SY1002:03
Australian Society
Townsville, Cairns
Inadmissable Subject Combination: BH1009
26 lectures, 13 tutorials. Second semester.
Staff: Ms C Hercus and other staff (Townsville campus); Dr J Elder and other staff (Cairns campus).
The subject examines the way sociological concepts and theories apply to the analysis of Australian society, by encouraging students to examine their own social environments by focussing on the sociology of everyday life. Specific attention is devoted to inequalities in Australian society due to age, class, gender and race/ethnicity, as well as to a consideration of social change and social movements in contemporary Australian society.
Learning Objectives:
- understand the ways in which individuals’ lives are socially shaped in Australian society;
- apply a reflexive and critical sociological perspective to the world around them;
- develop a range of scholarly skills relating to basic research, informed understanding and presentation of analyses in written and oral forms;
- gain an understanding of the major theoretical paradigms in sociology;
- outline explanatory theories of the changing nature of social institutions in contemporary Australian society;
- describe how these changes affect Australian society;
- understand how age, class, ethnicity and gender are socially constructed in Australian society;
- identify social inequalities in Australian society, in the form of age, class, ethnicity, gender and power and how a recognition of such inequalities is essential in order to be able to understand contemporary Australian social reality.
Assessment by assignment (30%); tutorial work (30%); examination (40%).
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