Questions on the upcoming exams

In our last seminar I was recieved some questions on the upcoming exams. I just wanted to go over some pointers:
 
1) I am sure a lot of you will be relieved to hear this! It is recommended that you concentrate on a minimum of four areas from the curriculum and not more than five. The exam comes in the format of essay questions and you will choose two questions from a list of eleven or so, by concentrating on five areas of the curriculum you would probably be better equipped to answer any question you choose in depth. On another note, the essay questions you chose as part of your previous assignments should have no bearing on the exam question you happen to choose in your exam.
 
2) In terms of citation in the exam, it would be good to go over a good number of theories and studies as part of your revison for the exam, the key point is to apply your knowledge to the question and to demonstrate key sociological skills, as was necessary when writing your essays. To revise essay technique I recommend you visit this online tutorial (I sent this tutorial before, if you remember) and go through it again as part of your revision:
 
http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/writing/arts/sociology/index.xml
 
3) Nevertheless, don’t get too bogged down with the exact year of a study or work, as relaying relevant key theories would get you good marks. Think of it as a spectrum, the more you put in, whether it be accurate and relevant relay of information, citation of relevant studies etc., the higer grades you will achieve. Tackling exam questions are similar to tackling essay questions, however more flexibility is given in the marking of exam questions, due to the time constraints and lack of access to references.
 
4) The exam date is not officially set, however the provisional date for now is the 6th of May at 9:30 AM. The date could change, but consider that the date for your exams would be roughly around that time. It’s actually one of the early exams set in the provisional timetable.
 
5) For past exam papers, visit the student portal and put in your username and password. From the portal you can download past papers. Here’s the link (Just enter your username and password):
 
https://portal.gre.ac.uk/cp/home/displaylogin
 
I will also be handing out sample papers for our next seminar.
 
6) As for the workshops, I was first requested to finalize details and dates, so that a room can be booked. In our last seminar, we had some disagreement within the first group (11-12), however the second group (12-1) gave preference to a Tuesday afternoon. Would everyone be able to fit in a Tuesday to their schedule, if you can’t make it to the afternoon session, we can always set another workshop on the same day, to do go over the same topics, but run at another time (similar to how our seminars are split into two different groups e.g. 12PM – 2PM & 2PM – 4PM). If we were to have two duplicate seminars, I would prefer them to be on the same date. Either way, please send an email with your preferences, so I can then go about booking a room. However, seeing that the Modern Societies exam is early, the workshops can still be used after exams, as part of your further studies/revision for sociology.
If you have any further question, just send me an email – modernsocieties@gmail.com

Best wishes,

Basem

Seminar Twenty One: Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism, Evironment and Crisis

Overproduction, the environment and the general law of capitalist accumulation 

I recommend you start with Allan Schnaiberg’s treadmill of production theory (which ties in the production process within competitive capitalism with its impact on the environment). Then have a look at similar theoretical inputs by both Dunlap & Catton.

Then after that have a look at the more recent trends in environmental sociology, especially through discoures in which:

… notions such as modernity, postmodernity, risk society, and ecological modernization figure prominently (e.g., Mol and Spaargaren 1993; Spaargaren and Mol 1992). Equally significant has been the drift of sociologists of science, and their notions of the social construction of scientific knowledge, into the environmental sociology arena as interest has grown in researching the environmental sciences and the connections of environmental knowledge production to environmental politics and the environmental movement (Taylor and Buttel 1992; Wynne 1994; Yearley 1991). 

Seminar Twenty: The New World Order?

You can download the seminar’s presentation slide by clicking here …

To download the seminar’s handout click here …

To compliment the seminar’s slide, read Chapter 15 of ‘Sociology: Issues and Debates’ (Edited by Steve Taylor). The chapter is by Leslie Sklair and is titled ‘Globalization’. You can download the chapter by clicking here… 

Further Reading

• For further reading I strongly recommend you take out ‘The Global transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate’ (Edited by David Held & Anthony McGrew).
• For an excellent online resource visit ‘The Globalization Website’ by clicking here …  
• Also there is the excellent Fernand Braudel Center, which hosts articles by the Center at SUNY Binghamton for the study of large-scale, long-term change; the site offers papers by leading figures in world-system theory.