Aims: To familiarise students with the aims and methods of sociology and social anthropology, to introduce them to the kinds of issues sociologists and social anthropologists raise in the development context, and to equip them with some social analysis tools of relevance to the practice of international development.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this unit study fellows should:
Have a clear grasp of certain key concepts in Sociology and Social Anthropology;
Be familiar with some key approaches within Gender and Social Development practice;
Be able to apply these to undertake social analysis of development issues and contexts.
Skills:
General skills: active learning, working in groups, doing presentations, writing, critical analysis, imagination and empathy, synthesis, trawling literatures.
Social development skills: recognising that policies and projects always involve real people and the related implications, appreciation of empirical diversity and complexity, discourse analysis, analysis of dynamic interactions between social power structures and social actors, understanding of unintended consequences, use of empirical material.
Content:
Social difference and inequality: forms and dimensions of difference; how these are expressed; their basis and how they are reproduced; how they vary and fit together.
Living together: units and modes of belonging; dynamics in relationship; links with social inequality.
Thinking, knowing and acting: consciousness and empowerment; culture and ideology; identity and subjectivity.
Dynamics of Change: environmental dimensions; endogenous/exogenous factors; making change happen through violence/non-violence; policies, organisations and projects. Frameworks of Understanding: methods and approaches of social research; logic of explanation; power/knowledge; morality and development critique.
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