BAEcon Accounting and Finance

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This course explores the significance of human-animal relations for understanding human societies. With reference to the diverse and often controversial roles of animals in modern societies, as pets or companions, as objects of consumption, as zoological exhibits, as laboratory animals and as agricultural machines, it examines the important but often invisible role of nonhuman animals in human social life.

Throughout history nonhuman animals have played key roles in human societies. In different historical periods and in different cultures animals have been key sources of calories, clothing, labour power, physical protection and companionship, as well as cultural symbolism, identities, mythology and religious beliefs. In late modern societies, animals and the various products derived from their bodies continue to play a huge role in both material and cultural aspects of human social organisation. This has led to the argument that it is necessary to understand social life as comprising more than just the interactions between human beings, and this course takes up that argument. The course will trace how human-animal relations have changed over time, and how these changes have been connected to social transformations, with an emphasis upon changing human-animal relations in modernity. The deeply ambiguous and contested place of animals in modern societies will be explored in depth, with reference to the diverse roles of animals in different locales, from the home to the farm, from the zoo to the laboratory. In this way the course will combine 'macro' and 'micro' approaches, exploring the nature of human-animal interactions in everyday life as well as in rationalised modern systems of production and consumption.  

On completion of this course unit students will be able to: - Assess the importance of human-animal relations for understanding human social life. - Explain how the relations between humans and nonhuman animals have changed over time in relation to social transformations. - Understand the diverse and ambiguous roles of animals in a range of social institutions and locales. - Identify the changing ideological function of animals in various modern discourses and cultural forms.

Weekly lecture and separate seminar/workshop comprising group discussion of key readings organised around questions on the text.

Formative assignment (non-assessed, mark and feedback provided): Mock/practice exam in same format as summative exam.  

Summative assessment (assessed, 100%): 48 Hour Online multi-format exam combining a range of question types, including, for example: multiple choice questions, short answer questions, and longer form answer questions.          
 

All sociology courses include both formative feedback which lets you know how you're getting on and what you could do to improve, and summative feedback which gives you a mark for your assessed work.  

Margo DeMello (2012) Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies.

Samantha Hurn (2015) Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions.  

Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders (2009) Between the Species: Readings in Human-Animal Relationships.  

Leslie Irvine (2008) If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connections with Animals.  

Kay Peggs (2012) Animals and Sociology.