Suspended in 2025/26
SO490 Half Unit
Contemporary Social Thought
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Chetan Bhatt
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in Economy and Society, MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics, MSc in Political Sociology and MSc in Sociology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). Places are allocated based on a written statement, with priority given to students who have this course listed in their programme regulations.
The course is not an introductory course in social theory. It is ideally suited to students familiar and comfortable with advanced modern social and political thought, philosophy, and political philosophy, including complex, advanced, and challenging readings in these areas.
Course content
Contemporary Social Thought covers several areas in contemporary social theory and links these areas to several traditions of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinking. This includes critical assessment of Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, and also more recent thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, Jacques Derrida, Achille Mbembe, Donna Haraway, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Stuart Hall, and Walter Mignolo. The course also aims to link theoretical areas with new and emerging social and political issues – for example, how theoretical approaches can be used to analyse a contemporary phenomenon. The substantive topics covered in the course vary by year, but may include: technology and transhumanism, politics and violence, the new identity politics, transformations in the far-right, authoritarian populism, decoloniality, global or world sociology, wars and technology; and violent religious movements.
Teaching
20 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
Formative assessment
Essay plan
An essay outline of 1,000 words to be submitted in Autumn Term.
Indicative reading
A. Loomba (2015), Colonialism/Postcolonialism [Third Edition], Routledge.
A. Elliott (2014), Contemporary Social Theory: an introduction [Second Edition], Routledge.
J. Wolff (2015), An Introduction to Political Philosophy [Third Edition], Oxford University Press.
Assessment
Essay (100%, 4000 words) in January
Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.
Key facts
Department: Sociology
Course Study Period: Autumn Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 12
Average class size 2024/25: 12
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Self-management
- Team working
- Application of information skills
- Communication