Keele University Prospectus Undergraduate | 2016 | Page 82

SOCIOLOGY AND CRIMINOLOGY

Criminology and Sociology
Overview

• Researching British Society

Crime, deviance and social order are some of the
most taxing issues in most societies. Criminology is
broadly about the search for answers to a number
of fundamentally important questions such as why
do people sometimes behave in ways that others
feel are harmful? Or, why is it that some harmful
behaviours are defined as ‘crimes’ and made
punishable by law, while other harmful behaviours
are sometimes ignored or encouraged? Or still, why
is it the case that some societies, in their attempts
to control crime, rely so heavily on punishment,
including capital punishment, whereas in other
societies the emphasis is much more on reparative
and restorative forms of conflict resolution?

• Working for Justice

Course content
First year
In the first year you will study four core modules:
• Understanding Crime
• Classical Sociology

• Self and Society
Second year
In the second year the core modules are:
• Crime and Justice in a Global Context
• 20th Century Social Theory
• Research Methods
Electives modules include:
• Policing and the Police
• Crime, Culture and Conflict 1700 to 1914
• Mental Health and Offending
• Globalisation and its Discontents
• Witchcraft, Zombies and Social Anxiety
• Cultures of Consumption
• Families and Households: Diversity and Change
• The Third Sector: Making a Difference
(voluntary sector placement module)
Third year
In the third year the modules available reflect the
expertise and active research interests of members
of staff, and change from year to year. Currently the
modules include:
• The Sociology of Parenting and Early Childhood
• Gender and Consumption
• The Virtual Revolution: New Technologies,
Culture and Society
• Home: Belonging, Locality and Material Culture
• Medical Sociology
• Sex, Death and Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social
Context
• Streets, Skyscrapers and Slums: The City in Social,
Cultural and Historical Context
• Gender History and Punishment 1486-1955
• Risk and Criminal Justice
• The Politics and Cultures of the Death Penalty
in the 21st Century
• Popular Culture and Crime
• Living with ‘Aliens’: Immigration, Crime
and Social Control

• Criminal Justice: Process Policy and Practice

• Power, Process and Victimisation

These are supplemented by a range of elective
modules, including:

• Drugs: High Crimes or Misdemeanours?

• Investigati ng Crime: Criminological Perspectives

• Corporate Crime

• Psychology and Crime

U

• Modernity and its Dark Side

• Social Inequalities in the Contemporary World

• Murder

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DU

• Punishment: Beyond the Popular Imagination

Sociology has been taught at Keele for over fifty
years and we take pride in combining world class
research with lively and accessible teaching. Keele
also pioneered the teaching of criminology at
undergraduate level and was the first university to
offer criminology as an undergraduate subject in the
UK. This popular degree programme enables you
to understand broad issues revolving around social
structure and social change, as well as the ways in
which institutions, power systems, identity, culture
and economics impact on crime and disorder. In
many respects the history of criminology is rooted in
sociology. Criminology offers a specific field for the
application of fundamental sociological insights.

Sociological ideas about social structure and social
change, about power, about the relationship between
economics and culture, or about the sense of identity
that so many groups and individuals crave in a
variety of ways are all directly useful in any search
for answers to criminological questions. One of the
themes that is often explored in sociology is about
how social institutions come about and evolve, how
they work, and how they impact on the lives not just
of individuals, but of groups or whole populations as
well. This is relevant in research that aims to explore
how an institution such as the criminal justice system
develops and changes over time.

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• State Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
• Prisons and Imprisonment
• Environmental Crime