Preface and Editorial

Sociology sets out to develop the sociological imagination of those who study it, allowing us to think critically and reflexively about the social world around us and make sense of the relationship between our personal experiences and wider society. This approach to interrogating the world is embodied in this collection of critical reflections written by final year students on the Single and Joint Honours Sociology degrees here at Leeds Beckett University. The essays in this volume underline both the breadth of the subject and its power to shed light on the familiar and the taken for granted. They tackle a wide range of contemporary issues: the quantification of learning, populist politics, the appropriation of activism by big brands, migration, social media, the digitisation of fitness and, of course, the impact of COVID-19. To do this, they apply theory as an interrogative and explanatory tool, tackling these subjects through the lens of, for example, commodification, surveillance, risk and postmodernity, underlining its central role in Sociology.