Undergraduate Module Descriptor

ANT2009: Living Cities: Migration, Place and the Politics of Identities

This module descriptor refers to the 2019/0 academic year.

Module Aims

This module with enable you to think analytically about ideas of race and place, processes of voluntary and forced migration of people across the globe and their lives in the living city, how ethnicity mediates cultural creativity in cities and how cities become sites of political action and resistance to regimes of governance and power. You will also learn how to think critically about popular racialised, classed and gendered representations of cities, including everyday accounts of urban uprisings and gang cultures. While the city is often depicted as the site of ethnic diversity and migration, we shall consider how the countryside becomes portrayed in some cultural representations as the city’s other and thus the site of cultural homogeneity.

This module will draw mainly upon anthropological and sociological studies of migration, ethnicity, place and urban cultures. We shall also consider important work by scholars in related disciplines such as cultural geography and politics to think about place, race and identity. In so doing this module will familiarise you with the rich body of work and thought by anthropologists, sociologists, cultural geographers and scholars from related disciplines working on questions concerning migration, ethnicity, race, racism, social class, place, politics, power and the city. The module will take a comparative approach drawing upon studies across Britain and the globe.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.

On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. demonstrate familiarity and some critical engagement with anthropological, sociological and related work on ethnicities, migration and the city
2. demonstrate some appreciation of theories and concepts deployed to analyze the ways in which places become sites for the production of identities
3. think critically about popular and everyday representations of urban life
Discipline-Specific Skills4. display - in written and oral form - an understanding of the relationship between anthropological, sociological and related approaches and explanations offered in the social sciences
5. appreciate key issues relevant to the contemporary world, and develop critical, comparative insight.
Personal and Key Skills6. demonstrate transferable skills in formulating, researching and addressing focused questions
7. prepare focused and comprehensive written and oral presentations
8. work independently and in collaboration with others