This course takes a critical approach to investigate how life is increasingly mobile. It draws on the expanding field of mobility studies to examine how different aspects of life are being transformed by processes of mobility including globalisation, tourism, migration and transport. It draws on a range of contemporary examples of mobile phenomena at a variety of spatial and temporal scales and highlights how these must be historically contextualised. Themes explored within this module will typically include: mobile landscapes, the rise of new landscapes associated with mobile processes and representations of mobility; mobile systems and the impacts of these systems on the urban environment; mobile practices and new everyday time-space choreographies; mobile socialities and their relationship to citizenship, identity and belonging; mobile desires, tourism and postcolonial geographies; mobile senses and the emotional and affective economies of movement; and mobile speeds and the complex relations between movement and stasis. The course encourages students to draw on a variety of sociological and geographical theories and methods to help understand these processes. The module takes an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on the work of key thinkers from Sociology, Geography, Politics, Anthropology and Cultural Studies.

By the end of the module students should be able to:

1. Understand the most recent developments in social scientific thinking with regard to a conceptual understanding of mobility.
2. Develop these ideas into arguments with reference to historical and contemporary examples of mobile processes.
3. Demonstrate the different ways in which mobilities are defined within contemporary debates, and analyse their cultural, social and political implications.
4. Select and interrogate relevant literature concerning the cultural, social and political aspects of contemporary mobility issues.
5. Communicate their findings in written and oral form with reference to broader debates within Sociology and related disciplines.

800 word tutorial paper: 20% 

1200 word tutorial paper: 30%

2000 word research essay: 40%

Tutorial Participation: 10%

2 x 1 hour lectures

1 x 1 hour tutorial per week for 11 weeks

Any two first-year Sociology courses or with the permission of the lecturer.

SOCY1002 and SOCY1004