Undergraduate Module Descriptor

SOC2095: On Violence

This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.

Module Aims

On Violence aims to increase your confidence in developing independent thinking, expressing that thinking verbally and in written materials, and responding to other people’s contributions, in a seminar environment. It also exposes you to an issue that is challenging in many ways, and cross-disciplinary by nature.

On Violence will help develop and strengthen your abilities to:

synthesize and critically assess the relationship between different approaches to violence;
apply the insights and findings in the literature to the analysis of problems confronting society;
scrutinize the methodological foundations of studying harm;
conduct independent analysis.

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 Skills	1. Demonstrate a clear understanding of the types of social science research into violence 2. Engage with different sources of information about violence, both quantitative and qualitative, and how they are produced - including their location in particular political and social frameworks - and how they can be interpreted
Discipline-Specific Skills	3. Develop and deploy arguments grounded in theoretical frameworks; 4. Draw thematic comparisons between material from different sources; 5. Clearly present research, policy debates and your own arguments;
Personal and Key Skills	6. Present an argument orally in a clear, organized and effective manner; 7. Evaluate your own work and those of others; 8. Demonstrate skills in collaborative working, e.g. group work, including the presentation and discussion of material in groups; and 9. 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 module will examine a wide range of type of violence. Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following themes over one or more weeks:

Defining Violence - Primary Question: How is violence defined?

Communication and Violence - Primary Question: How is communication characterized by violence?

Measuring Violence - Primary Question: How is violence measured?
Seeing Violence - Primary Question: How are violent acts rendered seen and unseen?

Systematizing Violence - Primary Question: How is violence ‘structural’?
Bounding Violence - Primary Question: How are social limits placed on violence?
Ignoring Violence - Primary Question: How do societies learn to ignore harm?
Remembering Violence - Primary Question: How do societies remember violence?
Symbolic Violence - Primary Question: In what way do representations entail forms of violence?
Re-defining Violence - Primary Question: How should violence be defined?

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
44	256	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 and Teaching activity	44	22 x 2-hour seminars (lecturers explanations, student participation and discussion)
Guided Independent Study	48	Preparing for the seminars
Guided Independent Study	80	Reading assignments
Guided Independent Study	20	Additional reading/research
Guided Independent Study	108	Preparation for and completion of all exams

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).