SC550-7-AU: SOCIOLOGY OF HUMAN RIGHTS 1
Year: 2013/14
Department: Sociology
Essex credit: 20
ECTS credit: 10
Available to Study Abroad / Exchange Students: No
| Module is taught during the following terms |
| Autumn |  | Spring |  | Summer | |
Module Description
This is a 10 week course structured around the following topics:
* Weeks 2-5 Sociology of Human Rights: Theory and Concepts
* Weeks 6-9 The Right to have Rights - citizens and non-citizens
* Weeks 10-11 Methods and conclusion
The primary aim of this course is to examine human rights through the 'sociological imagination', to enable students to understand how human rights practices and institutions are socially created and re-created by human beings.
To achieve this aim, the course will develop three kinds of sociological understandings: historical, critical and cultural:
Historical understanding enables students to appreciate how current practices and institutions are the result of previous processes of social transformation.
Critical understanding enables students to debate what kinds of future social changes are feasible and desirable and how such changes might be brought about.
Cultural understanding enables students to step back from taken-for-granted ethnocentric views of society and to engage in dialogue across cultures.
Students will learn how to apply some of the theories and concepts lying behind these understandings to selected human rights issues. This will involve the use of sociological reasoning in clarifying fundamental debates about the idea of human rights. Particular attention will be paid to the sociology of citizenship, enabling students to understand the complex social relation between human rights and the rights of citizens; to the position of migrants and asylum seekers; to the link between rights and controls; and to the ideal of cosmopolitanism. We will also look at methodological approaches to researching meaning and agency in relation to human rights
Learning & Teaching Methods
This is a 10 week course structured around the following topics:
a) Sociology of Human Rights: Theory and Concepts
b) Critical analysis of the rights of non-citizens and the power of human rights to supercede the sovereignty of the state.
Assessment
100 per cent Coursework Mark
Coursework:
Students taking this course must submit an essay of approximately 3500 - 4000 words.
Other details:
Subject to change
Exam Duration and Period
Bibliography
- Readings: Students with little prior knowledge of sociology will find it useful to consult one or more of the following general sociology textbooks:
-
-
Giddens, A. Sociology, 3rd Ed., Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997
-
Macionis, J. and Plummer, K. Sociology: A Global Introduction, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997
-
-
For a text on Sociology and Human Rights see:
-
Morris, L.D. Rights: Sociological Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2006
-
Morris, L.D. Social Theory and Human Rights, London: Palgrave, 2013
-
-
-
All students should read the debate about human rights in the leading journal Sociology:
-
Turner, B. "Outline of a theory of human rights", Sociology, 27(3), 1993: 489-512Turner, B. "A Neo_Hobbesian theory of Human Rights: A Reply to Malcolm Waters", Sociology, 31(3), 1997: 565-571
-
Waters, M."Human Rights and the Universalisation of Interests", sociology, 30(3), 1996: 593-600
-