Geography

Class, Community and Nation Through the Pandemic Portal

Module code: 009GA
Level 6
30 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Workshop
Assessment modes: Essay, Coursework

Why did the UK vote for Brexit in 2016? What lay behind the election of Donald Trump as US president the same year? How much have these events chimed with the rise in right-wing nationalist movements and regimes elsewhere? What will be the consequences for the planet in the face of the climate emergency?

This module will create a collective learning environment where you will explore these questions. You’ll draw on resources from across human geography and other social science disciplines. In particular, you will look at the following pair of questions raised by Doreen Massey:

  • What does this place stand for?
  • To whom does this place belong?

From areas rural and neighbourhoods to cities and whole countries, you will explore the effects of neoliberal economics and class-based inequality on communities. You’ll look at the ways in which racisms have emerged and shifted historically, including through the language and practices of colonialism, as well as their effects on the present.

You’ll analyse the idea of ‘community’, to be understood as something always containing tensions and contradictions (such as unequal land ownership and gender inequality).

As well as building up skills of critical analysis, you will engage with examples of geographies of hope and resistance. Part of this final section will involve an international comparative case study of the role of protest music.

Module learning outcomes

  • Summarise and explain key concepts.
  • Demonstrate a systematic understanding of key geographical and interdisciplinary debates on class, community and nation and their relation to the pandemic.
  • Recognise and critically evaluate knowledge and understandings of the diversity of scales at which class, community and nation become meaningful to people as well as the interrelation between those scales.
  • Identify, explore, and discuss appropriate empirical evidence in relation to the key concepts of class, community and nation and their relation to the pandemic.