Social Phenomena

Pre-requisites: No specific requirements

Course objectives: is to familiarize students with all essential characteristics of social phenomena

Course description: This subject combines lectures with exercises where social phenomena are discussed, through read literature and through linking social phenomena and issues with films promoting similar topics. That encourages students to critical thinking and easier comprehension. Theoretical and practical lecturing consists of 12 topics: 20th century – expectations and results; Demography (demography boom, losses, migrations); Urbanization (revolutionary change of modern megalopolis). Exercises: Documentary – How many people can live on the planet Earth; Industrialization (types of industrialization, center shifting Europe-USA-BRIC; consequences of urbanization and industrialization); Exercises: Film Dog slum millionaire; Ecology (pollution, climate change – economical and political consequences); Exercises: Film City 24; Finances (Financial and economic crises, relation models state-economy resistance to financial power, globalization and antiglobalization); Exercises: If a single tree falls: a story on Front for Earth liberation; Technology and communication (technological revolutions, transport revolution, cyber revolution); Exercises: Stephan Hassel, Rebel!; Film: Shock doctrine; Science (science and controversies – from atomic bomb to human genome);

Learning Outcomes: Enabling students to realize links between long-term process and political circumstances in the past in the context of social phenomenas

Literature/Reading:

• - M. Adas (ed), Essays on Twentieth Century History, Philadelphia 2010
• - R. Bulliet (ed), The Columbia History of the 20th Century, New York 1998.
• - Clive Ponting, The 20th Century World, New York 1999