SY1002:03
Australian Society
Townsville, Cairns
HECS Band 1
26 hours lectures, 13 hours tutorials. Semester 2.
Staff: Dr C Hercus, Professor S Crook (Townsville campus); Dr J Elder and other staff (Cairns campus).
This subject is aimed at students undertaking a wide range of subjects. It examines the way sociological concepts and theories apply to the analysis of Australian society with an emphasis on enabling students to analyse their own social environments by locating their social experiences within contemporary Australian social structures, processes, institutions, cultural discourse and the global context. Inequalities between women and men, in income and employment, in access to education and citizenship rights are considered. Contemporary change relating to work, the transformation of rural life and relations to nature and technology are also examined along with other issues.
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%).