Political Theory and Contemporary Politics

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 7
• Convenor and tutor: Dr Jason Edwards
• Assessment: to be confirmed

In this module we examine central problems of contemporary political theory.

We begin by questioning the very idea of a ‘Western’ tradition of political thought, engaging with arguments about how such a tradition has excluded or marginalised contributions by authors outside the Western canon, but also how knowledge within political theory has been constituted in a way that conceals or promotes the power of the West through its colonisation of the rest of the world over the last five centuries. We will place key debates over sovereignty, the social contract tradition, and the status of culture and identity in this context.

We then turn to problems of the constitution of ‘the people’, the politics of populism, the contribution of political theory to debates on work and play, and finally the status of the human in contemporary political thought.

Indicative syllabus

• Reviewing the state
• The impossibility of sovereignty
• The sexual and racial contract
• Decolonialism, postcolonialism and political theory
• Culture and identity
• Who are the people?
• Problems of democracy
• Work and play
• Political theory and things
• Humanism and posthumanism

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

• understand the idea of a tradition of ‘Western’ political theory and the way in which this has tended to exclude non-Western authors as well as assume the power and superiority of the West over the rest of the world
• relate contemporary debates about sovereignty, the social contract tradition, and culture and identity to broader questions of the status of political theory in relation to the Western tradition
• engage with and contribute critically to debates on contemporary issues such as the politics of populism, the relationship between work, play and politics, and the status of the human in politics today
• synthesise a variety of materials across primary and secondary texts to explain and support your own arguments concerning key problems in the study of contemporary political theory
• demonstrate skills of critical thinking, enquiry, synthesis, analysis and evaluation that can be employed on other modules studied at this level.