Module SOC3088 for 2018/9
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
SOC3088: Health, Illness and Bodies in Contemporary Society: Part 2: Bodies in Society
This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.
Module Aims
Understanding how societies and cultures shape bodies is critical to understanding the meanings and experiences of health and illness in contemporary society. The aim of the module is to introduce you to central concepts and analytic frameworks through which sociologists and anthropologists study and approach ‘the body’ in society and culture. This module will familiarise you with scholarship that takes bodies to be historically and culturally contingent and sites for important social, cultural and identity work across cultures, and to develop insights into how health, illness and deviance are experienced and governed. The module seeks to introduce you to the rich body of work being developed in sociology and anthropology around bodies and their many meanings, and the importance of critically placing bodies in cultural, power and policy contexts. You will develop research, writing and presentation skills by identifying, pursuing and communication about a topic on bodies throughout the module
| On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
|---|---|
| Module-Specific Skills | 1. Competently demonstrate your knowledge about current sociological and anthropological work and debate on bodies as historically and culturally contingent, and as material loci of social and cultural practices, in class discussion and course work; 2. Competently develop complex arguments regarding specific contemporary topics concerning bodies and their relationship to topics of health and illness, social control, identity, and social inequalities - based on sociological and anthropological theory and research; |
| Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. Critically evaluate contemporary sociological and anthropological texts; 4. display written and oral form an understanding of the critical approaches of these disciplines 5. appreciate key issues relevant to the contemporary world, and develop critical, comparative and cross-cultural insight; |
| Personal and Key Skills | 6. Critically demonstrate transferable skills in formulating, researching and addressing focused questions; 7. Critically prepare focused and comprehensive written and oral presentations; 8. Critically work independently and in collaboration with others; 9. Critically demonstrate critical and cross-cultural understanding, translation and comparison, which will be of advantage in an increasing range of professional settings. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Lecture topics may include:
- Theorising the body
- Categorising the body – deviance, cultural constructions, and social inequality
- Regulating bodies – discipline and punish? Social control and beyond
- Marking, performing and displaying bodies
Bodies as sites of consumption
- Experiences of bodies and embodiment
- Bodies of/in ethnography
- Technologies of/and bodies
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 22 | 11 x 2 hour lectures, involving presentations, group discussion, and film screenings |
| Guided independent study | 18 | Preparing a formative, research based presentation individually |
| Guided independent study | 80 | Reading and research, with roughly 10% dedicated to seminar preparation |
| Guided independent study | 30 | Web-based activities |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
Web based and electronic resources: including news media, blogs and online fora
Other Learning Resources
films and relevant feature films
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Lock, M. and Farquhar, J. (2007) Beyond the body proper: reading the anthropology of material life.
Malacrida, C. and Low. J. (2008 ) Sociology of the body: A reader.
Shilling, C. (2005) The body in culture, technology and society.
Lucy Grealy. (1994) Autobiography of a Face New York: Harper Collins
Alice Domurat Dreger (2004) One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Victoria Pitts. (2003) In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification
Rich, E. and Evans, J. (2005) “Fat Ethics: The Obesity Discourse and Body Politics.” Social Theory and Health 3(4): 341-358.
Gill, R et al. (2005) Body Projects and the Regulation of Normative Masculinity Body and Society 11 (1): 37-62.
