How does what you think become thinkable? How does what you know become knowable? Addressing these kinds of questions requires an investigation of social organization. In this course, we challenge pre-conceived, normative assumptions about social organization. We do this through a number of means.
We ‘unpack’ ‘the centre’, bringing into question taken for granted, normative assumptions about social organization.
We investigate every day objects and practices, exploring the social, economic, and political processes which produce these objects and practices.
We address ‘the politics of representation’. We analyse a selection of ‘texts’, including written, music and film texts, in order to comprehend the significance of the politics of representation.
We explore how power is embedded in ‘the social’. We investigate two approaches to power, the first inspired by the work of Karl Marx, and the second by the work of Michel Foucault. We consider the uses and limits of these approaches for enriching our understanding of social organization.
