Activism for Development and Social Justice (843L6)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

In this module you'll address the ways in which activists and activism have sought to engage in development and social justice. You'll explore and evaluate different approaches to activism, grounding this in theories of social mobilisation, citizenship and unruly politics. You'll work through a series of practical examples, drawing on empirical material produced by anthropologists and your own experiences, to explore how activism has been used to address issues of development and social justice.

The module covers a range of forms of collective action. These include:

• the use of petitions and lobbying of representatives
• the use of the arts in "interrupting" everyday life
• the mobilisation for protests and peaceful demonstrations
• non-violent direct action and social media activism.

In the second half of the module, you'll apply these theoretical ideas to the design of your own activism campaign.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 267 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.