BAEcon Accounting and Finance

What shapes people's everyday understandings of inequality? This course looks at how everyday 'views' or framings of inequality emerge. The course examines how troubling social situations come to be regarded as inequalities, and how inequalities come to be seen as susceptible to intervention and change. The course explores people's 'sense of inequality' through their attitudes and perceptions, reflexive and self-conscious values and beliefs, expressions of injustice and indignity, struggles against inequality through organized protest, resistance and mundane non-compliance, but also through the more tacit, embodied and affective ways in which people 'know' and 'sense' the world. 

• To develop understanding of the complex factors that affect the subjective experience of inequality  
• To critically evaluate different theories of the subjective experience of inequality  
• To develop understanding of the diversity of subjective experiences of inequality through familiarity with a range of empirical literatures 

On completion of the unit students should be able to:  

• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key theoretical and empirical debates on subjective inequality  
• Engage in theoretically informed discussion relating to people's consent, resistance or protest about unequal social arrangements  
• Synthesise, summarise and critically evaluate information from a range of sources in order to produce assessed coursework.  
• Understand the variable meanings of 'inequality' in academic and popular discourse Acquire and demonstrate transferable skills through group work and debates  

Weekly Topics: 

• Should we care about inequality?
• Attitudes and perceptions of inequality. 
• How do we form a sense of inequality? 
• Do people consent to inequality? 
• Internalising inequality. 
• Normalising inequality. 
• Affective inequality. 
• Protesting inequality. 
• Resisting inequality. 
• Course review and exam preparation. 

10 x 2 hour lectures. 

10 x 1 hour seminars, incorporating small group discussion of key readings  
focused upon questions set by the lecturer, and whole group interactive learning.  

Formative 500-word essay plan 

Summative 2-hour exam (100%) 

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

Bottero, W. (2019) A Sense of Inequality, London: Rowman and Littlefield (library e-book)

Bayat, A. (2013) Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle-East, Stanford University Press. (library e-book)

Bourdieu, P. (1992) ‘In Conversation: Doxa and Common Life’, (with Terry Eagleton), New Left Review, 191 (1): 111-121.

Dorling, D. (2015) Injustice: Why Inequality Still Persists, Policy Press.

Holloway, J.  (2010) Crack Capitalism. London: Pluto (library e-book)

hooks, b. (2003) Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem, New York; Washington Square Press.

Lamont, M., Moraes Silva, G., Welburn, J., Guetzkow, J., Mizrachi,  J., Herzog, H., and Reis, E. (2016). Getting Respect Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel. Princeton University Press. (library e-book)

McCall, L. (2013) The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality Opportunity and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (library e-book)

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2027 will be £10,050 per annum. Tuition fees for international students will be £34,800 per annum.

For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

Learn more about student finance options for UK students.

Learn more about fees and finance for international students.

As an international student you may be eligible for our Global Futures Scholarships. This is open to students starting their studies in September 2026.