University of Roehampton (RU)

Lecture notes on week 1, 2 and 3 of the module Understanding Social Change. This is a Sociology degree module. Lecture 1 gives an introduction to sociological theory: What is theory? What is sociological theory? Key Terms, What is theory for? How is theory created? Modernity, The racialisation of capitalism. Lecture 2 notes contains a summary of Karl Marx, Capitalism, False Consciousness, Marxist class analysis. Lecture 3 notes contains a summary of Du Bois, Double Consciousness and Racism.

Notes on week 10 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. Topics covered: Debating the Causes of Poverty, Debating, Why debate? Structuring your argument, How to debate well.

Notes on week 9 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology module. Topics covered: this session is about the literature review assignment that students need to complete to pass the module. What is a literature review? What do you think are the key features of a literature review? What are literature reviews for? Sources, How should it be organised? Where literature reviews go wrong, Where do you start? What’s important? How to take notes.

Notes on week 8 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. Topics covered: General attitude towards poverty in the UK, qualitative research, quantitative research, sampling: snowball sampling and random sampling, issues and challenges in using quantitative data.

Notes on week 7 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology module. Topics covered: Visual Sociology and Ethics, Do photographs reflect reality? Images used in sociology, Photo Voice, Photo-elicitation of Poverty, Analysis image data (realism, semiology, denotation, connotation, mythologizing), Research Ethics, Professional Integrity, Relationship and responsibility to response participants.

Notes on week 6 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. Topics covered: Representation of Poverty in the News, Do you believe everything you read in the news? If not, why? What criteria do you use to decide whether you believe something or not? Why is the news important? How is the news created? Journalists' code of practice, Neoliberalism and Journalism, the news environment, Poverty in the news, reporting poverting, writing about poverty.

Notes on week 5 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. This session looks at poverty with a theoretical approach. Topics covered: Zygmunt Bauman, liquid modernity, Globalization, The consumer society, Space and the Ghetto, Gentrification, Ghettoization, voluntary ghetto, involuntary ghetto, Poverty and Consumption, Welfare & Poverty.

Notes on week 4 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. Topics covered: What is social policy? How does it get made (looking at Universal Credit as an example)? What is evidence-based policy making? What is ideology-based policy making? Launch of the Universal Credit, gathering evidence for Universal Credit, Understanding policy documents, Pros and cons of two different approaches to making policy, Evidence based policy in theory, Evidence based policy in practice.

Notes on week 3 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. Topics covered in these notes: guidance on how to complete the report writing assessment on Poverty in the UK, how to make use of feedback from written assignments.

Notes on week 2 of the module Practicing Sociology. This is a Sociology degree module. Topics covered in these notes: Politics of Poverty, Formation of the welfare state (1945 – 1970-ish), Margaret Thatcher, 1979 – 1990, New Labour, 1997 – 2020, Austerity Britain, 2010 – 2015, 2015 – Present, Timeline of UK political attitudes to poverty, The long-term unemployed: Work and Poverty, Poverty and Disability, What does having a job do to your life? (how does your life change when you get a...