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On Civilisation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Societies
- Semester 2
- Face-to-face delivery
- 10 credits and 20 credits
What is civilisation?
How do societies create systems of meaning, order, knowledge, and collective life that endure across generations?
This course explores civilisation as a cultural, institutional, and symbolic process shaped by cities, religion, technology, governance, art, and social organisation. Drawing on sociology, history, anthropology, philosophy, and political theory, it examines how different civilisations understood order, progress, citizenship, empire, and human flourishing. Students explore how cultures evolve through contact, exchange, conflict, and institutions, alongside challenges like environmental crisis, globalisation, technological change, and social fragmentation.
No prior knowledge of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, or history is required.
This unit is accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines.
About
How do civilisations grow and pass meaning across generations?
This course introduces civilisation as a historical and symbolic process shaped by the interaction between culture, institutions, technology, and social organisation.
While recognising the continuities between biology, environment, and culture, the course examines how human societies increasingly evolve through symbolic communication, institutional memory, and cultural transmission rather than biological adaptation alone. It explores how language, religion, law, education, cities, and systems of knowledge allow human beings to accumulate and transmit meaning across generations, producing increasingly complex forms of collective life.
The course takes a strongly interdisciplinary approach, drawing particularly on thinkers such as Norbert Elias, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Lewis Mumford, Patrick Geddes, and contemporary debates in anthropology, environmental thought, and political theory. Students will explore how different societies understood order, meaning, citizenship, empire, religion, and progress, while also questioning the assumptions underlying modern ideas of “civilisation” itself.
Rather than treating civilisation as a fixed achievement possessed by some societies and not others, the course examines civilisation as an ongoing and contested process involving symbolic communication, institutional development, intercultural exchange, cooperation, conflict, and changing relationships between humanity, technology, and nature.
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Unit details
What should I know about this unit?
The unit aims to:
- Introduce students to interdisciplinary approaches to civilisation across sociology, history, anthropology, philosophy, and political theory.
- Explore the relationships between culture, institutions, technology, and social organisation.
- Examine civilisation as a symbolic and institutional process distinct from, though emergent from, biological evolution.
- Develop a comparative understanding of different civilisations across time and geography.
- Encourage critical reflection on contemporary global challenges through historical and civilisational perspectives.
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Analyse major theories of civilisation and social development.
- Compare different civilisations and forms of social organisation across historical contexts.
- Evaluate the role of culture, language, religion, technology, and institutions in shaping societies.
- Critically discuss the relationship between biological, cultural, and institutional evolution.
- Apply interdisciplinary perspectives to contemporary questions concerning sustainability, globalisation, identity, and technological change.
- Conduct independent critical analysis using interdisciplinary sources and methods.
Indicative topics may include:
- What is civilisation?
- Biological evolution, symbolic culture, and social inheritance
- Cities, states, and the emergence of complex societies
- Religion, myth, ritual, and social order
- Empire and world systems
- Civilisation and barbarism in historical thought
- Christianity, Islam, and comparative civilisational traditions
- Capitalism, industrialisation, and modernity
- Colonialism, globalisation, and decolonisation
- Technology, media, and digital civilisation
- Ecological crisis and the future of civilisation
- Civilisation, citizenship, and democratic futures
The unit will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, guided reading, audiovisual materials, and discussion-based learning.
Students will engage with historical texts, sociological theory, contemporary debates, and comparative case studies.
Seminar discussions will encourage students to synthesise perspectives from multiple disciplines and apply them to contemporary social questions.
- Dr. Eric Lybeck (SEED)
- Contributions and guest sessions may also involve colleagues from Sociology, History, Anthropology, Architecture, Politics, and Environmental Studies
UCIL units are designed to be accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines.
UCIL units are credit-bearing and it is not possible to audit UCIL units or take them for additional/extra credits. You must enrol following the standard procedure for your School when adding units outside of your home School.
If you are not sure if you are able to enrol on UCIL units you should contact your School Undergraduate office. You may wish to contact your programme director if your programme does not currently allow you to take a UCIL unit.
You can also contact the UCIL office if you have any questions.
How to enrol
UCIL units are designed to be accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Depending on your School enrolment can be completed in one of two ways:
Enrolment using the Course Selection System
You may be able to enrol directly onto a UCIL unit using the Course Unit Enrolment System.
Enrolment via your School
If you cannot see the UCIL unit you wish to study or it is blocked out on the Course Unit Enrolment System you may need to request approval to study the unit directly from your School.
Please get in touch with the UCIL team at ucil@manchester.ac.uk if you have any questions.