Sociology

This course introduces students to the rich museum culture of London. Through lectures, seminars, and visits to museums such as the British Museum, National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Museum of London students explore how museums create histories of art, society, and national identity. The course draws on the approaches of several disciplines – art, social, and cultural history, anthropology, social geography, and critical theory – to interrogate the ways that museums reflect and shape what we know and how we see. Exploring a selection of sites dating from the eighteenth century to the present day, the course considers the historical context in which these museums came about, the nature of their collections, and debates on current presentation, considering issues of museology, curatorial practice, and the construction of knowledge.

Criminal justice refers to the agencies of the government charged with enforcing law, adjudicating crime, and correcting criminal conduct. The major components of the criminal justice system are the police, courts and correctional agencies. Although society maintains other forms of social control such as the family, school, and church, only the criminal justice system has the power to control crime and punish criminals. However, can the police arrest all criminals? Does crime pay? Does punishment deter? This course is specially designed to critically examine whether the criminal justice system is an effective way to deal with crime.m.

This course aligns Political Sociology to the social scientific study of political issues by other disciplines such as Political Psychology and Political Science, and seeks to develop a broad account of politics that can be used to understand contemporary social and political themes. The course combines the study of institutional and everyday politics, focusing on topics such as formal and informal types of political participation, political partisanship, elites and the distribution of power, the rise of populism, the politics of emotion and identity politics. Students taking this course learn about the theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects of research in Political Sociology and related disciplines.

The course introduces students to key arguments about the various ways that economics increasingly underpins the cultural sector and the creative industries. The module outlines broad concepts that provide the students with foundational knowledge about cultural economics, cultural markets, and cultural value. Recent changes, such as the digitization of culture are introduced which help students identify and understand how the economics of culture is subject to change. Students learn about the way cultural labor is valued and often de-valued and the structures of cultural economies which enable inequality. A wide variety of cultural sectors and products are examined including cultural heritage, festivals, and cities of culture. Students consider the impacts of cultural production on the environment and innovative ways to change the footprint of culture, media, and creative industries.