Field Trip
| Module title | Field Trip |
|---|---|
| Module code | POC3138 |
| Academic year | 2023/4 |
| Credits | 15 |
| Module staff | Professor Clare Saunders (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 12 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 40 |
|---|
Module description
Politics takes place, makes place, and is shaped by place in many different ways: not just through elections, policy, and diplomacy but also through community organizing, development proposals, memorialization practices, and access to public goods and public space. This module focuses critical attention on how people manage collective life in everyday settings as well as national and global structures, combining taught theory and methodology, self-directed studies and an intensive six-day field trip. The taught programme situates a field trip in contemporary academic literatures at the cutting edge of critical contemporary politics: settler colonialism, postcolonialism and decoloniality; slavery, reparations, and racialization; gender, sex, and sexuality; local/global urbanization; gentrification and displacement; citizenship, diaspora, protest, and activism; art, aesthetics, and cultural politics; and urban ecology and sustainability. The methods and ethics workshops prepare you to study and analyse how the formal practices of government intersect with the critical politics of everyday life in specific places, drawing not just on politics and international relations, but other relevant disciplines such as geography and anthropology, for insights and research techniques. The field programme enables you to conduct individual and collective research through visits to symbolic spaces of commemoration, negotiation, learning and debate. Together, we will visit places such as museums and memorializations, community organizations, and memorial sites.
No prior knowledge skills or experiences are required to take this module, and it is suitable for specialist and non-specialist students. This interdisciplinary module is suitable for students studying Politics, International Relations, Geography, Flexible Combined Honours, and the Humanities.
Module aims - intentions of the module
This module is intended to familiarise you with using ethnographic fieldwork within a safe and controlled setting, and under the supervision of staff, to develop and expand your independent scholarship. The course highlights the interconnections between space and politics through an exploration of various social and geographical spaces that form the background of political activity in a field trip location. It does so by enabling you to visit symbolic spaces of commemoration, negotiation, learning and debate. You will gain the capacity to integrate field methods such as participant observation of everyday events and sites, exploratory conversations with community members, situated analyses of grassroots organizations and visual, aesthetic, spatial, and economic analyses of politicised spaces and public forums. You will learn how to keep an ethnographic notebook of your travels, collect photos of meaningful sites, and carefully observe the landscape (‘natural’ and built environment). You will visit places such as museums and memorializations, community organizations, and practice approaching these sites through various lenses, working in student groups organized around substantive theoretical, practical and methodological research themes.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. demonstrate substantive knowledge of major political dynamics affecting a field trip location, across multiple scales, in the various subfields we examine;
- 2. demonstrate in the field and in assessments the ability to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different research methods;
- 3. demonstrate the ability to apply a range of theories about politics and change to historical and contemporary debates;
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 4. demonstrate the ability to apply political concepts and theories to specific case study sites;
- 5. synthesize field observations and research to support critical engagements with and extensions of existing literatures;
- 6. demonstrate understanding of the implications of new evidence for a given political perspective;
- 7. demonstrate that you understand different methods of research in the field and their implications for findings;
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 8. work independently and in groups, and in spontaneous discussion and defence of arguments in class, and to manage conflict;
- 9. demonstrate analytical, creative, critical and organizational capacity in essaysand group discussion;
- 10. write essays and complete assessments to a deadline.
Syllabus plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, particularly in response to students’ own research interests, it is envisaged that the taught syllabus will cover at least some of the following material, in a mix of seminars and methods workshops before and after the field trip and through students’ extensive self-directed study.
The precise location of the field trip will vary from year to year and will be subject to UK Government travel restrictions. Should the trip not be deliverable as specified (e.g. in Online Module Selection or marketing) then you will be notified of the alternative delivery that nonetheless meetings the ILO of the module.
- Politics in Place: Cities, Urbanism, and Urbanization
- Whose Politics and Whose Place?: Dominant Narratives and Critical Orientations
- Fixes and Flows: The Complex Economies of Cities
- Postcolonial, Settler-Colonial, and Decolonial Cities
- The Aesthetic City: Feeling Sensing Living Breathing Wearing Creating Politics
- Building the Good Life: the Built Landscape
Field Trip:
A six day field trip, including visits to iconic sites, sites of community differentiation and determination, and sites of aesthetic enactments such as museums . Content of the field trip will vary from year to year, depending on the current political climate.
Methods Workshop 1: Field Work Ethics and Public-Engaged Research
An introduction to power relations in politics research, reviewing key concepts such as voluntary informed consent, research bias, anonymity, confidentiality and the dignity of research participation. Focuses on the politics of “public” research, from engaging with community organizations and marginalised people to structuring interview questions and participating in shared knowledge production.
Methods Workshop 2: Ethnography, Data Diversity and Research Reflexivity
A seminar on interdisciplinary approaches to the politics of ethnographic research, including participant observations, ethnographic walking, photography/visual recording, rhythmanalysis and other methods. Students will learn about using multiple forms of data gathering and keeping effective records of fieldwork.
*Training provided through the methods workshops is mandatory for participation in the field trip. Participation will be monitored, and those students who miss the seminar will have to retake it.
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | 98 | 40 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching activities | 12 | The module will be taught through 4 seminars of 2 hours each, and 2 methods workshops of 2 hours each |
| Placement/Study Abroad | 40 | The module will include one field trip under staff supervision. Hours include field research, keeping field guide, and participating in field-based seminar discussions. |
| Guided Independent Study | 22 | Private study reading and preparing for seminars/workshops |
| Guided Independent Study | 22 | Private study guided and independent research around field trip sites and thematics, before and after trip |
| Guided Independent Study | 54 | Researching, creating/writing assessments: planning and writing essay. |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| One page draft essay plan | One page | 2, 4-7 | Written Feedback |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethics, methods and research reflection | 25 | (1,000 words total) | 1-10 | Written feedback |
| Research Essay | 75 | (2,500 words total) | 1-10 | Written feedback |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethics, methods and research reflection | Ethics, methods and research reflection (1,000 words total) | 1-10 | August/September reassessment period |
| Research Essay | Research essay (2,500 total) | 1-10 | August/September reassessment period |
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
Seminars:
Amin, Ash. 2013. The Urban Condition: A Challenge to Social Science. Public Culture 25 (2): 201-208.
Amin, A. and N. Thrift. 2002. Cities: Reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Boudreau, Julie-Anne. 2017. Global Urban Politics: Informalization of the State. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Brenner, N. 2013. Theses on urbanization. Public Culture 25 (1): 85-114.
Closs Stephens, A. 2010. Citizenship without community: Time, design and the city. Citizenship Studies. 14 (1): 31-46.
Coward, M. 2009. Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction. New York: Routledge.
Curtis, Simon. 2016. Global Cities and Global Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Diouf, Mamadou and Rosalind Fredericks, eds. 2015. The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Farías, I. and Bender, T., eds. 2010. Urban assemblages: How actor-network theory changes urban research . New York: Routledge.
Jacobs, Jane. 2012. Urban geographies I: Still thinking cities relationally. Progress in Human Geography 36 (3): 412–422
King, AD. 1990. Urbanism, colonialism and the world-economy: cultural and spatial foundations of the world urban system. London: Routledge.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2003 [1970]. The urban revolution, trans. R. Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Low, N. 1991. Planning, politics and the state. Abingdon: Unwin Hyman Ltd. Part I: Planning practice and political theory pp 11-51.
Magnusson, W. 2011. Politics of urbanism: Seeing like a city. London: Routledge. (selections TBD)
McLean, Heather. 2017. In praise of chaotic research pathways: A feminist response to planetary urbanization. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 0(0) 1–9 DOI: 10.1177/0263775817713751
Merrifield, A. 2012. The politics of the encounter and the urbanization of the world. City 16 (3): 269-283.
Peake, Linda. 2016. The Twenty-First Century Quest For Feminism And the Global Urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 40 (1): 219–227. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12276
Pratt, G. 2017. One hand clapping: Notes towards a methodology for debating planetary urbanization. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 0(0) 1–7 DOI: 10.1177/0263775817716555
Robinson J. 2002. Global and world cities: A view from off the map. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26 (3): 531-554
Roy A. 2009. The 21st-century metropolis: New geographies of theory, Regional Studies 43 (6): 819-830. DOI: 10.1080/00343400701809665
Sassen S. 2010. The Global City: Strategic Site, New Frontier. Accumulation by Dispossession: Transformative Cities in the New Global Order ed. Swapna Banerjee-Guha. New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ldt.
Sennett, Richard. 1969. Classic essays on the culture of cities. New York: Appleton Century Crofts.
Wekerle G. 2004. Framing feminist claims for urban citizenship. Mapping Women, Making Politics: Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography ed. LA Staehali, E Kofman, LJ Peake. New York and Oxford: Routledge. 245-259.
Methods Workshops:
Calvey, D. (2008) The Art and Politics of Covert Research: Doing Situated Ethics in the Field. Sociology, 42, 5, 905-918.
Iphofen, R. (2009) Ethical Decision Making in Social Research. A practical guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mertens, D.M. and Ginsberg, P.E. (Eds) (2008) The Handbook of Social Research Ethics. London: Sage.
Munro, E. (2008) Research Governance, Ethics and Access: A Case Study Illustrating the New Challenges Facing Social Researchers. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 11 (5), 429-439.
Israel, M., and Hay, I. (2006) Research Ethics for Social Scientists. London: Sage.
Van Maanen, J. (1983) The Moral Fix: On the Ethics of Fieldwork, in R. E. Emerson (ed) Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings, Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources
| Credit value | 15 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 15 |
| Module pre-requisites | None |
| Module co-requisites | None |
| NQF level (module) | 6 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Origin date | 29/09/2021 |
| Last revision date | 13/02/2023 |
