1997 QUT Handbook

that are leading in this direction. It will also look at Australia’s
place in the new world order/disorder.
Courses: SS07 Prerequisites: SSB000
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB961 AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY: INTRODUCTION
TO SOCIOLOGY
Placing sociology in its own socio-historical context, tracing
the origins and development of the discipline and identifing
the forces that shaped the various perspectives and theories of
sociology and the associated reasearch methodologies. Major
theoritical perspectives are introduced, compared and contrasted,
and sociological concepts, theories and debates are
discussed within the context of the analysis of contemporary
Australia. A particular emphasis in the course is directed towards
those factors that appear to promote, constrain or influence
social stability, social change and social inequality.
Courses: PU49
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB962 SURVEY METHODS
This unit introduces students to the use of social surveys in
sociological research. Students will be asked to design and conduct
a survey using basic statistical techniques and the SPSS
computer package designed for social scientists.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB964 SEX, GENDER & SOCIETY
This unit focuses on the history of feminist thought and contemporary
perspectives with reference to issues of sociological
inquiry. It examines the significance of perspectives from
critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism and action
approaches in the development of feminist theory. The implications
of feminist perspectives for research strategies will
be considered with reference to feminist philosophers of
science and metatheorists such as Sandra Harding and
Dorothy Smith.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB965 CULTURAL STUDIES
This unit will focus on culture and its role in the construction of
the person and of social life. Much of the emphasis of this unit
is on historical sociology and cross-cultural sociology: this strategic
emphasis is taken in order to throw modern experiences
into relief. We shall study a series of experiences which have
only recently made their way into the sociological mainstream:
the ‘limit experiences’ of madness, death, sexuality and
criminality; and the ‘miscellany’ of social life – those experiences
that were once thought too unimportant to study, such as
swimming, walking, spitting and eating.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB966 INDEPENDENT STUDY (SOCIOLOGY)
This unit gives students the opportunity to work on their own
research programs under supervision. Students will, either individually
or in small groups, undertake a reading program in
an approved content area leading to written work of around
4000 words.
Courses: SS07
Prerequisites: 60 credit points in sociology
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB969 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY & ANALYSIS
This unit confronts two central issues in sociological work:
the relationship between the sphere of social positions and
that of culture, and the place of theory in the broader task of
sociological analysis. Theoretical approaches to the determination
of cultural practices are explored from the major nineteenth
century theorists to contemporary challenges from
ethnomethodological, feminist, poststructural and postmodern
perspectives. These approaches are also explored with reference
to their relationship to research strategies.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
838
■ SSB970 ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY
This unit examines major perspectives in the study of work and
organisations and their implications for research strategies.
Specifically, it looks at the development of an orthodoxy in
industrial sociology, and challenges to this orthodoxy with reference
to Taylorist, Fordist and Post-Fordist accounts of work
organisation. The relevance of this ‘discourse on industry’ is
examined in the light of contemporary perspectives such as feminism,
poststructuralism and ethnomethodology.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB971 POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
This unit examines a variety of sociological themes which might
broadly be termed ‘political’. Central to the unit will be an examination
of sociological conceptions of power. Typically, sociologists
have examined power in connection with the state;
power has frequently been regarded as flowing from the state.
We shall examine these debates, and move on to recent theorisations
which have begun to detach power from the state. We
shall take some case studies to make these distinctions clearer,
including the construction of an Australian administrative elite,
the notion of ‘police’ in seventeenth and eighteenth century
Europe, and compulsory education as the sphere of the reproduction
of social relationships.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB972 ETHNICITY, NATIONALISM & CUL-
TURAL DIVERSITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY
WORLD
Ethnicity and nationalism appear to play the central role in shaping
the contemporary condition in many different parts of the
globe. After clarifying definitional problems, students will be
given comprehensive overviews of different theories in the field
of ethnicity and nationalism. The main emphasis will be placed
on ‘instrumental’, ‘primordial’ and ‘modernist’ approaches and
the sorts of explanations they offer for the powerfulness and
persistence of the phenomenon. Finally, we shall look at how
nationalism influences the construction of individual and collective
identities by examining myths, ideology and symbolisms
employed by nationalist discourses.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB973 SOCIAL THEORY & SOCIAL CHANGE IN
CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
This unit will address contemporary European social theory
and the way it reflects upon societal change. The focus will be
placed on three major changes that occurred since the 1960s:
firstly, the emergence of new social movements; secondly, the
end of the Cold War which brought about rapid change in Eastern
Europe; and thirdly, the formation of the European Union.
Historical and social theoretical perspectives will be used simultaneously.
It will be shown how new social movements in
Eastern Europe contributed to the collapse of imposed rationality
and the existing order. The end of the Cold War and the
subsequent ideological and political fragmentation of Eastern
Europe have profoundly affected the European landscape. The
ideology of the New World Order was quickly to hand to legitimize
these contemporary European as well as global events.
Theory developed both fatalistic as well as critical and modest
accounts of this change.
Courses: SS07
Credit Points: 12 Contact Hours: 3 per week
■ SSB974 SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC
KNOWLEDGE
In recent years, sociologists have come to see the value of studying
the construction of scientific knowledge, overcoming a vague
distaste for scientific activity and recognising the importance
of understanding the major truth-providing discourse of our age.
This unit will introduce students to the various methodological
approaches used in the study of scientific knowledge; go through
a variety of case studies which will demonstrate the
‘constructedness’ of such knowledge; and demonstrate the implications
of such study for an understanding of our changing
society.