Global Societies

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenor and tutor: Dr Ian Sanjay Patel
• Assessment: a 1500-word critical writing exercise (20%) and 2000-word essay (80%)

In this module you will be introduced to global sociology and learn how to think internationally and transnationally, as well as comparing social questions in societies across different regions.

Indicative syllabus

• Major themes in global sociology
• Southern social thought (sociology flowing from the Global South)
• Regional case studies
• Social and political questions at the level of the transnational, international and global
• Solidarity and social movements across borders
• Globalisation and global versus local debates and tensions
• International inequalities and the global colour line
• Cosmopolitanism, migration and borders
• The concept and critiques of international society, the international community, etc

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand the key concepts of global sociology
• understand the theoretical claims of ‘the universal’ in sociology as well as the particularity of such universal claims
• approach social relations and the social world from international, transnational and global perspectives
• understand key debates about global/local and national/international relationships
• understand sociological thinking flowing from the Global South.