This course aims to introduce students to classical and contemporary debates on how societies are stratified and how inequalities and power are reproduced around the nexus of class. This involves exploring the main perspectives of sociological theories on class as well as the examination of empirical evidence of the different ways that class manifests today.

 Students will have 20 hours of on campus contact time. This will be 2-hour blocks of teaching, a lecture followed by seminar.

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Students will complete one summative assessment, a 4000 word essay. The essay question is broad: based on one of the lecture topics on the course, critically examine what that week's lecture topic offers the study of class today. Draw from contemporary empirical examples to support your argument. From this students are invited to devise a specific focus in terms of topic/examples and theoretical framework. The formative assessment asks students to submit an essay plan which helps students craft their essay focus with feedback.

The main aim of this course is to provide students with a knowledge of the sociological theory and empirical research which has attempted to conceptualise the ways in which class, and other forms of stratification manifest themselves in modern (and/or 'late modern') societies. More specific aims of the course include being able to examine and evaluate the worth of the 'classical' theories of social stratification, most notably the conception of class and to examine how this has been built upon by so-called 'neo' theories and assess their successes and failures in such attempts. Students will also be able assess the attempts at 'measuring' the class structure as well as evaluate contemporary attempts at class analysis, such as cultural analysis. Though this they will explore the ways in which 'new' forms of stratification may emerge in contemporary society, assessing whether this is due to individualization, neoliberalism or globalization.

■ Critically assess the value of various theories which discuss how class is manifested.

■ Identity the various research approaches in this field and develop understanding how these have developed over time.

■ Display an awareness of how these sociological ideas relate to the lived experience of those they claim to describe.

■ Produce a discussion of how changing experiences of class-based inequalities are linked to wider social transformations.

■ Evaluate the validity of claims for an 'individualised' society.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.