Modules
The module is organized into two interlinked Streams, both of which students will complete.
In Stream 1, students are introduced to the foundational ideas, theories, and developments of Globalization Past and Present through a comprehensive, international perspective on world political, cultural, social, and economic history. This segment reorients discussions of globalization to include perspectives from the peripheries of the world system, offering a critical framework for understanding globalization as a longstanding historical process rather than a recent phenomenon. Students will examine pivotal moments in global history, exploring how advancements and discoveries have driven societal transformations while also being marked by significant imbalances in power, inequality, and conflict. This stream encourages students to challenge Western-centric and universalized narratives by examining globalization through Eastern and Southern-led experiences and viewpoints. Analyzing globalization from historical and contextual angles, the module addresses issues such as underdevelopment and global disparities, which are fundamental to understanding politics and international relations. Students will explore the long-standing global forces shaping today’s world, approaching globalization from diverse perspectives. Topics include:
- Core theories of globalization—World Systems Theory, Dependency Theory, and various layered approaches from international relations to analyze globalization
- Three primary perspectives on globalization: Hyper-globalists, integrationists, transformationalists, and regionalists
- Global economic history: colonial expansion, trade, and early capitalism
- The Silk Routes, fur trade, and slave trade as catalysts of early global change: Who financed industrialization?
- The rise of industrialization and its opposite: deindustrialization and the beginning of the "Great Divide"
- Encounters with globalization in the South Pacific: the cultural significance of gifting in Polynesian societies
- Chinese globalization: Confucianism, communism, and the role of copper in trade
- Indigenous perspectives within the global system: examining marginalization
- South Asian globalization forces: from the “sweatshops of the world” to a manufacturing powerhouse
- Latin American views on globalization: coffee economies, the Chavez legacy, and communism
In Stream 2, students will investigate "What's in the News?"
This stream equips students with analytical and methodological skills to understand how major global events are represented and reconstructed across a variety of sources including news, documentaries, film, and academic sources. Students will deconstruct, examine, and critically evaluate the narratives and portrayals surrounding major international events, with an emphasis on methodological analysis. Students will explore dominant and alternative representations to question why and how certain perspectives are emphasized over others and how the methodologies used can determine those representations.
Weekly sessions centre on “What’s in the news?” as a means to interpret, decode, and assess current global events. This approach helps students develop research methods techniques and practices, critically evaluate sources (across a wide range of methods), and construct well-supported arguments using various types of documentary evidence, policy statements, academic texts and a range of methodological approaches. Through this stream, students build essential methodological skills in global affairs, including critical analysis, and the academic approaches central to Global Affairs and International Relations.
History Wars will introduce you to the different ways people have conceived of History and the ongoing debates about what History is and how it should be done. During the module we will transform your perception of what History is and how we make History. By the end of the module you will be well on your way to becoming historians equipped to redefine History and who are trained in the skills and methodologies of cutting-edge, independent research.
Our Lectures will focus on key themes in the way History has been defined and on key issues at the heart of how we do History, such as the relationship between the past and History, the nature of historical truth, the status of sources, the idea of facts or events, and others, opening a wide range of perspectives.
Your Seminars will discuss focused contributions to debates on these themes and issues by particular historians, examining in depth through small group activities.
On completing this module you will emerge equipped with a broad knowledge and understanding to inform your analysis of historians writing about particular times and places on your optional modules and for your dissertation. Through the Seminars and smaller group discussions you will adjust to university, build community and lay a foundation in the transferable skills required across the course.
This module is designed to introduce students to both the theory and practice of economic thought from a global perspective. In the first half of the module students will examine the history of economic thought through tracing the progress of economic ideas over time and learn about the work of some of the most influential economists that have shaped global affairs. In the second half of the module students will apply these economic ideas and thinkers to specific country case studies and compare the economic systems and approaches in different regions of the world. Indicative content will include:
- Mercantilism, Physiocracy, Classical Economics, Marxist Economics, Neoclassical Economics, Keynesian Economics, The Austrian School
- Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mills, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, Milton Freedman, Joseph Stiglitz
- Market Capitalism, Communism, Transitional Economies, Developing Economies, New Traditional Economies
- USA, Japan, France, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Poland, Hungry, Yugoslavia, Slovenia, China, India, Mexico, Iran
In this module you will examine political ideas such as freedom, equality, justice and democracy that have shaped today’s world. You will develop knowledge of the major concepts and ideas underlying political thought which primarily emerged out of and are associated with western political traditions. These ideas will be unpacked and explored through key thinkers and case studies in this module from classical to contemporary political thought. Indicative ideas may include power and freedom, democracy and rights, equality and justice, individual and state, security and militarism, gender, sexuality and queerness, race and nation, and class and capitalism. Students will learn to critically analyse and apply these ideas in both institutional and organisational analyses and through case study scenarios.
Indicative case studies rooted in the European context may include movements such as Just Stop Oil, Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo Movement. Global Surrogacy; security approaches such as UK Immigration policy; UK National Security policy; Global tobacco control; environmental justice such as UK Climate Coalition; Just Stop Oil; or Fracking.
Indicative institutions within the European context include government and political institutions and European institutions, elections, political parties and interest groups, constitutionalism, bureaucracy and public service, policy-making, civil society and social movements.
You now have the opportunity to pick an optional module to learn a new language or build on your existing language skills as part of your degree. You can choose:
- Subsidiary Language for Beginners (choice of German, Italian or Spanish)
- French: Intermediate Language Development
- Spanish: Intermediate Language Development
- Chinese: Intermediate Language Development
- German: Communication in Practice
- French: Communication in Practice
- Spanish: Communication in Practice