Sociology

Students engage with the cultures and histories of Scotland through a multi-disciplinary perspectives offered by archaeology, Celtic languages, history, and literature all with the common question of how Scottish society has interacted with the outside world. Students consider how Scotland’s migratory, economic, intellectual, and cultural links overseas as well as its own distinctive experience of globalization influenced the development of a range of other societies while simultaneously transforming the country’s own domestic character and culture. This central theme of both influencing and being influenced by links with the outside world enables students to assess the global history of a non-US society in a multi-disciplinary way. In doing so, this course demonstrates how humanities-based disciplines explore the mutually influencing nature of the global, the national, and the local.

This course provides basic knowledge about gender, social change, and modernity in Sweden and Scandinavia, covering the period from the late 1800s up to the 1950s. It presents the development of some theoretical debates within this field. The course explores Scandinavian political, social, feminist, and literary texts about gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, and the development of women's rights in a historically changing society. Research regarding women's rights, Scandinavian cultural expressions, and the mechanisms of intolerance and xenophobia from the late 1800s to the 1950s are presented. Central issues about gender, ethnicity, sexuality, social change, and modernity in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia are compared with international development. The course is mainly intended for international students who wish to acquire knowledge of the Swedish and Scandinavian societies from a gender perspective but is also open to all other students at Lund University.

This course examines reasoning about human rights. It covers what we mean when we talk about Human Rights and asking whether the concept of Human Rights makes sense. When examining particular claimed Human Rights, it looks at how are they talked about, breached, enforced, theorized. Examples may include: the right not to be enslaved, the right not to be tortured, LGBT rights, animal rights and climate rights.

This course introduces students to the key elements in society for determining those who have power, and those who do not. This is due to the perception that race, gender, and class (or at least how these determiners are perceived and maintained by a group), interact with one another, and inform one another, to ensure that power to and from is monopolized or unfairly distributed within the group. Students are introduced to issues surrounding race, gender, and class in the microcosm that is Italy; simultaneously a unique model and representative of shared universal concerns. This course has been divided into four sections. The first part of the semester focuses on gender, the second on race, the third on class, and although the last part of the course individually looks at the theories of intersectionality, these will naturally occur throughout the course. Alongside theories of gender, race, class, and intersectionality, students are encouraged to apply theories to case studies. The course explores not only explanations of why power inequalities exist and are sustained, but also insights into how such knowledge might be used to challenge these very real issues within society. Although the concerns covered in the course are universal, the case studies focused upon, alongside field trips, root the study in the Italian, local context. Students are encouraged to compare this context to their own academic concerns and pursuits, as well as personal experience, in order to provide more robust and unique insights.

This course introduces the field of digital methods for undergraduate students. It requires no coding or programming skills or prior experience with digital research tools. It centers on hands-on exercises and mini-projects to explore the potential utility and versatility of a broad range of tools (e.g., for issue crawling and mapping, data scraping, text mining, and visualizing data). The course teaches students to extract or scrape text and interaction data from the Internet, including important social media platforms, and to visualize and analyze these data in novel ways and with novel means. The course considerably augments the student’s range of means to access and analyze empirical material more generally: it is meant to generate competences which can be of use to complement and nuance virtually any social scientific investigation (in tandem, or not, with traditional methods). The course also touches upon more theoretical aspects and discussions associated with digital sociology and the use of digital methods, including theories about how (social) media frames and informs interaction, about the relationship between the digital and the social, and about the ethical implications and problems of digital research. Yet, it focuses on the development of technical skills and upon gaining familiarity with the software tools introduced during the course. The course involves extensive group work, including the final assessment which is completed as a group.

This course presents a historical and contemporary study of European integration and the role of the European Union in global politics. Some of the key concepts explored include Europeanization, Atlantism, supranationalism, intergovernmentalism, sovereignty, integration, interdependence, globalization, security, conflict and cooperation. Topics also include: the European Union as a global actor; the academic study of European integration; Europe after the end of the Second World War; birth and evolution of Atlanticism; the Soviet sphere of influence; dissension in bipolar Europe; Europe in the 1980s; the first European Community; the failure of the political and military community; Gaullist approach to European integration and the enlargement of the EC; reformulation of the European map and the creation of the European Union; the Common Foreign and Security Policy; the EU in a globalized world; the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on EU foreign policy; challenges of the future. Assessment is based on participation, a midterm exam, three short essays, and a final exam.