| CODE | SOC3123 | ||||||||
| TITLE | People on the Move: Mobility, Travel and Displacement | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 03 - Years 2, 3, 4 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Sociology | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | The study-unit will look at mobility as a non-exceptional aspect of human societies, both historical and contemporary. Mobility, and our experience of and attitudes to it, can be deeply transformative of the lives of individuals and groups. Specifically, the course will cover the following topics: - Why people move; mobility and social science; mobility, distance and journey as metaphors; mobility and its opposite, stasis; mobility and the meaning of home; technologies of mobility; mobile nonhuman objects; - Walking: de Certeau and the Situationists; the urban stroller - flâneur; pilgrimage; the ‘march’ as political action; psychogeography; - Mass leisure mobility: mobility and ‘free time’ in contemporary societies; tourism and the making and commoditization of spatial experience; the constitutive and transformative promise of travel; - Mobility, production and value: the (job) market value of spatial fluency; trade and distance; the value and symbolism of hypermobile elite cosmopolitanism; the value – and devaluation - of mobile labour; - Migration: theories of, from neoclassical to systems; diaspora and the making and meaning of home(s); the spatialization of migrants. Study-Unit Aims: The study-unit aims to address a key aspect of human societies and relationships. As such it belongs squarely within the current programmes of studies for sociology and social studies. The general idea is to encourage students to think about society as physically fluid, and about borders and other controls on movement as contrived, political and often fickle. Methodologically, the implications are profound - especially since social science has often conceptualized and studied groups as located and static. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Think productively about mobility and its consequences and effects; - Understand and describe the politics of mobility, especially when it encounters its obverse, the static object; - Conceptually link, compare and contrast the various kinds of mobility that characterize societies, historical as well as contemporary; - Learn to conceptually and substantively 'follow' the moble object: people, goods, ideas; - Think critically about the production of locality and its externalization of mobility and mobile objects. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Identify the various kinds of mobility that make and cut across societies; - design and plan research on mobile social objects; - apply the knowledge and understanding gained in the study unit to real-life scenarios such as migration, tourism and study/work mobility. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Adey, Peter. 2017. "Mobility". London & New York: Routledge. - Auge, Marc. 2009. "Non-places: An introduction to supermodernity." Verso. - Debord, Guy. 2002[1967]. "Society of the Spectacle". Black and Red. [A]De Haas, H. et al. "The Age of Migration: International population movements in the modern world". New York & London: The Guilford Press. - Massey, Douglas S. et al eds "Worlds in Motion: Understanding international migration at the end of the millennium". Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Salazar, Noel B 2018. "Momentous Mobilities: Anthropological musings on the meanings of travel". New York & Oxford: Berghahn. - Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. "Wanderlust: A history of walking". London & New York: Verso. - Tsing, Anna. 2005. "Friction: An ethnography of global connection". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Supplementary Readings: - Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. "Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of globalization". Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota. - Creswell, Tim. 2006. "Mobility in the modern western world". London & New York: Routledge. - de Certeau, Michel. 1988. "The Practice of Everyday Life". Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. - Delanty, Gerard. ed. 2019. "Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies". London & New York: Routledge. - Falzon, Mark-Anthony. ed. 2009. "Multi-sited Ethnography: Theory, praxis and locality in contemporary research". London & New York: Routledge. - Herod, Andrew. 2010. "Scale". London & New York: Routledge. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Project | ||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Mark Anthony Falzon |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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