MA/PGDip Gender, Sexuality and Culture / Course details

Precise content of the course is reviewed regularly, but you'll get a good sense of topic coverage from a recent list of lecture titles:

• Introducing the Sociology of Consumption: Theory, themes & controversies 
• Understanding consumer societies: History, gender, race 
• "One Dimensional Man"? Mass culture, materialism and well-being 
• Consumer culture, cultural theory and the meaning of signs 
• Consumption, Stratification and Taste 
• Political economy, globalisation and economic change 
• Sustainable consumption? Consumers and the environment 
• Will consumers save the world? Resistance, movements and alternatives 
• A sociology of things: Material culture, consumption and the digital

This course examines consumption from a sociological perspective. It aims to equip students with the understanding and ability to analyse consumption in relation to a range of processes. They include the dynamics and social differences of consumer societies, cultural consumption and the culture 'industry', globalisation and economic change, sustainability, consumer movements, and material culture. Throughout, the course aims to develop students' capacity for critical thinking, sociological imagination and synthesis at an advanced level, through the application of diverse conceptual approaches to a range of empirical cases and contexts. 

On completion of the whole course, and based on their active participation in and outside of classes, students will be expected to: 

• Understand the sociological dynamics of everyday economic activity 
• Understand and be critically engaged with contemporary debates about identity, inequalities, politics, and the environment as they relate to consumption 
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of current work in the field 

Weekly lecture

3000 word essay (100%)

250-500 word formative assignment (0%)