BSc (Hons) Sociology

This module aims to introduce you to key features of the sociological perspective and what many call the sociological imagination. It is concerned with making the everyday strange and the far away near to gain a better grasp on key aspects of social life. This leads into a key concern of sociology with questions of power and inequality. Students will be able to engage with key debates about the nature of inequality and power using contemporary examples and analysis.

This module will introduce the major aspects of social change that have led to and developed within modern societies. There is a focus upon identifying and explaining some of the major social changes over the past 30-40 years using official statistics and social theory. The emphasis will be upon patterns of change alongside an exploration of the impact on personal biography, life-satisfaction and wellbeing. The module will initially focus upon Europe but also give room for students to explore social change in more rapidly changing parts of the world as well. The module allows students to engage with a range of data that describe social changes in key areas of social life from family to work to wellbeing to migration.

Social Psychology is concerned with the scientific study of human social behaviour, experience and thought. Developmental Psychology is concerned with the scientific study of systematic changes in human psychology across an individual’s lifespan, particularly cognitive, perceptual, social and emotional development in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Policy and Politics gives students the skills and knowledge to identify the connection between political ideology and policy responses to crime and deviance, in addition to investigating how modern societies understand equality and social justice. This will enable students to form responses to criminal and perceived deviant behaviour.

Social Theory provides students with the opportunity to engage with the ideas of a range of important theorists from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, allowing for an engagement with the insightful, often challenging and sometimes counter-intuitive perspectives that come from a range of contemporary social theorists.

The central theme is the social nature of health. Understanding the broad patterns of morbidity and mortality are fundamental to enabling informed discussion regarding the social nature of health. The module seeks to broaden student’s understanding of contemporary health and illness with a content which is topical, wide ranging combining contemporary issues in health with classic debates within this field.

This module allows students to reflect on the world of work by considering their skills and strengths in relation to future career paths, and the kinds of practice and professional skills they may need to cultivate. The module allows students to take a work placement or engage in work shadowing. The module will also consider theoretical aspects of work and employment and review the most recent sociological research related to work and employment.  The examples will focus on Ipswich, Suffolk, and more widely on the UK and a global dimension of work and employment.

This module will encourage students to develop a critical approach to race, racism and resistance from a global perspective, looking not only on conceptions and lived experience in the Western countries but also other parts of the world, including the Global South including Latin American, Africa and Asian contexts, and Central and Eastern Europe. The module will explore key sites of contemporary racism and anti-racist political activism, drawing on examples such as the Black Lives Matter movement and pro- and anti-refugee solidarity activism in Europe and beyond. Attention will also be paid to decolonial and postcolonial approaches, as well as the intersection of gender, race, class and other categories of difference when exploring race, racism and resistance globally.

In this module you will produce a final year project that allows you to exercise your independent judgement and skills in the development and execution of a project or dissertation relevant to your field of study. Under the supervision of an assigned tutor, the module provides you with the opportunity to independently apply the core subject knowledge and skills developed over the course of your degree. Over the course of the year you will undertake independent analysis and research, and communicate and present it to high professional standards. This project can take the form of a traditional research dissertation, but you also have the flexibility to undertake an alternative, such as a reflective report based on an independent project pursued in a practice / work setting.

This module introduces the sociological perspective to the discussion about and the debates on mental illness and the development of the psychiatric treatment and services.

The module explores key issues, themes and debates from the field of drugs, crime and society. Students explore established and more recent academic and policy debates surrounding drug use, regulation and criminalisation. It is expected that students will come to the module with a ‘taken-for-granted’ perspective on the nature of drugs, their links with crime, and their wider social consequences and the module aims to challenge some of these.

Criminology as a discipline has predominately focused on crimes against the person that have tended to have been committed by other individuals, traditionally referred to as ‘street-crimes’. The aim of this module is to rebalance this bias by exploring key themes that fall under the ‘umbrella term’ Crimes of the Powerful and to apply these themes in analysing cases of hidden crime that arguably produces more harm than traditional deviant behaviour. These themes include discussions of power, privilege, information control and the construction of harm.