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Semester 2

Geography, Science, Civil Society (GEGR10120)

Subject

Geography

College

SCE

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

4

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Indication of satisfactory achievement of equivalent core or other courses in the degree programme(s) of their home institution.

Course Summary

The course will explore the role of geography and geographers in civil society and is taught via lectures and discussion/debate style tutorial sessions. The aim of the lectures is to introduce a series of case studies showcasing the variety of research that is done by Geographers at Edinburgh. These lectures will provide thematic case study material for a conceptual and theoretical framework that will be developed during student led tutorial sessions. These sessions will offer opportunities to reflect on the lecture material addressing questions such as the notion of Geography as an integrated discipline; theoretical connections between geography, the history of science and the idea of 'Cultural Competence'; Public Understanding of Science and Geography; relevance and activism; the idea of interdisciplinarity; and the notion of research impact. The course will provide an understanding of current debates over geographys relevance to and impact on civil society and to think through the connections between geography, politics and public understanding of geographical evidence.

Course Description

The course aims to provide final year Geography undergraduates with a coherent conceptual basis to their studies and a means through which they can use their own UG experiences to engage with the relationships between geography as a form of knowledge, the politics of geography's making, and the several publics with whom geography and geographers work. The course will provide a conceptual 'spine' to students' Year 4 studies and progression from the core Year 3 course 'Nature of Geographical Knowledge'. It is seen as essential that students, in the final year of their own development as geographers, are made aware of geography's making and reception as a form of knowledge, of contemporary 'big'. The course will draw upon the philosophy of social constructivism as a principal analytic frame.This is an ideas-based core course in undergraduate geography, designed to provide insight into the social and political making of geography as a form of knowledge and to alert students to the conceptual models available for the interpretation, inter alia, of the categories 'Geography', 'Science', 'Policy', 'Politics of Knowledge', and 'Public'. The course will build upon students' exposure to conceptual ideas and to epistemological questions in Year 3 of the Geography Honours Programme (Nature of Geographical Knowledge) and allow them, in Year 4, to ally their own experiences as advanced undergraduates with the issues raised in the course.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Assessment Information

Written Exam: 50%, Course Work: 50 %, Practical Exam: 0%.Classwork; Degree coursework essay : 2500 words (including bibliography); Degree Examination.

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