University of Manchester

This course introduces the field of business anthropology as an applied social science aimed at understanding organizational and consumer cultures, exploring how businesses use anthropology, how culture shapes consumption choices, and how culture affects businesses as organizations in various parts of the world. Topics include the importance of branding, homemaking, and identity; how cultural insights shape product design; cultural difference at work; and the business implications of organizational cultures. The course explores these issues using a mix of research articles, websites, and case studies of companies like Intel, Mujirushi Ryohin, Ford, and the New York Stock Exchange to provide examples of the ways culture shapes business practices globally.

This course explores sociological perspectives on education and schooling, with a particular emphasis on how experiences of schooling are affected by variables such as social class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Formal schooling systems play a vital role in both shaping individual and collective identities and in reflecting and reinforcing dominant societal values. Students examine the question, “What is education for?” and consider the micro-politics of everyday school life, focusing on the relationship between schooling and individual identity themes such as the body, space and time, masculinities and femininities, and sexualities.

This course focuses on sensation and perception. Topics include the process of visual perception; receptive fields and how the visual system responds to changes in light patterns; the visual cortex and how the brain processes complex visual stimuli; form perception and how people perceive the form and shape of objects; depth perception, focusing specifically on oculomotor cues, pictorial cues (monocular cues), motion produced cues, and binocular disparity; color perception and its purpose, color illusions, and contrast effects; motion perception and its purpose, movement detectors, motion after-effects (inducement of temporary visual hallucination), and animation and films; sound; touch and pain; chemical sense and multi-sensory perception (taste and smell); and illusions.

Minotaurs, labyrinth, palaces, matriarchy, Mother Goddess, peace-loving, naval empire, cannibalism – many concepts and ideas have been associated with the colourful Minoan civilization that existed on Crete during the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1400 BC). However, many of these are based on a misunderstanding or misreading of the evidence. To overcome the legacy of Victorian scholarship, theoretical frameworks are brought to bear upon the available archaeological and scientific evidence in an attempt to problematise key themes around the emergence, endurance and demise of Minoan society. Topics include: major social changes, such as the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist/pastoralist, the emergence of urban centres, the social context of the appearance of palaces, burial practices and the treatment of the dead, religion as a tool of community cohesion as well as of palatial control, interaction with neighbouring regions and the question of political control as well as the eventual demise of the Minoan civilization and the debate around a invasion by the Mycenaeans.

This course introduces how sociology approaches the issue of "self." Students compare approaches that portray society as something external to us with approaches that focus on the relational and interactional aspects of the self. This course also examines a variety of other aspects of the self such as how we make sense of ourselves through narrative, how our selves are always embodied, and the role that the habitual and the unconscious play in our sense of self.

This course introduces the causes, consequences, and controversies associated with the emergence, development, and consolidation of the conflict in Palestine/Israel from 1882 until the 1967 war. Emphasis is placed on both the socio-political and diplomatic aspects of the conflict. Students learn to formulate scholarly arguments and counter-arguments that, among other things, may enable them to support their respective views better.

This course begins with a general introduction to principles of property law and briefly outlines the development of equity and the trust mechanism. It covers express trusts, including the creation of private and purpose trusts, and legal formalities for the transfer of property.

The notion of limit underlies the differential and integral calculus, a central topic in Mathematics. A good understanding of this concept was developed in the early nineteenth century, many years after the calculus was first used, and this is essential for more advanced calculus. The main purpose of this course is to provide a formal introduction to the concept of limit in its simplest setting: sequences and series.

In this course, students analyze the differing approaches to governance in Western Europe, particularly in France, Germany and Sweden. This analysis is structured around a comparative perspective that is primarily based upon several key theories of democracy. Students are introduced to key political science theories and models. The selected theories and models have been chosen precisely because they are excellent vehicles for introducing students to the study of comparative politics. Students are provided with the conceptual equipment for more advanced comparative politics.

This course examines the politics, society, and economy of the Greek world and its relations with neighboring peoples in the Archaic Period (800-478 BC). The course explores the emergence and character of the leading Greek city-states and their geographical spread throughout the Mediterranean world; the rise of powerful non-Greek neighbors, especially Persia, during the 6th century; and, the interaction between them, culminating in the Persian Wars. Students investigate the first work of western historiography, THE HISTORIES OF HERODOTUS, and the potential problems of using other sorts of archaeological, documentary, and literary evidence to write the history of this period.