Economics in Competition Law and Practice, The Role of (LAWS0309)

The objective of this course, organised by the Centre for Law, Economics and Society at UCL, is to introduce the economic theories that underlie competition law. It will also introduce the methods that are used to assess whether business practices are nefarious, benign, or healthy as well as to examine the methods and procedures devised by regulatory authorities and courts in order to evaluate and use this economic evidence. The course will have a strong practical component as it will examine through case studies the interaction of lawyers and economists in the implementation of competition law.

The Role of Economics in Competition Law and Practice (LAWS0101)

Abolitionism |suffrage|First Wave Feminism|New Woman|human rights

Module Description: 

The first part of this module explores the rise of feminism in England from the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of...

New Woman Literature in Britain and America, 1793-1920 (CMII0161)

RUSSIAN HISTORY|MODERN HISTORY|SOVIET RUSSIA|MATERIAL CULTURE|EUROPEAN HISTORY

Visitors to contemporary Russia find themselves surrounded by things ‘made in the USSR’ – buildings, streets, statues. Yet there was once...

Made in the USSR: The Social Lives of Soviet Things (HIST0856)

Visitors to contemporary Russia find themselves surrounded by things ‘made in the USSR’ – buildings, streets, statues. Yet there was once also a vast world of less imposing, though no less significant, Soviet-made objects—the taksofon (public telephone), for example, and the budenovka (soft woollen soldier’s cap with a red star), papirosy (cardboard-tipped cigarettes) and the ‘Bolon’ia’ plashch (a thin, unlined nylon raincoat). This module analyzes the meaning and impact of such material things in the USSR over the decades, exploring in tandem their biographies and the life-cycle of the Soviet society that used them.

As cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai argues, ‘persons and things are not radically distinct categories, and …the transactions that surround things are invested with the properties of social relations’. Radical theorists of the Soviet 1920s, advancing similar claims, conjured up not only a new Soviet person, but a whole new universe of Soviet objects as their helpmeets and educators. What does the actual Soviet-made material world, in theory and in practice, have to teach us about Soviet experience? Was there a distinctive material culture in the Soviet Union? How did it differ from western material culture, and how did it change over time? What was the relationship between Soviet things and the evolution of key institutions like the family, the army, the party, and the gulag, between the design of everyday objects and the worlds of ‘high’ politics and ‘high’ culture? Can things be historical actors?

This module will introduce students to material culture studies by reading the work of major theorists and historians and by analysing objects, thereby preparing students to develop dissertation topics.