One of the challenges of the last few months has been to develop a ten credit unit of study with the title ‘Social Change and Late Modernity’. With unit specifications in official documents suitably vague there’s been room for a personal imprint – exactly which has been worrying me for at least six months. The options were:
- Translate my own specific areas of research and interest into an emphasis on social change from a communicative and media perspective. The downside of this is how relevant that perspective would be to students who have not followed a specific ‘communcations’ route through the degree programme.
- Continue a thematic social change curriculum choosing those topics which seem (to me) most relevant to students graduating in Social Change this year. The downside here is that in 10 sessions what would I be able to cover, with which theoretical/conceptual framework and more importantly what would, necessarily, be omitted?
- Create something new which could be a summation unit – the final unit of a three year degree that pulls together threads both personal and academic.
I decided on the third and have now developed a unit which examines contemporary ethical issues relating to the disciplinary fields (social policy, social & community studies, and policy & management) to investigate the interactions of social problems, justice and well-being. Social problems here are defined as problematic questions which require social debate – not with social conditions, the construction of social conditions or those groups affected – which have been covered in various other units on the programme.
So, with roots in moral philosophy and water from reasoned public debate we started planting yesterday. With spring just around the corner …
A new blog hosts the resources for the unit at:
