nationalism Seminar 

An examination of the causes and role of ethnic identity and nationalist movements in the modern world, and of the relations between nations and states. There are three principal concerns: 1. Theories of nationalism and ethnicity, including primordialist, ethno-symbolic, modernist and post-modernist approaches. These will be compared and critiqued. 2. The development of various kinds of nations, nation-states and nationalisms from pre-modern Europe to the global present, and a consideration of the concepts (e.g. civic/ethnic, political/cultural, Asian and African forms of nationalism) frequently used to understand these histories.3. Nationalism and the international system, including problems of state sovereignty, secession and national self-determination; the European union, globalisation and religious fundamentalism. 

GV498 Multiculturalism 

This seminar explores the political and epistemological issues of multiculturalism, broadly understood, in contemporary political theory. After deciding on a tentative definition for “culture,” we will explore how and why the concept has become so integral to normative theories of contemporary political life. In particular, we will focus on how increasing recognition of plurality within liberal democratic regimes has led to new theories of both culture and community. Along the way, we will consider normative questions such as: Should we encourage “global citizenship,” or should we celebrate the local and the national? If cultures are dynamic and hybrid entities, how can they be identified and protected politically? Are there significant and legitimate differences between “the West” and “the rest”—and if so, how must our interpretive approach change as we include voices from culturally diverse groups into already-established political communities? 

GV4A5 International Migration and Immigration Management 

The first introduces a number of theoretical models that seek to explain the dynamics of international migration, migration control and migrant integration, addressing questions such as: Why do people migrate? Why do states accept migration? The second, comparative part deals with national public policy responses to the issue of asylum & refugees, 'illegal' migration & human trafficking and (legal) immigration. The final part focuses on the analysis of multilateral policy initiatives on migration management at the global, regional and bi-lateral level. 

GV4B7 The Liberal Idea of Freedom 

In the first part of the course, we will address these questions by analysing different conceptions of freedom, including negative freedom, positive freedom, republican freedom and freedom understood in terms of capabilities. In doing so, we will explore the work of prominent contemporary political thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Philip Pettit, Robert Nozick and Amartya Sen. In the second and third part of the course, we will turn to substantive debates surrounding: (i)  the value of freedom and how this relates to other liberal values (e.g., equality, security) and (ii) specific liberal freedoms (e.g., freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement etc.) 

GV4B8 Contemporary Civil Wars: Comparative Case Studies

The course examines social science explanations of the origins, intractability and outcomes of civil wars. It does this through the comparative analysis of various cases. These cases may vary from year to year. The course examines social science explanations of the origins, intractability and outcomes of civil wars. It does this through the comparative analysis of various cases.  

GV4D4 The Politics of Inequality and Redistribution 

The objective is to explain why the distribution of wealth, income and opportunities differs so much between democratic countries with similar levels of economic development. The course draws largely on literature from the field of comparative politics, although perspectives from other disciplines - such as economics and social policy - are brought in as appropriate. The focus is on tracing the interactions between political institutions such as political parties and elections, labour market institutions, and the redistributive institutions of the welfare state. This approach is used to examine the growth of the public sector in the twentieth century, the differences between Social Democratic and Christian Democratic welfare states, the impact of wage bargaining institutions, the redistributive implications of age, gender and territorial location, and redistribution through corruption and rent-seeking. 

GV4D7 Dilemmas of Equality 

The course starts with the general question of why (or if) equality matters. It then introduces some of the major debates in the contemporary egalitarian literature: equality of what; equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome; luck egalitarianism versus relational equality. In the final section, it focuses on more specific issues and dilemmas. The topics addressed this year are gender and the division of labour; discrimination and policies that aim to combat it; and the question of who bears responsibility for addressing group-based and global inequalities.

GV4F9.1 African Politics, Wars and Violence 

The course is organized around this set of ten ‘big’ normative and empirical questions that have confronted the continent’s leaders and peoples and engaged scholars and policy-makers since the end of colonial rule. Linking all of them is an underlying inquiry into what assures the political and social stability of some sub-Saharan states but threatens ordered rule in others. Which of the myriad explanations proffered - natural resource abundance, high ethnic diversity, poor geography, weak state capacity, arbitrary borders, inter-group inequalities, and general poverty – best account for sub-Saharan Africa's high incidence of civil wars and communal violence? The overarching goal of the course is to equip students who work or seek to work in the policy-making arena with both an understanding of the major theories and an appreciation of the limits of extant empirical research relating to each of these questions so that they may look critically yet constructively at current strategies for meeting the challenges of governance on the continent. The course will tackle each of these questions through country case studies selected from the major country groupings to minimize the risk of students forming a regionally-skewed perspective on a diverse continent. The course will also draw on a range of methodological approaches - quantitative, historical, and qualitative - though students will not need any prior specialized training. 

GV4G5 The History and Politics of the Modern Middle East 

This course offers an advanced, inter-disciplinary introduction to the history and politics of the Middle East and North Africa from the nineteenth century to the present. The course adopts a chronological and thematic approach to a series of key topics and debates in the history of the region, including colonial rule, nationalism, popular protest, Israel/Palestine, gender, social change, armed struggle, neoliberalism, migration, rentier states, new religious politics, bread riots,the new imperialism, and the Arab uprisings of 2011-12. The cases are drawn from a wide range of countries in the region. Students will address concrete topics and problems in relevant historical contexts in the light of important social science debates. We draw in inter-disciplinary fashion on anthropology, politics, economic history, geography, sociology and international relations. The course material will avoid and challenge clichés associated with (1) culturally essentialist and exceptionalist (neo)Orientalism, (2) Eurocentric, materialist and teleological Modernism, and (3) wholly relativist or discursively determinist Postcolonialism. We will pay particular attention to the rise and fall of political regimes, the dynamics of consent and dissent, as well as to role of trans-national, trans-regional and global forms. 

GV4H3 Feminist Political Theory 

This course covers some of the central debates in contemporary feminist political theory, with a particular emphasis on the legacy and usefulness of liberalism. The course focuses on debates and differences within feminist political theory, rather than justifications for, or defences of, feminist political theory. Among the problems raised are conceptions of the individual and individual autonomy; the relative invisibility of gender issues in mainstream literature on justice and equality; the tendency to conceive of equality in sex-blind terms; the tendency to presume a universally applicable set of norms. We consider the theoretical debates in relation to a number of contemporary political issues. Topics likely to be addressed include: feminism and contract, individualism and autonomy, identity politics, equality and the politics of difference, surrogacy, multiculturalism, and universalism. 

DV400 Development: History, Theory and Policy

The course integrates the concepts and perspectives of a range of disciplines to consider: major trends of development and change in modern history and interpretations of them in the social sciences and contemporary economic and social theory and their bearing on the policy and practice of development.  During Michaelmas Term the course critically discusses concepts of 'development' and the historical evolution of paradigms of development thinking and policy. Through an examination of comparative historical experience, we explore the role of states and markets in development and/underdevelopment, colonial legacies and path dependencies and the political economy of growth, poverty and freedom. During Lent Term the course draws on recent research and policy documents to discuss current cutting edge policy issues and challenges in the developing world usually including: the determinant of state resilience and fragility and international responses,  demographic change, social policy and poverty; international trade; industrial policy; agriculture and agrarian reform; foreign investment; development aid; governance and democratisation; security and development and environmental sustainability.

DV413 Environmental Problems and Development Interventions

The course is structured to analyse the challenges of making well-informed environmental interventions in the face of poverty and vulnerability, and then seeking practical solutions to these dilemmas.To begin with, the course considers the nature of environmental problems within a ‘development’ context, and what this means for environmental science and norms as applied in developing countries. Themes include assessing environmental science and expertise in development contexts, adaptation to population growth and resource scarcity; gender and environment; and vulnerability to ‘natural’ hazards. As the course progresses, it considers debates about policy interventions such as common property regime theory; theories of the state and environment (including resistance and social movements); community-based natural resource management and Sustainable Livelihoods; adaptation to climate change; forests; and urban environmental policy (these latter themes involve debates on multi-level, multi-actor governance involving the connections of local development and global environmental policy).

DV407 Poverty

We focus as well on the relationship between poverty and inequality, education, gender and human development, with special attention to the relationship between poverty, violence, and democracy. We also examine the origins of modern famines and whether democratization contributes to poverty reduction. We close with further thoughts on poverty reduction and the Millennium Development Goals.

DV418 African Development 

Attention is paid to legacies of the colonial encounter; the constraints and opportunities presented by African countries' positions in the global economy; the political economy of industrialisation and agrarian transformation, resource mobilisation; trade diversification; institutional reforms and state capacity. Attention will also be paid to social policy with special focus on issues such as  social social protection, cash transfers, Millennium Development Goals, horizontal inequality and conflict.

DV420 Complex Emergencies 

It looks at the changing nature of civil conflicts, at the famine process, and at the benefits that may arise for some groups from war and famine. It examines some of the roots of violence in civil wars, as well as the information systems that surround and help to shape disasters.

DV421 Global Health and Development

By the end of the course, students should be able to: understand the complex relationships between health and poverty / inequality in and across low and middle income countries; evaluate multi-disciplinary evidence on a range of global health issues and interventions and apply this evidence to policy analysis and development; and understand how politics, power and moral frameworks influence global health policy.

DV424 International Institutions and Late Development

We are particularly interested in understanding the ways that developing countries respond to and participate in international regimes and organizations, and how changes in global economic governance affect opportunities for economic development. We analyze the politics of debt relief for the poorest and most heavily-indebted countries, where most of the debt is owed to public creditors; and we analyze the politics of debt restructuring for middle-income countries where significant shares of the debt is owed to private/commercial creditors.

DV428 Managing Humanitarianism

How humanitarianism relates to ideas about human rights and justice, and the politics of securitisation. Why  humanitarian organisations and governments respond to some crises and not to others. It also considers the critique of humanitarian assistance and the ways in which the UN and NGO communities have responded and sought to professionalise their activities. 

DV431 Development Management 

Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why are some governed well and others badly? This course employs a political economy approach to examine the causes of development, identify the underlying obstacles to development, and evaluate potential solutions. It focuses on the principles governing the institutions, politics, and organisations through which policies, programmes and projects are produced and implemented. 

DV433 The Informal Economy and Development

Contrary to standard development thinking, the informal economy has expanded rather than contracted in the face of liberalisation and globalisation, and now creates more jobs than the formal economy in most developing countries. Practitioners, policy makers and academics seek a clearer understanding of its impact on poverty, employment, social exclusion, and governance. In a globalising environment, are large informal economies a poverty trap or an engine of growth? Do they stimulate entrepreneurship and popular empowerment, or promote criminality and exploitation? How does a greater understanding of the size and organization of informal economies affect policy on urban service provision, social policy or taxation? What are the implications of the informal economy for social cohesion and popular politics in developing countries?

DV434  Human Security

This inter-disciplinary course will introduce students to the concept of human security. Human security refers to the security of individuals and communities as opposed to the security of the state. It combines physical security and material security; freedom from fear and freedom from want. The course will introduce students to the debates about the concept and its relevance in the contemporary era. It will combine political, military, legal and economic approaches to human security implementation. The course will cover topics including:; intellectual foundations and debates over the concept of human security; new and old wars; persistent conflict; just war thinking and whether it can be applied to human security; international humanitarian law and human rights law; humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect; international capabilities for human security; counterinsurgency, stabilisation, and statebuilding; transitional justice.

DV435 African Political Economy  

The course readings and lectures stress marked unevenness in national and sub-national trajectories and in the political-economic character of different African countries, drawing attention to causes of similarity and difference across and within countries. Students will come away with a better understanding of the economic and social underpinnings of order and conflict in African states.

DV442 Key Issues in Development Studies 

It features lectures from leading LSE experts on subjects such as climate change, conflict, poverty, the financial crisis, demography and democratisation, among other topics.

DV447 Public Affairs, International Development and Gendered Violence

We will consider the sexually informed constructions of women’s place in the home and in the public sphere, how development and public policy make assumptions about control over women’s bodies, and the ways in which such are challenged or reinforced. We will look at war and conflict, humanitarian work and times of ‘peace’. We will examine assumptions and judgements about (hetero)-sexuality, sexual control (by the self and by others) and how these have been drawn on by policy-makers and other actors, both in the public and domestic spheres. There will be discussions about the labour market and workplace, education, the household, family, marriage, reproduction and father-/motherhood and health. Violence – both physical and sexual – will be given attention. We will also explore issues relating to identity, religion and culture and power in relation to the grounding of concepts and expectations that infuse not only private life but also the thinking of policy-makers.

DV448 Political Economy of Development I 

This half-unit MT course explores why governments and organisations pursue the development policies they do.  Whenever experts get together to debate development policy, attention usually focuses on what all the relevant actors should be doing:  Which policies should the leaders of developing countries be adopting (or discarding) to stimulate growth and reduce poverty?  What new trade or aid strategies shouldpolicymakers in the industrialised world be implementing to help poorer countries develop?  In practice, however, people in positions of power do not always pursue the policy agendas that well-intentioned development experts say they should.  Rather than let this be a source of frustration, students who take this course will come away with a deeper understanding of the political incentives that drive development forward, or sometimes backwards, in the real world.  Attention will focus on the political pressures that motivate and constrain development policymakers at all levels of government - global, national and local - and across all sectors of the economy - public, private and non-profit.  Students will be exposed to a wide variety of political economy concepts along the way.  There will also be opportunities for students to apply these concepts to concrete cases of development management and mis-management.  Why do the governments of some developing countries take good care of poor rural families and their children, for example, while other governments privilege urban elites?  Why have inclusive democratic institutions taken root in some developing countries but not in others?  If you are curious about the larger political forces driving some developing countries ahead while others stagnate or decline - and you want more experience putting cutting-edge political economy theories to work in solving current development problems - this course is for you.

DV451 Money in an Unequal World   

The course will introduce students to approaches to money from sociology, anthropology, development studies, geography, political economy and cultural theory.  how money operates – its social organization and governance, its production in global and local financial networks. As a measure and symbol of economic inequality, money is both a problem for development and potentially a major part of its solution. Students will therefore investigate how new and alternative forms may help us to rethink and re-organize money and mount a sustained challenge to prevailing economic systems.

DV400 Development: History, Theory and Policy  

Through an examination of comparative historical experience, we explore the role of states and markets in development and/underdevelopment, colonial legacies and path dependencies and the political economy of growth, poverty and freedom; course draws on recent research and policy documents to discuss current cutting edge policy issues and challenges in the developing world usually including: the determinant of state resilience and fragility and international responses,  demographic change, social policy and poverty; international trade; industrial policy; agriculture and agrarian reform; foreign investment; development aid; governance and democratisation; security and development and environmental sustainability.

DV518 African Development   

The major concern of the course is with the political economy of African development, to examine processes of economic, political, social and cultural change in Sub-Saharan Africa. Attention will also be paid to social policy with special focus on issues such as  social social protection, cash transfers, Millennium Development Goals, horizontal inequality and conflict.

DV520 Complex Emergencies

It looks at the changing nature of civil conflicts, at the famine process, and at the benefits that may arise for some groups from war and famine. It examines some of the roots of violence in civil wars, as well as the information systems that surround and help to shape disasters.

DV528 Managing Humanitarianism 

Building on an analysis of the causes, construction and consequences of humanitarian disasters, this course focuses on humanitarian actors (including aid workers, journalists, medics, government officials, soldiers, politicians and peace negotiators). It considers the principles and the politics of humanitarian action, exploring the overlaps and tensions between practices of humanitarian assistance and humanitarian intervention. How does humanitarianism relate to ideas about human rights and justice, or the politics of securitisation? 

DV531 Development Management      

Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why are some governed well and others badly? This course employs a political economy approach to examine the causes of development and non-development. It focuses on the different kinds of authority, incentives and accountability mechanisms that govern the relationships between managers and recipients in the institutions and organisations that people use to meet their political, economic and social needs.

DV545 Research Themes in International Development 

The course will be structured around large research topics associated with the work of the International Development department such as Complex Emergencies, Control of Tropical Diseases, Assessments of Global Poverty, Dilemmas in African Leadership, the Economic Growth of China and may include language and other specialist training linked to the student's research. 

DV591 Economic Development Policy II 

This course focuses on analytically and empirically rigorous analyses of microeconomic economic policies in developing countries. In particular, increasing data availability has meant that the effectiveness of development policies, in terms of improving welfare, reducing poverty and promoting growth, can now be analysed using a variety of quantitative techniques.

HY118 Faith, Power and Revolution: Europe and the Wider World, c.1500-c.1800

The course will discuss the influence of key movements, such as the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, which rei-gnited an interest in the Classical past and fostered a culture of rational enquiry into the natural world. Yet religion remained a vital component in the world-view of contemporaries, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. This world-view was subject to challenges throughout the period, as during the Reformation, and often sought to impose its own orthodoxy, whether through religiously-motivated conflicts or the persecution / conversion of certain groups. 

HY200 The Rights of Man: A Pre-Modern History of Rights-Based Discourse in the West

This course will seek to explore an (inevitably selective) range of these historical contexts in order to demonstrate the continuity of perennial themes of conflict between the claims of individual actors and corporate institutions, whether states, churches, empires or other institutions, while also showing how and when key changes take place in the recognition of rights of political action, conscience, property ownership, gender identity and workers’ rights etc. The growth of toleration and free speech, the abolition of slavery and torture, and the role of Declarations of Rights will all be examined, but less familiar subjects will also find their place. The contribution of the conceptual legacy and historical inspiration of Greece and Rome will be recognised as will the crucial role of the political thought of the High Middle Ages, and at the other end of the course specific connection will be made to the recent development of human rights organisations.

HY232 War, Genocide and Nation Building: The History of South-Eastern Europe 1914-1990

The study of the inter-war period will include a debate of the reasons for the collapse of democratic institutions, the emergence of patriotic and anti-Semitic movements, economic failures and responses to German and Italian aggression. The establishment, development and the collapse of Soviet domination of the region after the Second World War will be discussed on the background of ethnic and inter ethnic conflicts. In addition political, economic and cultural theories, which formed the background to the emergence of the independent states of Eastern and South Eastern Europe, will be considered. The course will develop these themes in the history of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania and the Baltic States.

HY233 Empire and Nation: Britain and India since 1750

This course examines the history of South Asia from the eighteenth century to the present day. Focusing on the imperial relationship between Britain and India, it investigates the ways in which imperial rule shaped South Asian society, studies the nature of anti-colonial nationalisms, and explores the legacies of British rule for the independent states of South Asia. The course will explain how and why the East India Company acquired an empire in India, and will explore the techniques by which the British sought to derive profit, prestige and power from its empire in South Asia. It will ask, to what extent did the British seek to reform India, and what were the consequences - intentional or otherwise - of imperial efforts to understand and change Indian society? The course will examine the ways in which different groups of Indians responded to, benefited from, and resisted colonial rule in India. The economic impact of colonialism will be considered, as the course asks, did British rule drain India of its wealth? In the second term, it will assess the impulses behind the emergence of Indian nationalism, and discuss Gandhi's philosophy and his political strategies. The course will consider why British India was partitioned in 1947 when India and Pakistan gained independence, and it will investigate the long-term consequences of partition, including the conflict over Kashmir. The course concludes with a discussion of the impact that colonialism has had on the political and economic development of independent India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

HY239 Latin America and the United States since 1898 

HY239 is designed to provide students with an introductory overview of the history of the Americas and inter-American relations from 1898 to the present day. Rather than focussing exclusively on U.S. policy towards Latin America, the course explores the international history of Latin America and the United States from a variety of U.S and Latin American perspectives. It also incorporates broader thematic and interpretive questions alongside country specific studies. Among the major themes covered on the course are the concepts of imperialism, neo-colonialism and anti-imperialism, revolution and counter-revolution, nationalism and interventionism, democracy and dictatorship, human rights and repression, development and dependency, the 'war on drugs' and migration. More specific topics covered in lectures and class discussions include: the Spanish-American War; Big Stick and Dollar Diplomacy; FDR's 'Good Neighbour' policy; Juan Perón and Populism; the onset of the Cold War and post-war in the Americas; Jacobo Arbenz' Guatemala; the Cuban Revolution; JFK and the Alliance For Progress; the Brazilian Coup of 1964 and U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965; Cuba's Latin American policy and Che Guevara's Bolivian mission; Salvador Allende's Chile; the 'Condor Years' and Cuban interventionism in Africa; the Panama Canal Treaty and Carter's opening to Cuba; the Nicaraguan Revolution and Reagan's Central American interventions; 'The Lost Decade' and Debt crisis of the 1980s; the Washington Consensus, the War on Drugs and Hugo Chavez and the 'Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas' (ALBA). 

HY240 From Empire to Commonwealth: War, Race and Imperialism in British History, 1780 to the Present Day

It covers the period from the loss of the American colonies to decolonisation and the survival of the Commonwealth. Within the context of Britain's wider political, social and cultural history, the course will examine the following: the extension of empire during the Victorian era; liberalism and racism; the expansion of colonies of white settlement; the role of missionaries; the scramble for Africa, the impact of empire at home, the running of empire overseas; gender and  empire;  managing national decline and empire; the contribution of empire to the First and Second World Wars; fast exit strategies; violent decolonisation; race and  immigration; post-colonial dictators and the legacy of white settlers.

HY242 The Soviet Union: Domestic, International and Intellectual History

Using primary and secondary sources, this course explores the interconnected histories of slavery, commerce, and capitalism in the history of Britain and the British world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The course explores how the British slave trade functioned both as political economy and as a system of everyday oppression, how it intertwined with trade in other commodities and financial products like bonds and insurance, how Britons profited by it, and how enslaved and free people resisted it. The course interrogates the limits of ‘British’ history in the context of a global system of trade, and investigates the complicated history of the end of slavery and continuities before and after abolition – what did it mean to be ‘free’ in the British empire?

HY423 Empire, Colonialism and Globalisation 

The course examines the history of empires since the fifteenth century, and their legacy for our world today. It analyses specific imperial formations, with prominence given to the Ottoman, Mughal, Qing, Spanish, Portuguese, French, British and American empires. It explores conceptual and methodological debates concerning the nature and significance of given empires, and the dynamics of their rise and fall. The course also explores the extent to which the imperial past has helped to shape the processes of globalisation in early modern, modern and contemporary times. A number of major themes are addressed, including: financial and industrial capitalism; cross-cultural encounters; the role of the periphery and local actors; climate, diseases and the environment; imperial ideologies; the great divergence; colonial science and technology; the relationship between colonial and metropolitan societies; race, ethnicity and gender; post-colonialism. 

HY436 Race, Violence and Colonial Rule in Africa

This course examines the nature of colonial rule in Africa and its impact. It  is focused upon the violence inherent in this encounter, its different forms and origins. It is essentially a political history but includes cultural, social and economic aspects. The primary focus is on the British empire in Africa. Topics covered include  Victorian racism; the ‘Scramble for Africa;  white settler culture; the origins of apartheid South Africa; the development of the colonial state; indirect rule; the rise of nationalism in West Africa; the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya;  the Congo crisis and the assassination of Lumumba; the rise and fall of 'white' Rhodesia; the wars of liberation in Mozambique; the end of the apartheid state; the genocide in Rwanda; the civil war in Sierra Leone; Mugabe and Zimbabwe; and Somalian warlordism.

HY441 Islam, State and Rebellion in the Indonesian Archipelago   

This course looks at the Indonesian archipelago from the early modern/colonial period to the present day. It will focus on the dynamics of state and rebellion and centre and periphery relations as well as the dynamics of ‘empire’ looking both at external and internal imperialism/colonisation. The seminars will cover: the European scramble for the Spice Islands and indigenous rebellions; the establishment of the colonial state by the Dutch and local resistance in Maluku, Java and Aceh; anti-colonialism, Islam and the development of Indonesian nationalism; the Japanese occupation during the Second World War and Indo-Japanese cooperation against the Dutch; the Indonesian war of independence and the establishment of the Republic under Sukarno; regional rebellions against Sukarno’s state: the Darul Islam uprisings, the Republic of South Maluku uprising and the PRRI/Permesta rebellions; the PKI ‘attempted takeover’ and the rise to power of Suharto; Suharto’s New Order state and expansion into Dutch New Guinea and Portuguese Timor; regional rebellions in East Timor, Aceh, and Irian Jaya; the fall of Suharto and the reformasi governments under BJ Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and inter-communal, separatist, and Islamist challenges to the state.

HY469 Maps, History and Power: The Spaces and Cultures of the Past

How did past societies and cultures understand the world around them? How did those societies use maps to represent physical, social and imaginative spaces? Do maps merely reflect particular mentalities and social practices, or do they actively shape the experience and perception of the world? Maps, History and Power addresses these and other questions by exploring mapping practices and spatial thought in several European and non-European contexts from the medieval to the modern periods. The course explores how past societies have used maps to serve a number of practical and ideological purposes: to express religious belief, to aid navigation and commerce, to assert cultural superiority, and to enable state formation or imperial control. Alongside readings in history and cartography, the course will make extensive and innovative use of the latest digital resources, allowing students to view and discuss historical maps from the world's great research libraries and collections.

SO480 Urban Inequalities  

This course offers a critical introduction to key issues and processes in the study of contemporary urban inequalities. Recent urban analysis has highlighted the growing share of the global population that now lives in cities; this course puts that growth in the context of another major urban trend: deepening patterns of inequality in many cities across the world. It examines the continuing role of ‘older’ bases of urban inequality - access to land and property, gender inequity, ethnic and racial discrimination, legal exclusion and informality – as well as significant emerging patterns, including extreme concentrations of wealth at the top, middle-class stagnation, privatisation and spatial secession, immigration and insecurity. It also examines the complex of ways in which urban inequality is experienced, not only in terms of income or property, but also in consumption inequalities, inequities in access to housing, transport, urban services and legal protections, spatial disparities and environmental risks and injustices. The course considers the range of social, economic, environmental and political factors that shape, and also might help to address, urban inequality in these different contexts. 

GV4D7 Dilemmas of Equality 

The course starts with the general question of why (or if) equality matters. It then introduces some of the major debates in the contemporary egalitarian literature: equality of what; equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome; luck egalitarianism versus relational equality. In the final section, it focuses on more specific issues and dilemmas. The topics addressed this year are gender and the division of labour; discrimination and policies that aim to combat it; and the question of who bears responsibility for addressing group-based and global inequalities. 

GI409 Gender, Globalisation and Development: An Introduction 

This course will provide students with a thorough knowledge of two key interconnected and intersecting literatures: gender and development and gender and globalisation. The first part of the course provides students with an introduction to these fields of study; considers contemporary theories of gender, development and globalisation alongside critical engagements and understandings of development. A particular focus is on how globalisation is associated with widening social, spatial, gender and racial inequalities, illustrated by case studies of  global integration and uneven development, changing working patterns and gender divisions, and the association between rapid economic change and continuing social divisions. 

GI417 Gender, Population and Policy 

Although population change cannot be described, understood, or responded to without taking into account the wider -- and profoundly gendered -- social, political and economic context,  gender theory has had relatively limited impact on the development and direction of demographic research. This course explores the implications both theoretically and practically. Examining the complex inter-relationship between population issues and policy, students will develop an appreciation of the potential contribution and impact that a feminist and gendered perspective has to offer. It will also explore the ways that feminists can use demographic tools and research to redress social and gender injustices. 

GY441 The Politics of Housing 

The aim of this course is to examine the politics of housing from a transnational and comparative perspective. The course will link the empirical analyses on housing to theoretical discussions on class, community, gender, ethnicity and design. It will analyse housing issues ranging from informality, homelessness and gated communities to housing tenure, architectural design and housing as a humanitarian tool. This is an interdisciplinary course, drawing upon debates in fields such as Architecture, Urban Planning, Geography, Sociology, Anthropology and Development Studies. The course will help students develop a broad knowledge of the politics of housing in different countries and how they intersect with issues such as urban development, housing finance and public policy. It will also encourage students to think about housing issues relationally and globally. 

LL4H8 Employment Law 

Regulation of the content and the form of the employment relation. The contract of employment, including express and implied terms and the scope of employment law. Regulation of minimum wage and working time. Protection against discrimination in the workplace. Discipline and protection from dismissal and termination of employment. Business reorganisation and economic dismissals. Freedom of association and the right to strike. Privacy inside and outside of the workplace. The approach involves theoretical perspectives, economic analysis, comparative law of employment, and examination of relevant European law. 

MC421.1 Critical Approaches to Media, Communication and Development 

The content of the course is framed to address the history of and tensions between 'media for development' and 'communication for development', while challenging mainstream development perspectives on the role of media and communication in low income countries and unequal social contexts. It achieves this aim by emphasising the conflictual relationships between economic and political power and the empowerment of individuals, as well as among collective groupings within their local and regional contexts. In particular, paying attention to issues of colonization, race and gender, it questions the epistemological basis of current approaches to Media, Communication and Development in the context of a historicised account of representations of development both in the West and the Global South. The course offers a critique of the scholarly and policy oriented literature that regards the media, information, and communication strategies, and information and communication technology applications, as obvious means of alleviating poverty and fostering democracy as well as human rights in low-income countries. It offers alternative theorisations of the contested way in which developments in these areas become embedded in the cultural and social fabric, especially where poverty and unequal power relations influence the capacities of individuals to make changes in their lives. 

SO454 Families and Inequalities 

The course provides an introduction into selected issues of family sociology, focusing on families in contemporary Western societies. It explores inequalities within and between families and the role of families in reproducing social inequality. Major themes include: childhood; adolescence, partnership formation and dissolution,  parenthood; gender roles and the division of paid and unpaid work; intergenerational transfers. 

IR100 Concepts of International Society 

An examination of the concepts designed to explain the nature of contemporary international relations. 1. The emergence of the discipline and the nature of its subject matter. 2. Key agential concepts in IR: state; empire; international and subnational agents; foreign policy. 3. Key structural concepts in IR: the states system; Euro-centrism, globalisation, post-colonialism; global governance; security. 4. Key institutional concepts in IR: international society; great powers; diplomacy; war; balance of power; international law and human rights. 5. Key sociological concepts in IR: power and sovereignty; intervention; gender; anarchy.

IR461 Islam in International Relations: From Al-Andalus to Afghanistan 

The course covers the rise of transnational Islamist networks from the late Ottoman era through the tumultuous years of mass mobilisation in the interwar era, demobilisation with the formation of new nation-states in the early Cold War era, and the revival of Islam in world politics by the 1970s with the Iranian Revolution and developments elsewhere in the Muslim world. But most of the course covers the contemporary post-Cold War era, examining the varying role of Islam in diverse regional settings - Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe - and in the contexts of globalization and democratization, mass migration, separatist struggles and regional conflicts. Close attention is paid to the role of Saudi Arabia and Iran in the global politics of Islam, to Sunni-Shi'i conflicts, and to the question of Israel and Palestine. The course also focuses important cases like Al Qa'ida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Chechnya, Iraq, and Somalia, as well as important trends in Western Europe, including the UK. 

IR464 The Politics of International Law 

An introduction to the politics of the creation and implementation of international law, intended for non-lawyers. The course focuses on the areas of international law most relevant to International Political Theory: human rights, the use of force and international crime, and examines the increasing legalization of international politics, the tensions between international politics and international law, alternatives to international law and international law post 9/11. Watch a short introductory video on this course: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/internationalRelations/video/IR464-PIL-video.aspx 

IR465 The International Politics of Culture and Religion 

Approaches to understanding the role of culture and religion in the discipline of IR. Culture and religion in IR theory; their influence on the practice of international relations. Case study: Islam. The course will be divided into two parts. In the first part, the contribution of a number of international relations theories to our understanding of culture and religion will be explored. The focus here will be on the English School and constructivism; critical theory, post-modernism and post-colonialism; cosmopolitanism, liberalism and communitarianism. The second part of the course will examine the role that cultural and religious issues play in the practice of international relations and in particular their influence on international norms, gender, foreign policy, conflict, negotiation and war. 

LN250 English Literature and Society 

(a) Study of 20th century British literature (prose, poetry and drama) in its socio-political context; Study of individual authors (in weekly lectures) - these form the basis of the examination assessment (b) Study of major cultural themes running through the century e.g. Literature of War; Imperialism; Feminism; Modernism; Postmodernism; Political writing - these form the basis of the student's extended coursework essay. (c) Several trips to theatre productions during the year; (d) Extensive use of archive recordings of authors, and video; (e) Students encouraged to draw upon background in their main discipline, and to read widely. 

LN270 Society and Language: Linguistics for Social Scientists 

The course will introduce students to key (socio)linguistic concepts (semantic and pragmatic meaning, discourse, register, genre, dialect, idiolect, sociolect) employed in the analysis of language use as a social process. Students will explore the reciprocal relationship between language and specific social contexts and structures (class, gender, ethnicity), and study the role that language plays in the creation, maintenance and change of social relations and institutions. Important themes are changing attitudes to language and the prestige afforded to particular languages and language varieties. The use of language for academic purposes will be analysed, as will be situations of language contact, multilingualism and the role of translation in intercultural and international communication. The implications and consequences for less widely used languages of the emergence of English (and other widely spoken languages) as global lingua francas will be outlined and discussed.  

LL207 Civil Liberties and Human Rights 

The course provides a challenging introduction to human rights law. The first term focuses on the European Convention on Human Rights with an in-depth analysis of the case law on several important rights, including but not limited to freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of religion, the right to respect for private life, and freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The second term deals with the UK Human Rights Act and builds not only on  the first term’s work but also on the knowledge that students have acquired in Public Law in year one. Thus, students must engage with the law of two legal systems here: the European Convention on Human Rights and U.K. law. 

LL241 European Legal History 

This course aims to equip students with an in-depth understanding of the social and cultural history of the Western legal tradition (from its foundations in Ancient Rome to the onset of modernity), in order to engender a solid grasp of the basic assumptions and practises that underpin the legal systems of today’s Europe. In the first part of the course we will study: law and religion in ancient Rome; the space of the law; the emergence of the people's legislative assemblies in Republican Rome; women, slaves, and foreigners in the eyes of the law; the rise to power of Augustus and his Chancery; the great jurists of the Empire; the challenges of the “new religion”, Christianity, for the Roman constitution; the turmoil and decline of Empire; and the rise of the Eastern Emperors and of Byzantium as the “new Rome”. 

LL242 International Protection of Human Rights 

The law of human rights reflects attempts made internationally to articulate basic legal standards for the protection of individuals and groups in their relations with the state, and to use the authority of international law, institutions, and procedures, to secure compliance with such standards. Human rights law is a modern phenomenon; but it has an ancient lineage. Some account of its evolution is given, from natural rights, civil liberties, the history of minorities protection, and the progressive development of human rights in public international law since 1945. 

LL257 Labour Law 

This subject builds on contract and tort, and to some extent public law and EU law, but introduces the distinctive legal regulation of employment relations, such as the law of dismissal and discrimination law, and the institutional arrangements of industrial relations, including trade unions and collective bargaining. The course looks at these topics in an industrial relations context informed by sociology and economics. Labour law is an important area of legal practice, with employment law disputes representing one of the largest topics of civil litigation. 

LL272 Outlines of Modern Criminology 

This course examines developments in British legal history in the era from 1750 to 1914. Drawing on printed and electronic primary sources, as well as secondary literature, it will explore the changing nature of law in a number of areas. The course begins with an exploration of the nature of eighteenth century criminal justice, and how this was transformed in the nineteenth century. It will then examine the nature of the system of civil justice, and how this was reformed in the era before the Judicature Acts. In the second term, the course will explore topics relating to status, examining the attitude taken by the law to women, workers and slaves. A final set of topics will turn to explore the impact of law on economic change, looking at how the law facilitated the growth of a modern economy. 

LL401E The Law of Armed Conflict 

This course covers the international law governing the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello, also known as the law of armed conflict or international humanitarian law)--as distinct from the law on the resort to force (jus ad bellum), which is a separate course. The course will take a critical approach to the international regulation and facilitation of armed conflict. As well as the laws governing the means and methods of war (‘Hague’ law), the ‘protected’ groups hors de combat (‘Geneva’ law), and the distinction between international and non-international armed conflict, the course will cover ‘lawfare’ more generally: the recourse to law as a means of waging war. It will examine the application of the laws of war, including occupation law, in recent conflicts, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 'war on terror', and the Israeli Occupied Territories. Students can expect to have a thorough grasp of the principles and regulations governing the conduct of hostilities, the context and efficacy of enforcement mechanisms, and a critical understanding of the normative and political stakes of international law in this area.  

LL403E International Human Rights: Concepts, Law and Practice 

This course is concerned with the international protection of human rights and its relation to a range of current global problems. The course draws on the international law and practice of human rights to examine how we might best understand the contribution and limitations of human rights to addressing contemporary ills. Through the consideration of a range of standards and thematic issues, participants will learn about, and critically analyse, human rights concepts, norms, institutions and actors. The course begins by studying the ideas and objectives that underpin the post-1945 human rights legal order and then turns to assess the United Nations and regional architectures and standards of international human rights. We build on this foundation to examine a variety of human rights topics and to consider how international law in these areas has developed and is being applied. The lectures will explore civil and political rights, economic social and cultural rights, ‘third generation’ rights, the rights of particular groups as well as a selection of current issues. Subjects may include: the prohibition of torture and the war on terror; the right to privacy; the right to food; the right to self-determination; the right to development; the rights of indigenous peoples; women’s human rights; transnational corporations and human rights; human rights and poverty, and; human rights and the environment. 

LL404E European and UK Human Rights Law 

The course has two parts. In part one the origins, development and current standing of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms are considered. The primary focus will be on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, though the cases of other jurisdictions will also be referred to where appropriate. The course will analyse the Convention from the perspective of selected rights within it, but will also engage with the subject thematically, subjecting such concepts as the 'margin of appreciation' and proportionality to close scrutiny. The goal of this part of the course is to give students a good critical understanding of the Convention, the case-law of the Strasbourg court and the Convention's place within the constitutional and political structure of 'Greater Europe'. The second part of the course is made up of a detailed study of the UK Human Rights Act. The origins and the political background to the Act will be explained, and the structure of the measure will be fully elaborated, relying on the text of the Act itself but also on the burgeoning case law that accompanies the measure. This part of the course will identify the principles that underpin the UK Act and explain its proper place in British law. It will also explore the wider constitutional implications of the measure, looking at its effect on the relationship between courts and Parliament. Linkages with the broader European framework discussed in the first part will be made by students through their reading and through class-engagement. 

LL409E Comparative Constitutional Law: Rights 

This course examines a range of controversial issues in human and constitutional rights law from a comparative perspective. These issues include: abortion; euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; gay sex and sodomy; religion in the public sphere; affirmative action; hate speech and denial of the holocaust; obscenity. We will approach them by comparing and contrasting judgments from courts all over the world, with a certain emphasis on cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the U.K. Supreme Court, and the German Federal Constitutional Court. The goals of the course are, first, to introduce the students to the jurisprudence of those extremely powerful and influential courts, and, second, to invite them to think about and critically analyse some of the most controversial, difficult, and important rights issues of our time.  

LL4AW Foundations of International Human Rights Law 

The course provides an introduction to historical developments and institutional structures that have given shape to the international human rights legal regime. Part 1 of this course considers a range of foundational and enduring debates around the role of international human rights as a force for emancipatory change and popular empowerment. With a particular focus on the post-1945 institutional order, Part 2 maps the terrain that established the human rights regime at the international level and that continues to inform the contributions and limits of human rights protection and promotion. Topics vary from year to year and may include: Ethical Foundations • Universality and Diversity • Legal Sources and Normative Frameworks • Historical Antecedents • Global Regime • Human Rights Enforcement UN Reform • Regional Human Rights Regimes. 

LL4AX  Selected Topics in International Human Rights Law 

Building on the foundations provided in LL4AW, this course explores the international protection of human rights through a range of contemporary topics. The course examines legal and institutional efforts to confront deprivation, indignity and violence, along with the rights of particular groups, such as refugees and indigenous peoples. Recurring questions will be: in what ways do international human rights help to alleviate global problems involving suffering and in what ways do they instead serve to sustain the conditions for those problems’ occurrence? How might we understand the contribution of human rights to addressing current ills, and what are their particular limitations? Through the study of key concepts, norms, processes and debates, students will be encouraged to develop an informed and critical assessment of the significance of human rights as a force for emancipatory change. Topics may include: • Human Rights and Counter-terrorism • The Prohibition on Torture in Question • Economic, Social and Cultural Rights • Violence Against Women • Human Rights and Armed Conflict • The Human Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons • Identity and Non-Discrimination • Indigenous Peoples and Rights to Land and Natural Resources. 

LL4BA International Law and the Movement of Persons within States 

The course provides a detailed study of the international legal framework in which the causes, problems, policies, standards, techniques and institutions concerning the movement of persons within States and protection of internally displaced persons are situated. The course explores the overlap between International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law and Humanitarian Assistance with respect to internally displaced persons. It covers: the definition of internally displaced persons; individual criminal responsibility for forcible displacement before ad hoc Tribunals with criminal jurisdiction and the International Criminal Court; standards applicable in international law to the protection of internally displaced persons, the regime of humanitarian assistance to displaced persons; and finally the institutional protection of internally displaced persons by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Refugees.  

LL4BB International Law and the Movement of Persons Between States 

The course provides a detailed study of the international legal framework in which the causes, problems, policies, standards, techniques and institutions concerning the protection of asylum seekers, refugees and refugee women, and migrants are situated. The course explores the overlap between International Refugee Law, International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, the phenomenon of Migration, including Human Trafficking in the context of refugees, legal and illegal migrants. It covers: the definition of refugees, legal and illegal migrants, including trafficking in human beings; the concepts of 'well-founded fear' of persecution and group eligibility to refugee protection; procedures for determining refugee status on an individual and group basis, in Africa, Asia, Australia, the European Union, North America, and Latin America; temporary protection; the process of exclusion from refugee protection; the role, in refugee law and human rights, of the principle of non-refoulement in refugee protection; the cessation of refugee status, voluntary repatriation, and safe return; standards applicable in international law to the protection of refugees, migrants, and evolving standards against human trafficking.  

LL4BY An Introduction to the International Human Rights of Women  

The course provides an introduction to the concept of women's human rights and the international legal protections of such rights. It is located within the framework of international law and feminist legal theories. The international legal instruments for the guarantee of women's civil and political and economic and social rights will be examined for students to acquire knowledge and understanding of the basic texts and the international monitoring mechanisms. Detailed attention will be accorded to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979 and the work of the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Topics include: • Introductory: the United Nations Gender Architecture • Sex and gender; feminist theories of equality and difference • International instruments for the guarantee of women's rights • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979: History, Substance and Reservations • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979: the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women • Economic, Social and Cultural Rights • Universality and Cultural Relativism • Beyond the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: Global Conferences; Regional Protections • Combating Violence against Women (1) • Combating Violence against Women (II).

LL4CN New Technologies in Law and the Body 

The course addresses the interrelation of law, technology and theories of ‘the body’.  Within the broad categories of ‘Beginnings’, ‘Bodies’ and ‘Endings’, we look at emerging medical technologies and their effect on social and theoretical conceptions of the body and its capacities. 

LL4G7 Mental Health Law: The Civil Context 

This course aims to integrate a practical and theoretical understanding of mental health law, as it relates both to mental illness and mental incapacity. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive understanding of the law in England and Wales, but rather aims at broader conceptual understanding of the problem areas that are likely to bedevil mental health law across many jurisdictions. The course makes reference to both the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. 

LL4H8 Employment Law 

Regulation of the content and the form of the employment relation. The contract of employment, including express and implied terms and the scope of employment law. Regulation of minimum wage and working time. Protection against discrimination in the workplace. Discipline and protection from dismissal and termination of employment. Business reorganisation and economic dismissals. Freedom of association and the right to strike. Privacy inside and outside of the workplace. The approach involves theoretical perspectives, economic analysis, comparative law of employment, and examination of relevant European law.

LL4H9 Human Rights in the Workplace 

The sources and application of human rights in the workplace, including international and European laws and conventions. Civil liberties of employees. Social and economic rights of workers. Protection from discrimination in the labour market and employment. As well as detailed examination of legal materials, the approach involves discussion of theories of human rights and comparisons between legal systems. 

LL4K4 The International Law of Self-Determination 

This course will provide a general introduction to the doctrine of self-determination in international law. Self-determination will be historically contextualised from its intellectual progenitors in the Enlightenment through to its political birth at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and its formal induction into international law by virtue of the 1945 UN Charter. Both the detail of the doctrine's content and the dynamic governing its development will be explored. The relationship between self-determination and state formation (including decolonisation and secession), minority rights, aboriginal rights, women's rights and the nascent right to democratic governance will be central topics. Reference will also be made to the interplay between self-determination and economic rights, including permanent sovereignty over natural resources, the right to development and the "third generation rights" movement more generally. Self-determination's influence upon the international rules governing the use of force will be discussed, but these rules will not be a primary focus. Upon completion of the course students will be in a position to legally analyse contemporary fact patterns and to identify both strengths and weaknesses in the existing legal framework. Students will have considered new and novel approaches to self-determination and will be able to situate the doctrine in relation to international law and human rights. Those taking the course will gain an appreciation for self-determination's particular contribution to political and economic liberty. 

LL4K7 Mental Health Law 

This course aims to integrate a practical and theoretical understanding of mental health law, as it relates to mentally disordered offenders. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive understanding of the detail of the relevant law in England and Wales, but rather aims at broader conceptual understanding of the problem areas that are likely to bedevil law relating to mentally disordered offenders across many jurisdictions. The course makes reference to both the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Criminal Justice Act 2003. 

LL4L6 Theory of Human Rights Law 

The course will provide an introduction to the philosophy of human rights and theoretical issues in human rights law. The emphasis is on a combination of law and theory; to this end, each seminar will rely on a mixture of cases from various jurisdictions and theoretical and philosophical materials. The overarching questions to be examined are to what extent current philosophical theories of human rights can illuminate our understanding of the cases and legal doctrines, and to what extent the cases and doctrines can help improving the theoretical and philosophical understanding of human rights. Topics to be discussed will include: James Griffin's Theory of Human Rights; Ronald Dworkin's Theory of Rights as Trumps; Balancing and Proportionality; Human Rights and Judicial Review I (The American Perspective); Human Rights and Judicial Review II (The European Perspective); Absolute Rights. 

LL4Z7 Comparative Constitutional Law: Rights 

This course examines a range of controversial issues in human and constitutional rights law from a comparative perspective. These issues include: abortion; euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; gay sex and sodomy; religion in the public sphere; affirmative action; hate speech and denial of the holocaust; obscenity. We will approach them by comparing and contrasting judgments from courts all over the world, with a certain emphasis on cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the U.K. Supreme Court, and the German Federal Constitutional Court. The goals of the course are, first, to introduce the students to the jurisprudence of those extremely powerful and influential courts, and, second, to invite them to think about and critically analyse some of the most controversial, difficult, and important rights issues of our time.  

MG103 Management, Labour and Work 

The syllabus introduces students to the complex relationships between employers, managers, workers, trade unions and the state. It builds from the perspective of the individual worker and his/her job and proceeds, via discussion of management strategies and trade union responses, to contemporary views on globalisation and its impact on state policy. The employment relationship in theory. Work organisation and work methods. Emotional labour. Japanisation. Human Resource Management. Pay and reward. Individual and collective resistance at work. Collective bargaining and trade unions. Industrial conflict and the right to strike. Comparative models of employment relations. The role of the state. Corporate governance. Globalisation and migrant work. International labour standards.

MG228 Managing the Stone-Age Brain 

The study of business and management is currently dominated by economic perspectives, supplemented by sociological and social psychological perspectives, in American business schools. The course will provide a necessary corrective to the dominance of economics perspectives in the study of business and management by providing biological and evolutionary perspectives and thereby throwing a new light on the old problems (and finding potential solutions for them) in organizations and organizational behaviour. The course will provide evolutionary and biological perspectives on management and organizational behaviour. It will introduce the students to the following topics: Principles of evolution; Principles of evolutionary psychology; Sex differences in preferences, values, cognition, emotions, and behaviour; Physical attractiveness; General intelligence; Evolutionary constraints on human behaviour and their relevance to organizational behaviour. 

MG306 Managing Diversity in Organisations  

The primary aim of the course is to develop students' understanding and critical awareness of issues associated with managing a workforce characterised by diversity in age, gender, race, religion, disability, and sexual orientation. The course endeavours to combine academic rigour with a practical focus on promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, enabling students to both develop a critical understanding of relevant theoretical and empirical literature and apply acquired knowledge to specific diversity management scenarios. Seminars will require participation in group exercises designed to enhance students' appreciation of the wide range of issues associated with categorizing individuals as members of different groups, on whatever basis. Students will become familiar with the drivers of increased workforce diversity, the psychological and sociological theories underlying discrimination and exclusion, current employment legislation related to diversity in the UK, and the barriers to equality of opportunity in the workplace for minority groups. Students will examine "best practice" in diversity management programmes and learn to critically assess organisational policies and practices for managing workplace diversity with regard to their ability to enhance organisational performance and avoid costly litigation. 

MG4D4 Cross Cultural Management 

The ability to communicate cross culturally and understand diverse perspectives is a necessity in order to achieve a competitive advantage in global economy. The aims of the course are to understand the impact of culture on management; to identify the areas in which cultural differences pose challenges as well as advantages in managing people across cultures; and, to become more self-aware of our cultural conditioning, individual biases and assumptions. Topics include i) understanding my own and others’ cultural conditioning, ii) cultural diversity in teams, iii) international assignments and global career development, iv) managing cross-border alliances, v) leading global organisation with responsibility.  

MG474 Managing Diversity in Organisations 

The primary aim of the course is to develop students' understanding and critical awareness of issues associated with managing a workforce characterised by diversity in age, gender, race, religion, disability, and sexual orientation. The course endeavours to combine academic rigour with a practical focus on promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, enabling students to both develop a critical understanding of relevant theoretical and empirical literature and apply acquired knowledge to specific diversity management scenarios. Seminars will require participation in group exercises designed to enhance students' appreciation of the wide range of issues associated with categorizing individuals as members of different groups, on whatever basis. Students will become familiar with the drivers of increased workforce diversity, the psychological and sociological theories underlying discrimination and exclusion in organisations, current employment legislation related to diversity in the UK, and the barriers to equality of opportunity in the workplace for minority groups. The emphasis of the course will be on demographic diversity in the context of work organisations, in order to avoid overlap with existing offerings from other departments. 

MG478 Globalisation and Human Resource Management (formerly ID438) 

In the course modules, we will: a) Evaluate the strategic choices facing global corporations, including the choice between adopting highly centralized or predominantly decentralized HR policies; HR considerations in the outsourcing and offshoring of work; and the role of HRM in managing international mergers and acquisitions.b) Analyze how institutions and culture affect compensation strategies and employee participation policies – as well as the implications of these policies for economic inequality and employee well-being. c) Analyze the factors shaping different patterns of migration and discrimination.

Evaluate how regional institutions such as the European Union and multilateral institutions such as the ILO affect the HRM/ER strategies and policies of global firms.

Examine how consumer pressure, coupled with corporate social responsibility programs, encourage global firms to extend their HRM/ER policies to their supply chain.

MG4D3 The Dark Side of the Organisation 

In this seminar, students will learn about a variety of topics related to the dark side of the organisation, (e.g., substance abuse, violent/aggressive, discriminatory, and retaliatory behaviours, and unethical behaviours/corporate corruption). In organisational behaviour courses, topics covered often explore how behaviours promote beneficial outcomes for the organisation, as well as investigate the precursors to these more positive behaviours. However, not all behaviours and outcomes occurring in the workplace are beneficial and positive for employees and their organisations. Dark side behaviours typically lead to negative outcomes. Those who engage in these negative behaviours generally are aware that their actions can cause harm to others, their employer, and/or to them; hence, the instigator usually has intent. It is imperative that we more fully understand these behaviours and their antecedents and consequences so that we can identify these behaviours, as well as control, prevent, mitigate, or ameliorate their occurrences. In addition to an organisational behaviour approach to the dark side, we will also explore industrial relations perspective.  

MC407 International Media and the Global South 

This course challenges students to raise questions about the power and role of international media - including media originating in the global south - in shaping global discourses about development, citizens and the global south. Building on empirical examples, the lectures aim to demonstrate that the reporting and discussion of poverty, disasters, political unrest, underdevelopment and development by international media organizations has implications, not only for the way the global south and its diverse populations are imagined and represented, but also for the arena of international and national policy and politics. From different theoretical perspectives, the course critically investigates key questions concerning the role of international, national, NGO and subaltern media in development, including the failure of the dominant modernization paradigm to 'pass away'. The course offers insight into how to approach the study of media constructions, discourses and representations of, and about, the global south and its citizens. The objectives are to: (a) Introduce debates about how media power shapes international development discourses and political realities for citizens in the global south; (b) Link dominant development theories to the paradigms of mediated NGO development interventions; (c) Provide a postcolonial critique of the study of representations of poverty, development, participation and the global south; (d) Critically assess aspects of the political economy of international media production within the contexts in which both local media groups and NGOs research, package and produce information about international development, especially in and about the global south and (e) Investigate whether and in what ways new and mobile technologies, and small and participatory media formats enable alternative voices and critical frameworks from the global south to be heard. The course is organized into three sections: 1) a historical and theoretical overview of international media, development and the global south locating the debate(s) around development and communication within postcolonial and other critical frameworks, 2) Critical perspectives, drawn selectively from studies of development theory, political economy and cultural studies and pertaining to identity, ideology, representation, regulatory frameworks, good governance and democracy and 3) Cases and practices in reporting development, poverty, inequality and humanitarian issues.  

MC416 Representation in the Age of Globalisation 

Images and stories circulated in the media play a central role in informing how we imagine the world, others and ourselves. We become increasingly dependent, often exclusively, on what we see, read and hear in the news, on our favourite television drama series, in advertisements, on the radio, and over the Internet. This course focuses on the way media representations are implicated in the exercise of power over how we think and feel through the construction of meaning. It explores the opportunities that media representations present for the creation of a global and interconnected space, which enables the people living in it to conduct their social, cultural, political and economic lives in positive, just and inclusive ways. At the same time, the course discusses some of the critical challenges, limits and threats those visual and textual representations present. The discussion focuses on the representation of the Other and the production of difference, the representation of suffering, migration war and conflict, timely issues whose centrality is ever more vivid. It examines how transformations in the contemporary media landscape, such as the expansion of new media, the increasing commodification and the increasing global scope of communication, shape the ways in which public issues are framed, imaged, and constructed, and what consequences this may have for the moral judgements people make and the actions they take. 

MC420 Identity, Transnationalism and the Media 

This course examines the relation between identity and the media in the context of diaspora and transnationalism. The course explores meanings of identity at present times, especially as these are formed through experiences of mediated and physical transnational mobility. As migration and symbolic mobility, especially through the media, inform each other it becomes almost impossible to understand identity outside the context of mediation. The course is organised in three main thematic units. The first unit provides the conceptual entry point to the course. The second unit focuses on the modes of transnational communication: television, cinema and the internet. The third unit focuses on the spaces of transnational communication: the city, the nation and the transnational space. Each unit and lecture contributes to the understanding of identity in a world that is increasingly interconnected and networked. 

MC421.1 Critical Approaches to Media, Communication and Development 

The content of the course is framed to address the history of and tensions between 'media for development' and 'communication for development', while challenging mainstream development perspectives on the role of media and communication in low income countries and unequal social contexts. It achieves this aim by emphasising the conflictual relationships between economic and political power and the empowerment of individuals, as well as among collective groupings within their local and regional contexts. In particular, paying attention to issues of colonization, race and gender, it questions the epistemological basis of current approaches to Media, Communication and Development in the context of a historicised account of representations of development both in the West and the Global South. The course offers a critique of the scholarly and policy oriented literature that regards the media, information, and communication strategies, and information and communication technology applications, as obvious means of alleviating poverty and fostering democracy as well as human rights in low-income countries. It offers alternative theorisations of the contested way in which developments in these areas become embedded in the cultural and social fabric, especially where poverty and unequal power relations influence the capacities of individuals to make changes in their lives. 

MC428 Media Culture and Neoliberalism in the Global South

This course offers a comparative perspective on changing national media cultures in the global South in the context of the neoliberal turn. The course not only considersneoliberalism as a crucial factor that has brought media industries such as private broadcasting stations and mobile phone companies into existence but also examines the extent to which these new forms of media have played a role in reproducing neoliberalism as a process. The course aims to offer an understanding of how shifting economic policy regimes have impacted on the way in which people engage with media and how media engage with people in the global South. The first part of the course introduces the key concepts of ‘media culture’, ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘global South’ which will be deployed throughout the course. The second part of the course discusses how key processes of social change in the global South are linked to changing media cultures, including the commodification of national imaginaries, informality, crime and the rising middle class, religion and the prosperity gospel, self-help media and the neoliberal subject, and mobility and social relations. The course examines these themes through a series of empirically-grounded, mostly ethnographic case studies that include sport in Chile, popular video in Nigeria, reality television in India, crime and media in South Africa and India, Pentecostal media in Ghana, mobile phones in China and the Philippines, and therapeutic television in South Africa. 

PH214 Morality and Values 

In weeks 1-5 of MT, Michael Otsuka will discuss the ethics of harming and saving from harm: (i) Should one save the greater number from harm?; (ii) Can contractualism justify the saving of the greater number when and only when we ought to?; (iii) Should one be solely concerned with how badly off people are, or should one also care about inequality?; (iv) Does it make a moral difference that a person is less well off than she could have been? (a.k.a. 'the non-identity problem');(v) Why is it permissible to divert a tram so that it runs over one rather than five, whereas it is impermissible to kill a single individual in order to redistribute his vital organs to save the lives of five? (a.k.a. 'the trolley problem'). Lent Term: Politics (Michael Otsuka all ten weeks). Lent Term will be devoted to the topics of justice and legitimacy. We will begin with the following questions: What does justice require? Does it demand the redistribution of income from rich to poor in order to create a more egalitarian society? We'll discuss the answers to these question that John Rawls and Robert Nozick have provided. Rawls argues that such taxation is just, since it would be endorsed under fair conditions in which people are deprived of knowledge of whether they happen to be rich or poor, talented or unskilled. Nozick argues that redistributive taxation is unjust because on a par with forced labour. In addition, we'll consider their answers to the following questions: When it is unjust to constrain the liberties of some in order to prevent harm to others? What sort of equality of opportunity for jobs and university places does justice require? Are people entitled to compensation for historical injustices? What are the just conditions of acquisition of unowned natural resources? In answering the last question, we will also draw on the writings of John Locke, whose related views in his Second Treatise on the legitimacy of government we will also consider, along with the Locke-inspired views of Thomas Jefferson. 

PH227 Genes, Brains and Society 

This course introduces issues in bioethics, neuroethics, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of psychology. It demonstrates how philosophical tools can help make sense of the complex problems arising at the intersection of human beings’ evolved nature and the social structures humans have erected. The course will challenge conceptions as to what human beings are, and what we, as human beings, might ultimately be responsible for. Topics covered include: Human nature: Does the concept of 'human nature’ have any biological basis? Can we distinguish between those traits that are part of 'human nature' and those which are not? What might the evolutionary history of human beings as social agents have to tell us about ‘human nature’? Disability: How do we determine whether an individual is disabled or not? Does the recognition of an individual as disabled change their moral status? Does society bear some responsibility for the care of disabled individuals, and in what way? Sex and gender: Are ‘sex' and ‘gender' the same thing? Are gender categories natural or social? Are there robust psychological differences between men and women? If so, are they explained by genes or by culture? And should we reconcile ourselves to these differences, or should we try to eliminate them? Race: Do races exist? Is there any objective biological basis for racial categorization, or are races socially constructed? Does the concept of ‘race' have a future, or will human societies soon become racially undifferentiated? Responsibility and Social Structure: Are problems with racism, sexism, and disability systemic, societal problems? Or, by contrast, are they the result of biased, racist, and sexist individuals? How are we to enact changes to society on these different conceptions of the root cause(s)? 

PH415 Philosophy and Public Policy 

The course offers critical reflection on the design and evaluation of public policies from the perspective of moral and political philosophy. To this end, we study a range of theories and concepts that are used in policy evaluation. We often discuss and evaluate them by focusing on specific policy proposals. The course addresses questions such as: 1. What is well-being, how is it measured, and how should it be measured? 2. When, if ever, is paternalism justified? 3. What is the role of personal responsibility in determining people’s claims on public resources? 4. What are the moral limits of markets? 5. When, if ever, is equality in the distribution of goods (such as health, income, or well-being) important? 6. How should we evaluate risks of harm and chances of benefit to people? 7. What are our rights to freedom of expression? 8. What are our rights against being harmed and to harm others in war? 9. Do we have a right to privacy? 10. What are our moral obligations to animals?   

SA100 The Foundations of Social Policy 

The course examines the nature of social provision in different policy fields and for different groups of people. This work is contextualised by reference to different kinds of welfare systems in developed countries, changes in role of the state and other providers of welfare, and changes in ideas and key concepts. The course considers how social problems are defined and policies formulated with reference to the fields of poverty, health, education, housing and income maintenance; discusses key concepts (for example, citizenship) and the position of different social classes, generations, ethnicities, and men and women; explores the changing boundaries between the roles of the state, the market, the family and the voluntary sector in the mixed economy of welfare; and considers the economic, social and political factors that are important to an understanding of policy formation and policy change. 

SA101 Sociology and Social Policy 

This course introduces students to sociological ideas and thinking, and how they link to key illustrative social policy issues. The course is organised around certain major social policy concerns such as: inequalities in health, labour markets, and education; social stratification and social segregation; housing provision and neighbourhood deprivation; ethnic and racial inequalities; families, care and ageing, which are then related to key classical and contemporary theoretical perspectives and concepts that have been used to describe and explain them, such as theories of class and status, social control, gender and the division of labour, socialisation and intergenerational transmission, identity and belonging, urbanisation, globalisation and risk. 

SA104 Social Economics and Policy 

The first part introduces basic economic concepts and principles and discusses their application to  different social policy areas. It covers the concepts of supply and demand, externalities and market failure, private insurance and social insurance, and quasi-markets, and looks at the economics of health care, social care, housing, education and the environment. The second part analyses the distribution of household income and the drivers of poverty and inequality, including unemployment, low wages and wage inequality. It covers concepts of human capital and productivity and looks at a range of policy responses, including minimum wage legislation, trade union policy, government economic management, taxation and the social security system.  

SA105 Crime and Society 

The course introduces students to the study of crime and its control in contemporary society. It begins by considering different conceptualisations of crime, and its measurement, before critically examining the multiple ways in which crime patterns are understood by the public, politicians, the media, and criminologists. These understandings are used to explore particular crime types such as white collar crime, drugs, and violent crime. Next the course explores the impact of major social divisions - such as gender, age, ethnicity, class and community - on the social distribution of crime and considers how these patterns influence political responses to controlling crime. Lastly, the course selects key controversies in controlling crime, focusing on criminal justice agencies such as the police and considering sentencing practices of imprisonment and community punishment and restorative justice. 

SA218 Criminological Perspectives 

The course critically analyses the key features of a broad range of theories developed to explain patterns of social order in society and to illuminate the nature of the 'crime problem'. It will additionally consider the theories of punishment from the late eighteenth century to the present day. 

SA221 Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Change 

The course will examine the definition, measurement and causes of poverty and social exclusion in general and analyse selected aspects drawn from the following: social and demographic change, gender and racial inequality, homelessness and housing deprivation, unemployment, worklessness, social security and poverty, area deprivation, educational inequality, crime and social exclusion.

SA223 Health and Social Care Policy 

The course covers the foundations of health and social care policy, including a number of key policy issues in the UK, the USA and elsewhere. In the first term, students will be introduced to the main dimensions of and challenges facing health and social care systems today. These include the concepts of need and demand for health and social care; mortality and morbidity trends; financing and payment of providers; health and behaviour; models of reform in the delivery of health and social care; and the US and UK health and social care systems. In the second term, the course will look at a number of specific areas, including mental health policy; choice and personalisation; child protection; pharmaceuticals policy; prevention and public health; health inequalities; performance assessment; evaluation; and health technology assessment. 

SA309 Crime Control: Ideas and Controversies 

The purpose of the course is to provide students with an understanding of, and critical perspective on, key debates in contemporary crime control policy. The course examines the emergent features of current responses to problems of crime and social order, focusing in particular on issues such as: policing and security; crime prevention and surveillance; youth, crime and control; drugs policy; and punishment. Attention is given to both historical and comparative perspectives, together with analyses of developments in current government policy. 

SA403.1 Criminal Justice Policy 

The course provides a detailed and critical introduction to the study of criminal justice institutions, practices and participants. It begins with an introduction to the nature of crime and contemporary criminal justice policy. It then examines the main elements of modern criminal justice systems (police, courts, prisons, probation, the media, and private security). Special emphasis is given to current issues such as restorative justice and increasing rates of incarceration. The course combines up-to-date empirical work with theoretical perspectives and also emphasises the role of historical and comparative perspectives in understanding current trends. 

SA429 Understanding Social (Dis)advantage 

This course focuses on the emergence of a range of concepts key to social policy relating to selective cumulative advantage and disadvantage in society, including concepts that supersede or complement classic concepts of poverty, such as social exclusion, capability deprivation, social immobility, social/cultural capital deficiency. It examines the uses of such concepts in both developing and industrialised countries. Topics addressed on the course may include - changes in inequality and their causes; the theoretical and empirical issues provoked by the 'underclass' debate; family change and disadvantage; long term unemployment and welfare-to-work; area segregation, housing and 'welfare ghettos'; ethnic division; disability; employment; education; crime; social exclusion and citizenship. 

SA488 Social Policy Goals and Issues 

The nature of social policy and policy making: key approaches and issues. The goals of social policy in relation to policy formation and the policymaking process. Issues including: the political economy of social policy; social justice and social policy; human needs; the mixed economy of welfare; the governance of social policy; gender and social policy; poverty, inequality and social exclusion; globalisation and the future of social policy. 

SA492 Sexual and Reproductive Health Programmes: Design, Implementation and Evaluation 

The course covers a wide range of topics, including: the organisation of programmes; issues of strategic management; personnel training; logistics and commodity supply; the tools of management and evaluation, including management information systems; information, education and communication, including the role of the mass media; innovative approaches to reproductive health education, including an examination of the role of formal education and curriculum content; violence against women as a reproductive health issue; meeting the reproductive health needs of "special" groups, including adolescents and refugees; the use of social marketing; issues of quality in service delivery; techniques for evaluating programme effectiveness. 

SA4B5 International Planning and Children's Rights 

This is an interdisciplinary course that explores the links between child rights and child poverty at all levels of development in rich and poor countries. The social and economic as well as the civil and political rights of children, as defined in recent international laws, charters and Conventions, are examined in relation to the conditions, especially poverty and multiple deprivation, experienced by many children. Human rights theories as a basis for international and social policies will be a focus of attention. There has to be universal planning and not only specific proposals to deal with serious violations of rights. Issues of child labour, the violations of war, cultural discrimination against girl children and the right to a minimally adequate family income will be discussed in relation to the roles played by international agencies, Trans National Corporations, governments and NGOs.

SA4B8 Ethnicity, Race and Social Policy 

Understanding Key Concepts; Disciplinary Frameworks; Migration and Citizenship, Theorising Multiculturalism; Ethnic Settlement and Housing Inequalities; Education; Employment, Poverty and Underclass; Criminalisation and Incarceration; Discrimination and the Role of the State I: Positive and Affirmative Action; Discrimination and the Role of the State II: Legislative Frameworks, Diversity, and Service Delivery. 

SA4B9 Education Policy, Reform and Financing 

The course considers education policy, reforms and financing across developed countries. It uses concepts and tools from a range of academic fields - economics, politics, social policy, philosophy and sociology - to scrutinise education, with a particular focus on equity, social justice and the distribution of resources. Issues to be addressed include: the aims of education; the impact of social characteristics on educational outcomes (e.g. class, 'race'/ ethnicity and gender) and related policy reforms; accountability and market-oriented reforms in education; privatisation and the changing role of the state; power and the global politics of educational policy making; early years education; school-based education; and tertiary education. 

SA4C6 International Housing and Human Settlements: Conflicts and Communities

The course is an introduction to the global housing challenges of a fast urbanising world in the context of rapidly growing cities worldwide. There are 5 key themes: the push and pull factors in urban growth; the key actors in housing provision; slums and self-help; the environmental impact of low income settlements; the problems of poverty and exclusion in low income and informal settlements. The course includes 10 lectures in LT and one in ST. The main topics of the lectures are: housing needs and demand; contrasting patterns of housing development; owner occupation, renting and self-help; government intervention and finance; planning and renewal; international agencies, aid and NGOs; bottom-up shelter models and community-led initiatives; social exclusion and urban pressures; basic services and public infrastructure; participation and women's roles in low income settlements; environment of cities; urban and housing design; theories and practice in upgrading urban settlements. Case studies are used to illustrate arguments, policies and practical responses. 

SA4D4 Measuring Health System Performance 

This course aims to present a framework to discuss the opportunities and challenges with performance measurement in health care, examine the various dimensions and levels of health system performance, identify the measurement instruments and analytic tools needed, and examine the implications of these issues for policy makers and regulators.  appreciate the challenges, approaches, and opportunities in performance measurement in four dimensions: population health, patient outcomes, equity, quality and appropriateness of care, and productivity. 

SA4D5 Social Rights and Human Welfare 

The course will examine the basis of social or welfare rights as a component of human rights. It will situate social/welfare rights in an historical and comparative context and explore a range of debates concerning the relevance and effectiveness of a rights based approach to poverty alleviation and social welfare provision, both in the developed and the developing world. It will address the practical limitations of and the constraints upon social/welfare rights. Specifically, it will address: concepts of social rights and welfare citizenship; human needs and human rights; social/welfare rights in global context; critiques of social/welfare rights as human rights; the scope and substance of social/welfare rights; social/welfare rights and mechanisms of redress; rights based approaches to poverty alleviation; social development and social/welfare rights; constitutional instruments and social/welfare rights; human rights and the ethics of welfare. 

SA4F9 Housing, Neighbourhoods and Communities 

The course introduces MSc students to the links between housing, neighbourhoods and social policy, in urban areas of developed countries. It analyses how existing urban areas came to be developed and run. It explores housing systems in the UK, across Europe and North America, including home ownership, private renting and social renting, the role of government, housing providers and communities. In particular, the gap between neighbourhoods, the problems of housing costs and affordability, homelessness, and social exclusion. The course covers the management and maintenance of housing and neighbourhood services in cities, the impact of housing on social problems, on community relations, and on the environment. Case studies are used to examine how people relate to their neighbourhoods and to each other, particularly in low income, urban areas. How new communities are being developed, how existing areas can be adapted and how housing needs can be met are the big challenges this course addresses, using live case studies to illustrate the main themes. 

SA4G8 The Third Sector 

The 'third sector' is conceived as including all non-state and non-market organisations - such as non-governmental organisations, voluntary organisations, and community groups - and their activities. The course provides a concise introduction to theory and evidence on the nature, past and present roles and potential capacity of third sector organisations in social policy in developed  and developing countries. It aims to answer the key questions: what is the 'third sector'?; what roles does it or should it play in meeting welfare needs?; how are third sector organisations involved in shaping social policy; how are changes in funding and in the provision of services affecting organisations? What are the limits to the roles of third sector organisations? Are the answers affected by country, institutions, policy, period, areas of activity? The course covers theoretical arguments and models of the ideal and actual roles of third sector organisations, and the historical development of the sector in different contexts. It assesses boundaries and relationships between the third sector, the state and the market, and its relationship with different social groups, service users and communities. It describes and explains the size and the role the sector takes in different periods, countries and areas of activity, and evaluates its impact. It considers the independence, interdependence, accountability and probity of third sector organisations. The course draws on examples from a range of areas of activity (such as education, employment, international development, social care), and areas of activity with particular groups (such as migrants and refugees, women, children and older people), as well as a range of countries. 

SA4H7.1 Urbanisation and Social Policy in the Global South 

The course examines the social, economic and political challenges in urban areas in developing and transitional countries from various conceptual perspectives, and the policies and planning practices aimed at addressing them. Some of the themes explored in the course are: theoretical perspectives on the city; urbanisation and social change; migration; the rural-urban interface; urban poverty and livelihoods ; labour markets and housing; urban social movements; urban basic services; and urban management and governance. 

SA4H9 Non-Governmental Organisations, Social Policy and Development 

The course focuses on the specialised field of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) within the field of social policy and development, and considers theoretical and policy issues. Main topics include the history and theory of NGOs; the changing policy contexts in which NGOs operate; NGO service delivery and advocacy roles in policy; challenges of NGO accountability; NGO organisational growth and change; conceptual debates around civil society, social capital, social movements and globalisation; and NGO relationships with other institutional actors including government, donors and private sector.

SA4J8 Social Policy and Development: Core Concepts 

The course is designed to give students a knowledge of core concepts within the theory and implementation of social policy in developing countries. Such an overview is essential for those focusing on mainstream social policy and development issues, and those choosing to specialise on non-governmental organisations. Main topics will include: Comparative social policy in north and south; social development and human development; conceptualizing the state, market and civil society as policy actors; citizenship and rights; comparative approaches to the understanding of poverty, wellbeing and exclusion; welfare regime theory; concepts of sustainable livelihoods; global institutions and the international aid system; conceptualizing the policy process. 

SA4J9 States, Social Policy and Development 

This course provides the analytical tools needed to understand and critically evaluate the key practical challenges of social development. It will apply concepts discussed earlier in the Social Policy and Development: Core Concepts half unit. A wide range of development contexts will be discussed using empirical research and case studies. Key themes include: linking social policy theory, implementation and practice; making social protection effective; managing sector reform processes; projects and programmes, including design and evaluation; participation and community development; gender analysis; the impact of corporate social responsibility and social enterprises on poverty reduction.  

SA4K2 Sexuality, Everyday Lives and Social Policy in Developing Countries

This course aims to analyse and understand the way social policies deploy sexuality categories in regulating everyday life in developing countries, both in its public and private manifestations. It aims to consider social policy and particular interventions in their historical contexts, as a way of unpacking the construction of sexuality in the intersection of colonialism, gender, race, class and international policy frameworks in developing countries. The course also aims to interrogate the relationship between particular social policy prescriptions developed in most industrialized welfare societies and the way some of these are transferred to developing countries. The major concern of the analysis is to bring out the perceptions of sexuality that underwrite these policies and how these interact with existing perceptions of sexualities and their performances (identities, desires and bodily practices) in multiple developing country contexts. These policy areas include, among others, discussions of rights, entitlements, citizenship, same-sex marriage, sexually transmitted disease, HIV/AIDS, family policies, migration/border controls, criminality and employment-related policies. 

SA4X6 Welfare Analysis and Measurement 

This course provides an introduction to the analysis and measurement of the welfare of individuals and societies, examining concepts, measurement and data, as well as providing illustrations. The aims are to provide an understanding of the main tools used to measure and monitor individuals and social welfare, and to develop skills for assessing academic research and official statistics (as produced by national or international agencies) and for undertaking one’s own analysis. The first half of the course focuses on monetary measures of economic wellbeing notably income, and on the experience of OECD countries (especially the UK, EU, and USA), but the aim is also to place these in the context of developments based on other approaches and in other countries including middle- and low-income nations. The topics covered include measurement of inequality, poverty, and mobility; setting poverty thresholds and equivalence scales; data sources and their quality; empirical illustrations considering assessments of trends within countries, cross-national differences, and global poverty and inequality. The second half of the course broadens the perspective to consider a range of non-monetary, multidimensional, and subjective measures of welfare for individuals and societies. Examples include occupational and socio-economic status (SES), anthropometric measures, the Human Development Index and related indices of development, and measures of happiness and life satisfaction. 

PS203 Societal Psychology: Theory and Applications 

This course discusses major areas of application of social psychology to real-world issues. Emphasis is put on the complexities of translating theory into practice and on the theoretical developments which are prompted by research on topical social issues. A recurrent theme is the reciprocal interaction between theory and practice in relation to social issues of theoretical interest and practical importance. The interplay of theory and practice will be examined in relation to selected topics which illustrate the application of social psychology in real world settings, such as: crime and anti-social behaviour; mass media; gender and sexuality; evolution and social relationships; identity and community; prejudice and racism; language and communication; religion and cultural beliefs. 

PS400 Contemporary Social and Cultural Psychology 

Selected topics in cultural and modern social psychology. The relationship between mind, society and culture; the relationship between the individual and society; social and cultural psychology in historical perspective; epistemological issues in social and cultural psychology; self, society and social identities; consciousness; language and communication; attribution theory; psychoanalytic approaches to culture and society, social representations, beliefs and attitudes; the relations between culture and psychology; cognition and culture, applied aspects of social and cultural psychology. 

PS409 Political Psychology of Intercultural Relations

The course demonstrates the importance of a Political Psychological perspective for the understanding of intercultural relations in general, with a particular focus on multiculturalism, politicised identities, ideologies of nationalism, racialised poverty, institutionalised discrimination and intercultural dialogue. The central issues we shall examine across an array of contexts are: what is the connection between politics and psychology within everyday encounters; what is the relevance of politics in intercultural relations and for systems of everyday knowledge about belonging, nationhood and cultural communities; what are the psychological consequences of exclusion, discrimination and inequality; what are the psychological processes involved in systems of social and political change? Theories of social representations, identity, discourse, contact, acculturation, community resilience and reconciliation shall be covered. Lecturers aim to achieve a balance between theoretical and applied issues, in the interests of critically investigating the ways in which conceptual tools can enhance our own understanding of intercultural relations and systems of inequality, and also contribute to broader social and political debates. We aim to establish an account of intercultural relations that connects the political (the ideological, the structural, the discursive) and the psychological (identity, representation and agency). We apply this critical political psychological account of production and consequences of cultural difference to the contexts of politics, community, education and everyday life in general, and examine the possibilities for productive intercultural contact, dialogue and engagement.

PS410 Social Representations Lecture 

This course provides students with extensive knowledge of the theory of social representations. This is a theory of both social knowledge (highlighting the construction, negotiation and contestation of different knowledge systems) and social change (highlighting the interplay between social and community identities and relations of power). The course covers 4 parts. 1: The theory of social representations and its history, covering the theory's ancestors (Durkheim, Weber, Piaget, Vygotsky, Lévy-Bruhl and Freud) and recent developments. 2: Classical studies in social representations - their methodology and findings, including representations of madness, psychoanalysis, health and illness, the environment and nature. 3: Fields of application, covering health, community, education, multiculture, and racism. 4: Criticisms and points of development, including critiques of the theory, the relationship between theory and method and the critical development of the theory. 

PS460 Inter-cultural Relations and Racism

The course demonstrates the importance of a Social Psychological perspective for research into inter-cultural relations and racism, with a particular focus on national and community identities, acculturation, multiculturalism, political change and collaboration across difference. We use a range of psychological theories: acculturation, contact, social identity, social representations, intersectionality, orientalism and conscientization. We explore the social and ideological production of cultural difference, exclusion and prejudice in ways that both highlight the role of history and politics in the social psychology of intercultural relations and also reveal the possibilities for agency, resistance, collaboration and transformation in contexts of (constructed) difference. Hence we establish an account of intercultural relations that connects the social (the ideological, the contextual, the structural, the cultural) and the psychological (subjectivity, agency, identity and representation). We apply this critical social psychological account of production and consequences of cultural difference to the contexts of politics, community, education and everyday life in general. 

PS461 Health, Community and Development

This course examines the psycho-social determinants of community health and social development, in the context of health inequalities and social marginalisation in the global North and South. In particular it explores the role of participation, partnerships and collective action in facilitating health, well-being, the management of illness (including prevention, service access, care and treatment) and health-enabling social change. Attention is given to promoting behaviours that facilitate both physical and mental health and well-being more generally, viewing health as a phenomenon that spans the individual, community and social levels of analysis. The challenges of facilitating health, and health-enhancing collective action, are explored with reference to social identities, social representations and local knowledge, dialogue, empowerment, critical thinking, gender, social capital and social change. All this material is contextualised within wider debates about the global nature of public health, mainstream vs. alternative development policy, the respective roles of local and global social movements, and the potential for participation to alleviate the negative health impacts of social inequalities. Particular attention is given to the links between health and inequalities related to poverty, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, age (children and the elderly) and disability.  

PS464 Social Influence 

This course explores the many modes and modalities of social influence which social psychology has studied and developed concepts for. Modalities of social influence cover processes by which social groups and actors influence private and public opinion, attitudes, social stereotypes, institute norms and ways of life, and achieve recognition and social change. We will discusses the social psychological traditions of social influence analysis (such as rhetoric, crowd behaviour, public opinion, leadership, norm formation, majority and minority influence, resistance, obedience, persuasion, attitudes, mass media effects; inter-subjectivity and inter-objectivity). This discussion will unfold under three parallel perspectives: a) the theoretical and empirical grounding of models, b) the socio-historical context of developments; many social influence models came about in the context of Total War Propaganda of WWII and Cold War mobilisation efforts, and c) in the mirror of current developments which often deploy new language without necessarily treading new ground. The course will discuss contemporary ideas of social influence with reference to canonical paradigms in order to assess scientific progress of what often seems ‘old wine in new bottles’. The course builds a theoretical integration of modalities of social influence in the ‘cycle of normativity and common sense’ including processes of normalisation, assimilation and accommodation of social diversity (Sammut & Bauer, 2011). The moral ambiguity of social influence treads a fine line between promoting wellbeing and social recognition, and manipulating beliefs, opinion and attitudes. This raises ethical issues involved in the study and exercise of social influence in the context of modern public spheres. 

SO110 Power, Inequality and Difference: Contemporary Themes in Sociology

The course provides an introduction to different substantive areas of work in contemporary sociology. Students will gain an understanding of leading-edge research within the discipline worldwide. The sociological problems covered in the course can vary from year to year. They normally include: Class, power and inequality; Race, ethnicity and multi-culturalism; Nation states, war and conflict; Money, markets and work; Identity, cosmopolitanism, nationalism and religion; Gender, sexuality and the body; Crime, punishment and deviance; Family and the lifecourse; Health, illness and biomedicine.

SO201 Sociological Analysis

This course engages key sociological issues through the critical reading of empirical research studies. The course explores the connections between theoretical arguments and the practice of social enquiry and analysis. Indicative topics include: culture, religion, bodies, risk, migration, nature, rights. 

SO208 Gender and Society

The course will explore the meaning of gender in contemporary society. It considers gendered relations of power and the articulation of gender with other kinds of social difference such as 'race', class and sexuality. A variety of theoretical perspectives will be applied to a number of substantive issues of contemporary concern. Indicative topics are: gender and sexuality; the body; families; employment; violence; nation and citizenship; multiculturalism; reproductive technologies; globalisation; sex work; representation; body modification.

SO211 Sociology of Health and Medicine

The course provides an introduction to the sociology of health and illness. It focuses on the social, economic, political, ethical and subjective aspects of health and healing. Key thematic areas of inquiry include: medicine as a social institution; the social, political and cultural parameters that shape illness experiences; health inequalities within the UK and globally; and the political economies of health care. Indicative topics explored within these thematic areas include: chronic illness, mental health, HIV/AIDS, disability, reproductive technologies, pharmaceuticals and clinical trials. The course aims to develop an understanding of key issues in medicine and society that are empirically grounded and theoretically engaged, thereby introducing students to the social bases of health and illness. To achieve this, the course combines traditional learning with additional exercises.

SO224 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

The course provides an introduction to theoretical, historical and contemporary debates around race, racism and ethnicity. It firstly explores the main theoretical perspectives which have been used to analyse racial and ethnic relations, in a historical and contemporary framework. It then examines in more detail the areas both theoretical and lived within our contemporary social and political climate where analyses of ‘race’, racism, culture, belonging and identity are urgently needed, focusing primarily on Britain, Europe and the US. Topics include: race and ethnicity in historical perspective; race, class and gender multiculturalism; diaspora and hybridity; whiteness; mixed race; race, disease and contamination; race and the senses; race and popular culture; urban multiculture and the street; race, riots and youth culture; community cohesion; Muslim identities; asylum and new migrations; the Far Right and the white working class.

SO308 Personal Life, Intimacy and the Family

The course provides an overview over the area of family sociology, drawing predominantly on literature about Britain and other Western societies. The course focuses on recent and ongoing transformations of families, family relationships and family life. Throughout the course various theoretical approaches will be considered. Issues related to gender, ethnicity and migration will be cross-cutting themes of the course. Indicative topics are: family structures and family relationships; childhood, adolescence, partnership formation, childlessness, motherhood, fatherhood, divorce, post-divorce families, intergenerational ties, family violence, family and work, family and social inequality.

SO454 Families and Inequalities

The course provides an introduction into selected issues of family sociology, focusing on families in contemporary Western societies. It explores inequalities within and between families and the role of families in reproducing social inequality. Major themes include: childhood; adolescence, partnership formation and dissolution,  parenthood; gender roles and the division of paid and unpaid work; intergenerational transfers.

SO458 Gender and Societies

The course introduces theoretical debates and contemporary issues in the sociological study of gender. Topics include femininities/masculinities; sexualities; nation and family; work; education; violence; transnational feminism; politics, representation. NB topics may change slightly from year to year.

SO468 International Migration and Migrant Integration

Coverage of contemporary sociological perspectives on migrant integration including theories of international migration, immigration policy, labour market incorporation; welfare and social rights; 'assimilation' and social integration; multiculturalism; religion and ethnicity; and the second generation.

SO478 Social Scientific Analysis of Inequalities

The course will consider how the issue of inequality is examined in each of the main contributing disciplines (Economics, Geography, Media and Communications, Social Anthropology, Social Policy, Sociology). Drawing on contrasting perspectives from different disciplines, topics to be covered would include patterns and trends in economic inequalities; approaches to quantitative measurement of inequality; wider aspects of inequalities and the capabilities approach; inequalities and gender, ethnicity and age; social and intergenerational mobility; geographical and neighbourhood polarisation; health inequalities; media representation of inequalities; ethical and philosophical approaches; policy and the impact of government. 

SO482 Topics in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies

The course offers students a broad exposure to issues in the theory of race, racism and ethnicity as well as an opportunity to consider a range of contemporary instances in which the social and political problems arising from these factors of division have been manifested. It will offer a preliminary genealogy of race thinking connecting historical and theoretical work with new scholarly debates over multi-culture, diversity, genomics, postcolonialism, and human rights.