BA (Hons) Sociology with Criminology

This programme will allow you to consider the subject of criminology from a sociological perspective. You will study:

• ideas about the growth and development of the modern state
• theories of the formation of modern society and culture
• forms of government of crime and the policing of individuals, populations and territories
• technologies of forensic policing, surveillance and security
• crime as a global phenomenon and its policing in the context of global inequality, the movement of peoples, international trade, human rights and state violence
• research methods for the empirical investigation of sociological and criminological topics

Our intention is that you consider the problem of crime from a critical perspective in the context of modern forms of power.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

The first year of this programme will introduce you year to sociological knowledge and training, but it will also offer an understanding of criminology in the context of the nation state.

You study four core modules:

Year 1 core modules Module title Credits. Researching Society and Culture 1 Researching Society and Culture 1 15 credits

This module introduces you to the methods that social scientists have developed to analyse societies and to produce social scientific knowledge. Through lectures and workshops you learn about methods in relation to various topics and research traditions.




15 credits. Modern Knowledge, Modern Power Modern Knowledge, Modern Power 30 credits

This module aims to introduce you to the ‘sociological imagination’. What is distinctive about Sociology? With a focus on knowledge and power, the module looks at how Sociology has developed, with an emphasis on the study of relations between individuals and groups in modern industrial societies.




30 credits. Culture and Society Culture and Society 30 credits

This module is primarily concerned with the relations between culture and social processes, and approaches these in a number of ways: by outlining various sociological uses of ‘culture’, by identifying the role of culture in examples of macrosocial phenomena (eg education, consumption, the city), and by discussing microsociological analyses of the role of culture in social interaction.

30 credits. Policing the Nation State Policing the Nation State 30 credits

The module considers the growth and development of criminological theories and methodologies in the context of the forms of representation, policing, constraint and government of people and things and largely in the contexts of the city and the nation over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The module is divided into four parts across twenty weeks.

a) It initially considers the social pathology of the gang within the milieu of the urban. This provides an opportunity to reflect on some of the early Chicago School ethnographies and analyses of the urban (Cressey, Park and Burgess, Thrasher), questions about culture and environment, and also importantly adolescence and delinquency. This work is then contrasted with contemporary analyses of the gang (Venkatesh, Alexander, Hagedorn) in order to notice the striking continuities, but also the discontinuities with regard to understandings of gender, race and ethnicity, culture and the global.

b) Secondly, the module considers the work of Becker, Cohen, Hall. Walkowitz and others regarding the labelling and representation of crime and the work of representation in the criminalisation of populations and areas of the city.

c) Thirdly, the module looks at the role of disciplining, punishing and confining institutions and technologies through the writing of Goffman, Foucault, Wacquant, Davis, Khalili and Graham. What kind of institution is the prison? How has it developed in the form it has? What is its role now? And how has its inventiveness spilled out into wider social environments and contexts?

d) Finally, the module considers the circulation and associations of people and things in the context of technologies of security and territory. Through a consideration of cases such as the global sex trade, the circulation of images of child sexual abuse, the control of drugs, and the war on terror, the module focuses on the fundamental question of movement and security.

30 credits. Year 2 (credit level 5)

The second year will give you the chance to explore crime and criminology in a global context, considering crime and global inequality, migration, international relations and trade, and state crimes and human rights. This learning will help to frame your third-year dissertation research.

You study the following core modules:

Year 2 core modules Module title Credits. Criminal Justice in Context Criminal Justice in Context 15 credits

This module considers a number of issues concerning crime: both the acts themselves and also the legal and policing frameworks which address them and which frame them. It relates to longstanding philosophical and social theoretical questions about the relation between crime, the law, justice and rights.

It focuses on five themes:

• policing
• criminal court process
• migration
• refugees and their relationship to criminal justice
• prisons
• the 'prevent' agenda on 'radicalisation'

In this module you will consider the institutions of criminal justice systems and explore the space between the law's conceptualisation of itself as being neutral, above and outside society, and a social critique of that conceptualisation which focuses on all the ways in which the law falls short of its own ideals. Law is understood as a relationship between concepts and their actualisations by social actors; a relationship between the conceptual and the material.

The module will invite guest speakers from relevant spheres of practice and will contextualise their contemporary and actual experience in discussions of soicological and criminological theory and method.

15 credits. Crimes Against Humanity Crimes Against Humanity 15 credits

This module considers crimes against humanity. In terms of social theory, it asks what it might mean to say that something is a crime against humanity as a whole, or against the human condition, rather than simply a crime against a paticular state or a particular national law. You will consider the meaning of key concepts such as humanity, state, universal jurisdiction, and individual responsibility.

The introduction to this module will also look at sociological theories of nationalism and the distiction between civic and ethnic nationalism. It will go on to consider totalitarianism, comparing Bauman's analysis of totalitarianism as a prototype of 'modernity' with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism as a revolt against modern forms.

You will study what kinds of behaviour consititute crimes against humanity; how, why and by whom such crimes are committed, and consider what kinds of international legal instruments and institutions have arisen to designate crimes against humanity as such and to try to prevent or punish them. The module will also explore the difficulties of cultural representation of crimes against humanity, through movies including Shoah, Schindler's List, Ararat, Hotel Rwanda and The Act of Killing.

Throughout this module you will develop a materialist sociological methodology: using concepts to understand case studies and case studies to shed light on concepts.

15 credits. Researching Society and Culture 2 Researching Society and Culture 2 30 credits

This module – which has Researching Society and Culture 1 as a prerequisite- looks in detail at the various stages in the research process: including the construction of research questions, collecting and analysing data and the political and ethical questions involved in thinking about writing for an audience. You're encouraged to work through these issues by reading particular research monographs and by developing your own research proposal.

30 credits. Central Issues in Sociological Analysis Central Issues in Sociological Analysis 15 credits

This module looks at central questions in Sociology about how to study of society. It focuses in particular on issues of agency and structure; holism and individualism; continuity and change; public and private; structure and self; laws, observation and interpretation.




15 credits. The Making of the Modern World The Making of the Modern World 15 credits

Exploring the sub-discipline of historical sociology, the module focuses on the formation of the modern state out of earlier types of political organisation, and different ways of understanding state power. It examines processes such as: revolution; the development of nationalism; the nature of imperialism; post-socialism; and the rise of fascism.



15 credits.

You also choose up to 30 credits of optional modules from a range offered in the Department.

Year 3 (credit level 6)

Your final year will be a mixture of core and option modules as well as an in-depth dissertation in a subject area of your choice.

The core modules include:

Module title Credits. Contemporary Social Theory and Society Contemporary Social Theory and Society 30 credits

Combining the 'Theorising Contemporary Society' and 'Issues in Contemporary Social Theory' modules, this module forms the compulsory taught core for third year BA single honours Sociology students.

It examines how the world has changed, from classical sociological theory through to 'postmodernity'. This includes:

• recent and contemporary capitalism
• developments in the economy
• technology and the future
• politics and social movements
• identity, the body, feminism and sexuality
30 credits.

You study option modules to the value of 60 credits. Option modules offered recently include:

Year 3 option modules Module title Credits. Privacy, Surveillance and Security Privacy, Surveillance and Security 15 credits

This module will engage with issues of privacy, surveillance and security. Recent years have seen a huge growth in demands for: certainty in the verification of identity; accountability of individual and organisational activity; and mechanisms designed to accumulate knowledge of what individuals and groups may do in the near future. First, the module will provide a background to the historical development of surveillance and the mobilizing of notions of security through specific political regimes.

Second, the module will investigate contemporary issues in privacy, surveillance and security including: the rise of CCTV and the visualization of order, airports and spaces of disciplined consumption, the management of everyday life and claims regarding the death of privacy. Third, the module will end by investigating the possibility of addressing tensions between privacy, surveillance and security issues.

In particular we will focus on technologies as solutions, market based mechanisms and the valuation of privacy, and the variety of interventions, engagements and accountabilities with regard to surveillance that have been developed in recent years.

15 credits. Race, Racism and Social Theory Race, Racism and Social Theory 15 credits

This examines some of the conceptual and political problems that have clustered around sociological analysis of ‘race’ and racism. It is comparative in focus and encompasses both historical and theoretical material. It introduces some of the major sociological paradigms of ‘race relations’ analysis and relates them to a variety of examples.

15 credits. Sociology of Visuality Sociology of Visuality 15 credits

This module is about the relationships between vision, sensuality and the production of truth, knowledge, and identity in Euro-American cultures. It asks: how do historically and culturally specific ways of seeing and sensing shape ways of knowing (epistemology) and ways of being (ontology)? What are the relationships between vision, sensuality and power?

What are the epistemological, methodological and ethical demands that are made upon sociology in its encounters with the visual and the sensual? Through discussion of topics such as Deigo Velázquez' 1656 painting Las Meninas, the camera and photography, and the visual manipulation of identity through ‘passing’, the module will provide a forum for thinking about the pleasures, dangers and contingencies present in visualising the social world.

15 credits. Sociologies of Emerging Worlds Sociologies of Emerging Worlds 15 credits

Conventional ways of demarcating economic, power, and cultural relationships have long relied up notions of "North and South", "first and third", "east and west", "colonial and post-colonial." These means of envisioning the world and of tracing the intersections among diverse places, times, and peoples, while maintaining some salience, no longer seem to grasp what is really taking place.

The module, in particular, explores the emerging relationships between Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa—articulations that have been elaborated over a long history but which now take shape in new and powerful ways.

Additionally, there are a plurality of "worlds” that enjoin different actors and spaces that cannot be easily defined according to geopolitical understandings--where information infrastructure, design, telecommunications, and travel combine to create new possibilities of transaction. The module looks at how these worlds affect our understandings of sociality, actors, and collective life, in general, and the shape and operations of emerging powers in particular.

15 credits. Citizenship and Human Rights Citizenship and Human Rights 15 credits

This module is concerned with the historical development of citizenship and human rights, especially in relation to the nation-state and the international states system. It is also concerned with the value of human rights, explored through consideration of any or all of the following topics: Are human rights cosmopolitan? Is there a human rights movement? Does the enforcement of human rights increase democracy? Are human rights structured so that they necessarily privilege certain groups as ‘human’?

15 credits. Global Development and Underdevelopment Global Development and Underdevelopment 15 credits

Globalisations is both a dominant discourse of powerful actors on the world scene, as well as the main target for one of the most vibrant new social movements. This module aims to develop a critical and historical understanding of the issues which inform contemporary debates on globalisation.

15 credits. Childhood Matters: Society, Theory and Culture Childhood Matters: Society, Theory and Culture 15 credits

This approaches childhood as a socio-historically constructed concept, with material, technological and political dimensions and consequences. Through a mixture of theoretical readings and issue-based discussions, you explore the regulated constitution of childhood and its changing parameters. Some of the substantive areas explored include: changing household patterns from the child’s perspective, child sexual abuse, infancy and foetal life, children’s literature.

15 credits. Migration, Gender and Social Reproduction Migration, Gender and Social Reproduction 15 credits

This module takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to chart the gender dimensions of transnational migrations in the contemporary world. As a growing number of migration scholars emphasize, a gender perspective is crucial to orienting our theories and understanding of migration and global human geographies in the twenty-first century. You will be encouraged to address questions such as: Why are men and women increasingly on the move on a global scale? What do male and female migrants do in the so-called countries of destination in the Global North? How does gender help us to understand the migration trajectories of migrants? How are gendered migrations linked to processes of social reproduction?

The module will be divided in two parts. First, you will analyse the recent history and political economy of migrations through the lenses of gender, as well as ‘race’ and class theories. We will focus particularly on the notions of ‘feminisation of migrations’ and ‘crisis of social reproduction’ in order to examine their root causes and dimensions. Second, you will learn to explore the social and cultural representations of migrants in the Global North and to identify the ways these representations can be scrutinized through theories of gender, ‘race’ and class. We will thus take a critical perspective on key concepts such as ‘sexualization of racism’, ‘racialization of sexism’, ‘gendered assimilation’, ‘civic integration of migrants’ and ‘gendered colonial technologies of domination’.

Taking a case study approach throughout the course, you will also learn how to evaluate the feasibility and appropriateness of different methodologies and techniques of social research when undertaking empirical research projects involving migrants.

15 credits. Why Music Matters for Sociology Why Music Matters for Sociology 30 credits

This module aims to explore why music matters sociologically speaking. It discusses the relationship between music - both orchestral and popular - and social life in a wide range of spheres including