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Bachelor of Arts Social Sciences
Information about the Bachelor of Arts Social Sciences
The Bachelor of Arts Social Sciences is a joint degree program of the subjects Sociology and Political Sciences of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies (Faculty 03) of JLU Giessen. The main subject is the analysis of society, its subareas, structures, conditions, and developments as well as their interactions with the actions of single persons.
The main issues are:
How and why do structures in society and politics emerge?
How do they change?
How do they influence acting persons and how do acting persons influence structures?
While the subject of Sociology applies these main issues to society as a whole as well as its parts, such as family, gender, or working organisations, the subject of Political Science applies these issues to the political order of societies in general as well as to single areas of politics such as home affairs, foreign affairs, or financial politics.
Subject Area
Over the course of the last years, we can observe a dramatization of the picture of interdependent societies circulated by mass media as well as political happenings: Starting with global warming and continuing from instable financial systems and social distortion as well as several crises of political systems right up terrorism – crises dominate the collective introspection. The Bachelor of Arts Social Sciences takes up these more recent societal as well as political challenges, mediates the foundations and crucial research findings of the two subjects Political Sciences and Sociology and teaches the application of empirical, qualitative and quantitative methods that help us to get to the bottom of these challenges and problems in a methodological way.
Contentual key topics are the following areas: (comparative) political planning and administration, media and communication, trans- and interculturality, education, global and regional governance, economy, distribution and global as well as regional social inequalities, democratization and participation, gender relations, European Studies and post-colonialism. Students learn how to independently acquire and critically evaluate social-scientific theories and methods.
Course Structure
The Bachelor of Arts Social Sciences is made up of six sections:
The basic section (modules M1 – M4) imparts the fundamental principles of Sociology and Political Science.
For us, a thorough training in methodology is very important. Therefore, the modules M5 – M8 are concerned with qualitative as well as quantitative empirical social research, data collection and data analysis.
In a practical part (modules M9 and M10), students need to complete an accompanying internship and have the opportunity to take part in a skill-program dealing with the techniques of scientific work.
The themed modules M11 – M13 are composed of political as well as sociological elements and intensify content of the guiding themes communication and media / culture and conflict, social and political transition, international relations and societal comparison, social inequality and gender relations / institutions and political areas.
The teaching-research-project (M 14) is used to work independently on a specific, circumscribed research project. Thereby the module connects theoretical with empirical learning content.
The three-month working time of a bachelor thesis concludes the usually six-semester Bachelor of Arts program.
Career Options
The Bachelor of Arts Social Sciences imparts a wide and methodologically well-founded capability and skill array which can be individually specified for example with themed modules and internships. Social scientist are able to work in the following areas:
Social-scientific teaching and research institutions
Institutions of the education system
Market and opinion research
Planning and administration on the federal, regional or local level
Unions, advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), cultural and political initiatives
Parties, fractions, parliaments and policy counselling