SA4069 Technologies of Power and Resistance

Academic year

2024 to 2025 Semester 2

Further information on which modules are specific to your programme.

Key module information

SCOTCAT credits

30

The Scottish Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SCOTCAT) system allows credits gained in Scotland to be transferred between institutions. The number of credits associated with a module gives an indication of the amount of learning effort required by the learner. European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits are half the value of SCOTCAT credits.

SCQF level

SCQF level 10

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) provides an indication of the complexity of award qualifications and associated learning and operates on an ascending numeric scale from Levels 1-12 with SCQF Level 10 equating to a Scottish undergraduate Honours degree.

Module coordinator

Dr V L B Buthpitiya

This information is given as indicative. Staff involved in a module may change at short notice depending on availability and circumstances.

Module Staff

Dr Vindhya Lakshmi Buthpitiya

This information is given as indicative. Staff involved in a module may change at short notice depending on availability and circumstances.

Module description

This module is an examination of the interweaving of technology and politics through processes of visualizing, mediating, digitalizing, and as a means to imagine what is politically possible. We will consider technology and its divergent uses as social, and importantly, political practice. Its multiple forms, historical uses, current distribution, and future-oriented developments have been integral to the exercise of both power and resistance. Technology, as political practice, manifests in enactments of authority, surveillance, securitization, and militarization, as well as a means for political expression, socialization, dissent, activism, and their regulation, curtailment, and suppression. This module will consider various theoretical perspectives and case studies on the subject with a focus on themes of ideology, power, and resistance, and how these are translated and given shape by a range of technological interventions, and interlinked visual, media, and digital cultures.

Relationship to other modules

Pre-requisites

BEFORE TAKING THIS MODULE YOU MUST PASS SA2002

Assessment pattern

Coursework - 100%

Re-assessment

Coursework - 100%

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact

1 x 2 hour Seminar, 1 x 2 hour Workshop (3 weeks)

Scheduled learning hours

35

The number of compulsory student:staff contact hours over the period of the module.

Guided independent study hours

281

The number of hours that students are expected to invest in independent study over the period of the module.

Intended learning outcomes

  • Gain a sound understanding of a range of topics, key theoretical debates, and ethnographic literature relevant to the study of technology as political practice and associated visual, media and digital cultures.
  • Develop core skills and competencies related to grasping the methodologies and synthesis of data associated with the anthropological study of politics, technology, mediation, and digitalization.
  • Foster a good comprehension of the ethical, methodological, and representational complexities and potentials of conducting multimodal ethnographic research on the digital, media objects, their production and circulation for political use, and associated technologies.
  • Assess critical perspectives on the social and political life of media and technologies and the practical limitations and challenges to studying the deployment and mobilization of technology.
  • Strengthen foundational knowledge to plan, research, develop and present an independent research project.