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Monash University

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Politics - Faculty of Arts

Offered by the School of Political and Social Inquiry
Campus availability: Caulfield, Clayton

Relevant courses

  • 2454 Diploma in Arts (Politics)
  • 0002 Bachelor of Arts (and associated double degrees)
  • 3910 Bachelor of Arts (Global)
  • 0202 Bachelor of Letters

The politics program specialises in three broad areas: politics and governance: Australia and the world; international relations and global politics; political theory and philosophy. Students may specialise in one or more of these areas, but are encouraged to choose their units so as to explore the different approaches to political studies.

Politics is a very broad discipline, which tends to overlap continually with all the other major humanities and social science disciplines. It is, therefore, an excellent discipline for learning about the interrelationships that exist in the human world, and for acquiring a diverse range of interpretive, analytic and synthetic (especially conceptual) skills. The discipline is not just concerned with the study of government, policy or political institutions; it also studies resource allocation, decision making, social behaviour and political action, the management or resolution of conflict, power struggles, the struggle for political freedom, ideologies and political movements, the nature of the state and relations between states. It is especially concerned with the nature of power and authority, with 'practical understanding', with the relations between theory and practice, and with the series of arguments which are created by the continual struggle by human beings to maintain their social existence and to devise more desirable and more satisfactory forms of human community.

Politics at Monash aims to offer students up-to-date coverage and explanation of many aspects of the contemporary world - developed and underdeveloped - coupled with a solid intellectual grounding in the key debates, texts and traditions of inquiry that one finds in the humanities and social sciences.

Sequences

First year sequence

Clayton

For Clayton students a first-year sequence comprises any two first-year level politics units offered in either semester from the list of units below.

Caulfield

For Caulfield students a first-year sequence comprises PLT1020 and PLT1031.

Minor sequence

Students complete a standard minor chosen from the units listed below, including the first year sequence relevant to their campus of enrolment.

Major sequence

Students complete a standard major chosen from units listed below, including the first year sequence relevant to their campus of enrolment.

Units

First-year level

  • INT1010 Contemporary worlds 1
  • INT1020 Contemporary worlds 2
  • PLT1020 Australian politics and government
  • PLT1031 Introduction to international relations
  • PLT1040 Introduction to international relations
  • PLT1050 Nature, law, revolution: Political ideas in context
  • PLT1120 Fanatics and fundamentalists: The global politics of violence

Second/Third-year level

NOTE: The normal prerequisite for second-year level units is successful completion of an approved first-year politics sequence at any Monash campus. The normal prerequisite for a third-year-level unit is successful completion of an approved first-year politics sequence and any two second-year level politics units at any Monash campus.

* Not offered from 2007.

** From 2004 this single unit replaces the previously offered PLT2150/PLT3150 (Nationalism 1: Global transformations) and PLT2152/PLT3152 (Nationalism 2: Interpretations). Students who completed PLT2150/PLT3150 prior to 2004 cannot complete the new version of PLT2152/PLT3152. However, if either of the older versions of the units (or both) were completed prior to 2004 they may still count them toward a major in politics.

*** Not offered from 2006.

Students may choose a maximum of 12 points from the following elective list:

Contact details

Enquiries (Clayton): room W1017, west wing, Menzies building; telephone +61 3 9905 2443

Enquiries (Caulfield): room H5.31, building H; telephone +61 3 9903 2378

Email psi@arts.monash.edu.au

Visit http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/psi