Unit information: Culture, Postmodernity and Religion in 2014/15

Unit name	Culture, Postmodernity and Religion
Unit code	SOCIM2113
Credit points	20
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Flanagan
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Faculty	Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

Description including Unit Aims

This unit considers issues of character, identity and spirituality that have emerged from debates on religion, culture and postmodernity. These issues give rise to concerns with virtue ethics and morality and relate to debates on reflexivity that increasingly shape sociological understandings. A particular concern of the unit is to understand how these moral matters relate to visual culture, to acts of seeing and spectacle. Indicative ContentDefinitions of culture and postmodernity; issues of self, identity, ethics and virtue; the place of religion in sociology and in the postmodern world; metaphors of the sacred; visual culture, visibility, invisibility and its relation to virtue, vice and evil; Bauman, Bourdieu, Simmel.

Aims:

• To explore debates surrounding issues of visual culture, postmodernity and the distinctive religious issues that so emerge

• To link these issues so raised to questions that emerge in sociological characterisations of virtue ethics

• To underline the complexity of religion as a persistent strand of sociological reflexivity

Intended Learning Outcomes

• To understand how and why issues of religion have emerged from debates on postmodernity

• To show understanding of relations between virtue and visual culture in ways that expand a sociological reflexivity

• To understand the significance of virtue ethics for sociological characterisations of religion and culture in the contexts of debate on postmodernity

• To be able to understand how issues of vice and evil have a bearing on virtue ethics.

• To show how virtue and visual culture can be linked to issues of relig iosity through the writings of Georg Simmel

Teaching Information

The main method of teaching will be weekly face-to-face seminar sessions which will involve a combination of lecturing, group discussion and student presentations.

Assessment Information

The assessment will relate directly to one of more of the learning outcomes specified above in 15 and will be an extended essay of 4000 words (or equivalent) showing an in-depth understanding and integration of key aspects of the unit.

Reading and References

• Bauman, Zygmunt (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents Oxford:Blackwelis

• Eagleton, Terry (2000) The Idea of Culture Oxford:Blackwelis

• Flanagan, Kieran (1999) The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture Basingstoke: Macmillan

• Jervis, John (1998) Exploring the Modern Oxford:Blackwelis

• Macintyre, Alasdair (1982) After Virtue Duckworths

• Simmel, George (1997) Essays on Religion Yale University Press