Module POL2081 for 2016/7
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
POL2081: Thinking about Race: Perspectives from the Biological and Social Sciences
This module descriptor refers to the 2016/7 academic year.
Module Aims
Of the many coalitional cleavages that political systems must manage, racial and ethnic divides often demand considerable energy. This course examines the motivations and attitudes that fuel racial and ethnic conflict by drawing from research in psychology, genetics, neuroscience, economics, politics, sociology, and law. By studying a complex phenomenon like racial attitudes from a variety of perspectives, you will learn how to analyze and synthesize divergent approaches while assessing the strengths and limitations of each approach. Furthermore, you will gain a more general understanding than one single methodology can provide.
The course moves from intimate narratives of childhood experience with racial identity to large data sets from survey experiments and evidence taken from studies of genetics and neuroscience. You will learn to evaluate claims that emanate from distinct research traditions and integrate their insights. You will apply legal methods of analysis to psychological theories of motivation. And, you will compare claims from cutting edge research in the biological sciences with arguments founded in psychological, economic, or sociological theories. Working with such range of methods will extend your cognitive dexterity and prepare you for managing the ambiguity inherent in the analysis of complex problems.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
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Module-Specific Skills | 1. critique and integrate evidence from a variety of methodological approaches; 2. evaluate competing claims and find the common conclusions they support; |
Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. comprehend statistical results from surveys, psychological experiments, and biological studies; 4. identify key assumptions of diverse research paradigms, assessing their appropriateness for particular questions; |
Personal and Key Skills | 5. write efficiently and with reduced bias through a structured inductive process that begins with accumulating evidence and moves through a synthesizing framework; 6. use appropriate strategies for anxiety management when faced with intellectual challenges at the edge of your competence; and 7. demonstrate the ability to work independently, within a limited time frame, and without access to external sources, to complete a specified task. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
The course is organized around a series of different perspectives on the topic of race.
Book: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Political Psychology of Race
Group Threat
Social Dominance Orientation
Symbolic Racism
Principled Conservativism
Implicit/Explicit Attitudes
Biology of Race
Evolutionary Psychology
Neuroscience and Race
Genetics and Race
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
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22 | 128 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
---|---|---|
Scheduled Learning & Teaching activities | 22 | 11 x 2 hour seminar |
Guided Independent Study | 44 | Preparing for Seminar - Reading and Research |
Guided Independent Study | 84 | Completing assessment tasks - Reading, Research and Writing |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
ELE – http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/