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Just Futures

Module description

How have geographers tried to make the world more just and what impact has this had on the discipline? This module focuses on how geography and geographers have developed thought and practice around the idea of ‘just futures’. This module will be of interest to students interested in social justice, activism, and politics who wish to engage with non-academic as well as academic materials.

This module will build on other geography modules, such as GEO2311 Ideas in Geography, but there are no pre-requisite modules and it will be open to geography and non-geography final year undergraduate and masters students.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aim of the module is to give you a deep understanding of social justice theory and practice within geography and how this has shaped the discipline, wider academic thought, and the world beyond academia. It will introduce you to some of the key developments and attempts to expand the horizons of what geography can be, what methods can do, and what the role of geography is in the world. The module will give you the opportunity to engage in depth with cutting-edge debates in the discipline, critically engage with activist and scholar-activist work, and develop your writing skills.

The module entails engaging broadly with social justice ideas and strategies to shape the world around us such as feminism, queer theory, disability justice, and decolonial theory. The teaching team will be supporting you to understand these ideas in academic texts as well as a range of activist and scholar-activist ideas through non-academic texts, films, podcasts, and other media.

The assessment will consist of one 1,500 word essay worth 50% of the module mark that will assess your understanding of just futures thinking within the discipline of geography and one 1,500 word essay worth 50% of the module mark that will assess your critical engagement with an activist or scholar-activist ‘project’ through the themes and literatures introduced in the module. The project that you focus on will be of your choosing, in conversation with module teaching staff, and may be a protest, performance, zine, film, book, or music, amongst others.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Understand core debates in how geographers have developed ‘just futures’ thinking within the discipline
• 2. Discuss key themes whereby geographers have engaged with debates on justice

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Understand knowledge production in geography and contestation around geographical knowledge
• 4. Engage with academic and non-academic texts and media to understand geographical knowledge

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Critically engage with and show understanding of academic and non-academic sources
• 6. Develop sustained and logical arguments through written work

Syllabus plan

The first half of the module will be an introduction to developments in geographical thought that have attempted to bring about more just futures within and beyond the discipline. Indicative topics include feminism, queer theory, disability justice, and decolonial thought. The second half of the module considers key themes whereby just futures thinking can be discussed. Indicative topics include education, trade, labour, the anthropocene and democracy. Students will explore these ideas through a 50-minute lecture and a 50-minute seminar each week.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Stephens, A. C., & Bagelman, J. (2023). Towards scholar-activism: transversal relations, dissent, and creative acts. Citizenship Studies, 27(3), 329-346.
• Johnston, R., & Sidaway, J. D. (2015). Geography and geographers: Anglo-American human geography since 1945. Routledge.
• Blunt, A., & Wills, J. (2016). Dissident geographies: an introduction to radical ideas and practice. Routledge.
• Mollett, S., & Faria, C. (2018). The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures. Gender, Place & Culture, 25(4), 565-577.
• MacLeavy, J., Fannin, M., & Larner, W. (2021). Feminism and futurity: Geographies of resistance, resilience and reworking. Progress in Human Geography, 45(6), 1558-1579.
• Browne, K. (2006). Challenging queer geographies. Antipode, 38(5), 885.
• Todd, J. D. (2021). Exploring trans people's lives in Britain, trans studies, geography and beyond: A review of research progress. Geography Compass, 15(4), e12556.
• Gahman, L. (2017). Crip theory and country boys: Masculinity, dis/ability, and place in rural southeast Kansas. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107(3), 700-715.
• Hall, E., & Wilton, R. (2017). Towards a relational geography of disability. Progress in Human Geography, 41(6), 727-744.
• Daigle, M., & Ramírez, M. M. (2019). Decolonial geographies. Keywords in radical geography: Antipode at 50, 78-84.
• Zaragocin, S., & Caretta, M. A. (2021). Cuerpo-territorio: A decolonial feminist geographical method for the study of embodiment. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(5), 1503-1518.
• Noxolo, P. (2020). Introduction: towards a Black British geography? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(3), 509-511.
• Nguyen, N., Cohen, D., & Huff, A. (2017). Catching the bus: A call for critical geographies of education. Geography compass, 11(8), e12323.
• Kraftl, P., Andrews, W., Beech, S., Ceresa, G., Holloway, S. L., Johnson, V., & White, C. (2022). Geographies of education: A journey. Area, 54(1), 15-23.
• Connor, T., & Phelan, L. (2015). Antenarrative and transnational labour rights activism: Making sense of complexity and ambiguity in the interaction between global social movements and global corporations. Globalizations, 12(2), 149-163.
• Bannister, L. & Bergan, R. (2023). A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. London: Trade Justice Movement
• Moore, J. W. (2017). The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of peasant studies, 44(3), 594-630.
• Bonneuil, C., & Fressoz, J. B. (2017). The shock of the Anthropocene: The earth, history and us. Verso Books.
• Glasius, M. (2018). What authoritarianism is… and is not: a practice perspective. International affairs, 94(3), 515-533.
• Koch, N. (2019). Post-triumphalist geopolitics: Liberal selves, authoritarian others. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(4), 909-924.
• Kenny, B., & Webster, E. (2021). The return of the labour process: race, skill and technology in South African labour studies. Work in the Global Economy, 1(1-2), 13-32.
• Mhlana, S. (2023). Precarious Work and the Gendered Individualisation of Risk in the South African Manufacturing Sector, 2002–2017. Global Labour Journal, 14(2).
• Castel-Branco, R., & Mapukata, S. (2021). Digitalisation and post-work utopias: a view from the Global South. South African Labour Bulletin, 26.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE
• Podcast series- Politics, Theory, Other
• Podcast series- UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre podcasts
• Podcast series- Changemakers
• Activist Handbook- curated lists of film guides, books, websites and many other resources here
• Zine Libraries- Papercut Zine Library and Glasgow Zine Library
• V&A curated playlist of protest music

Key words search

Social Justice; Activism; Scholar-activism; Politics; Geographical Thought