Sociology

Being healthy is a fundamental human desire. But different cultures have different understanding of the body and employ a wide variety of methods for curing ill-health. Consequently, the history of medicine provides an important avenue for deepening understanding of global diversity and cross-cultural interactions. Since the 19th century, both Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine have played important roles in curing the Chinese. This course focuses on the social, cultural and political contexts underpinning the transmission of Western medicine and the transformations of traditional Chinese medicine from the early 19th century to the present. Assessment: tutorial presentation and participation, short essay, journal, final exam.

Using case studies from various domains (environment, health, technological and industrial accidents, security, new technologies) and countries, this course explores how social sciences have conceptualized risk over time and how risk has become a central object of political attention. It considers how the notion of risk has become a central concern of today's societies, as Ulrich Beck predicted in the 1990s; and how the language and techniques of risk analysis, first developed in the realm of insurance, have become key to modern governance and to the operation of contemporary states. The course explores how global crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, have further reinforced a perception that risks are essential components of our daily lives and major concerns for governments. 

The course introduces students to notions, definitions, and insights about social work practice from within the profession, discussing how they compare with public understanding (and prejudices) of the social workers' role and task. A theme is to explore how social workers can and do make a difference. Outside contributors discuss what they do and how they interface with other professions, providing students with an awareness of the distinct place of social work in the range of welfare services.

Open to all students, the course starts with a short history of the principles and background to the concept of "sustainable development" and proceeds to draw on insights from economic history and sociology, politics and international relations, social anthropology and human geography, to unravel the multiple issues and interpretations of sustainability, its politics, and its relevance. Students learn to think critically about what sustainability means and how it can be applied. Students are encouraged to examine from the lens of sustainability the challenges that contemporary societies are being confronted with from global to local levels. They also evaluate the changes that capitalist and industrial development and technological advancement have brought about to living patterns and the environment.

This course critically examines the subject of globalization from a sociological perspective. Globalization is a vast topic, and no one course can cover all its aspects. This course gives students grounding in the most fundamental aspects of globalization, with exploration of selected substantive topics to help root the general in the particular. Students examine the concept itself, the central themes of changing communications, social networks, and experiences of space and time, and the major economic, political, and ideological dimensions of globalization. The view taken in this course is that, while there have been distinctive social changes associated with globalization in recent decades, to understand this process we need to regularly relocate it in a long-term historical perspective. Globalization has been happening for centuries, and to understand current processes of globalization, we need to relate them to a deeper history of globalization. We also need to be careful about talking of globalization as if it were one thing. In fact this very broad term encompasses an array of different social processes that need to be distinguished in order to be better understood.

The course provides a basic introduction to cultural and narrative criminology, neutralization theory, and studies of crime, war, and social harm inspired by discourse and narrative analysis. It discusses links between the different traditions and the background in social constructivist theory and methodological influences from the humanities.

This course examines a wide range of musical traditions from around the world as a product of individual, social, and historical reflection and creation. It looks at musical genres of different communities in relation to their histories, aesthetics, political situations and religious beliefs.