Feb 05, 2025

2023-2024 Graduate Calendar

2023-2024 Graduate Calendar [ARCHIVED CALENDAR]

MSPI 5030G - Foundations for Social Practice and Innovation

This course provides students with the means to employ core concepts from the three disciplines that comprise the interdisciplinary program: communication, legal studies and politics. The course will consist of three blocks corresponding to these disciplines. The communication component examines foundational and current works in new media and communication studies. It focuses specifically on how current and emerging technologies may be designed and used by individual and collective actors for practices oriented to social innovation and transformation. The legal studies component engages legal concepts such as: the rule of law; human rights; constitutionalism and the Crown; sources of law including the common law, the civil code and Indigenous law; distinctions between criminal, administrative/public and private law; and relationships between domestic and international law. The course explores these concepts in the contexts of theoretical perspectives such as legal pluralism and multi-juridicality, critical legal theories, and structures of sovereignty and jurisdiction. The politics component explores the realm of politics by focusing on the nature and role of the state, and different forms of understanding society and power. Historical transformations in the role of the state in the context of globalization and their impacts on democracy, the economy and on the relations between politics, policy-making and society will also be considered.
Credit hours: 6
Note(s): Must be enrolled in one of the following level(s): Graduate.
Experiential learning Yes