MSc Sociological Research / 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 
• Differentiating consumer societies: History, gender, race 
• "One Dimensional Man"? Mass culture, materialism and well-being 
• Consumer culture, cultural theory and the meaning of signs 
• Consumption, class, taste 
• Political economy, globalisation and transformation
• 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, subcultures and the culture 'industry'; globalisation, privatisation and economic change; sustainability consumer activism and movements; and material culture.

In relation to these processes, we ask a range of questions. What is consumer culture, where did it come from, and how does it vary? How are forms of social difference around, for example, gender, race and class, challenged or reproduced in consumption? What do critiques of consumption from critical theory and environmental activists tell us? How do privatisation, colonialism, digitisation, and global commodity chains affect consumption? Can we resist or change the world with subcultures or consumer movements? And what are the stories and lives of commodities and objects themselves, can we say that things have agency?

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%)