In this stream, students will consider the relationship between the individual and society. This will build the groundwork for many of the most popular majors at UBC including Psychology, Economics, Commerce, Sociology, and English.
This stream offers a foundation for understanding, researching, and writing about the relationships between people and the worlds they inhabit. Our approach considers economic and business policies, social and psychological phenomena, technological innovation, pop culture, and social justice.
This stream is ideal for first-year students interested in majoring in Psychology, Economics* or Sociology. It also suits students entering into an interdisciplinary major, or who are unsure of their major but want to develop a broad and flexible range of scholarly abilities in preparation for the rest of their academic career.
Individual & Society students develop skills for critical thinking, academic writing, and research across disciplines as they prepare to be the influencers and leaders of the future.
*Please note that students interested in majoring in Economics should take ECON 101 as an elective outside of CAP in Term 1 or consider CAP’s PPE stream (which offers ECON 101 in Term 1). This stream only offers ECON 102 (Term 2).
Courses: Term One
In the first term, students will enrol in CAP 100, Sociology, and Psychology. In CAP 100, you will be introduced to the research practices and features of academic writing at the university level. Biological psychology seeks to explain individual actions by delving into the inner workings of a person’s mind. In Sociology, students will learn how societies work together towards a more just, fair and sustainable society for all individuals.
CAP_V 100-Io1 (MWF 11-12) - Instructor: Dr. Moberley Luger
Responsibility, Complicity, and In/visibility
“Am I responsible for all others, or only to some, and on what basis would I draw that line?” – Judith Butler
The question posed here by the famous American theorist Judith Butler sounds simple enough—who am I responsible for?—yet it is also quite complex. Butler asks us to examine how we perceive and value those around us. She asks us to confront how we live in the world separately (as individuals) and collectively (in societies). She asks us to think about representation: how does what we see—in movies, on social media etc.—determine who we feel responsible for? Ultimately, in her own attempts to answer this question, Butler models how scholarly work, in its detailed, researched way, might address some of the most confounding geo-political issues of our time.
This course will explore Butler’s question from many angles. We will look at 21st century examples – the War on Terror, climate change – as case studies through which to explore questions of responsibility, complicity, integrity, in/visibility, and the relations among individuals and societies. We will watch films and tv shows (e.g. American Sniper, Ramy) and read a bit of fiction and/or poetry (e.g. by Juliana Spahr). As we do this, our main goal will be to develop your skills and practices as writers at university. You will learn the conventions of knowledge-making and writing in Arts disciplines. You will produce assignments like reading responses, article summaries, literature reviews, and/or research essays. This means you will join ongoing scholarly conversations on challenging topics and contribute new knowledge to them.
CAP_V 100-I02 (MWF 12-1) - Instructor: Dr. Andrew Connolly
Course description TBD.
CAP_V 100-I03 (MWF 1-2) - Instructor: Dr. Kirby Manià
Expansion, Ecology, and Economies: Navigating Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene
CAP 100 introduces students to scholarly discussions and interdisciplinary research within a specific field of study. In this section, we will explore the connections between economics, justice, and the environment, analyzing how historical events and current issues have influenced global societal dynamics. We will start with the Columbian Exchange, examining its extensive and lasting impacts on economies, political systems, ecosystems, and Indigenous communities. The course will then shift to the Anthropocene—a term used by scientists to describe a geological epoch marked by significant human impact on the Earth's climate and environment. We will investigate how economic systems and resource extraction, especially the fossil fuel sector, have contributed to environmental changes and explore alternative frameworks like degrowth, which advocates for sustainable production and consumption practices over continuous economic growth. Special attention will be given to environmental justice, focusing on how resource extraction and industrial activities disproportionately affect Indigenous communities. Through academic articles and documentary films, we will examine the challenges these communities face due to the persisting effects of settler colonialism and learn about their efforts for sovereignty. We will also explore alternative governance models that incorporate environmental stewardship and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Towards the end of the course, we will discuss climate change discourse, which will include the psychology of eco-anxiety and eco-resilience, as well as sociological theories that address climate change denialism.
The course encourages students to engage with scholarly discussions, research, and various media formats from different disciplinary perspectives. It will involve writing about these research perspectives as well as conducting research of your own.
CAP_V 100-I05 (TTh 11-12:30) - Instructor: Dr. Dilia Hasanova
In this section of CAP 100, we will explore the role of language in the construction of social identities. The course will focus not only on social factors that contribute to construction of multiple identities but also on how aspects of everyday language relate to social categorizations, such as class, age, gender, and ethnicity. The assignments (in-class and homework) will provide you with the opportunity to study current theories and debates in the field and to reflect on your own experience as a language user in a multicultural society.
By reading a range of texts across disciplines and conducting a variety of writing exercises, you will learn how to recognize and interpret methods of academic scholarship, and how to incorporate these methods into your own writing. In addition, you will learn to write a variety of scholarly genres, including the research proposal, literature review, and research paper.
PSYC_V 101-003 (MWF 10-11) - Instructor: Dr. Mark Lam
This course will introduce students to some of the major research areas within the field of psychology: the scientific study of the mind, the brain, and behaviour. The course begins with an overview of psychology and its research methods. Next, the course covers the biological basis of behaviour as well as cognitive psychology (the brain and the mind respectively). Specific topics include neuroanatomy, thinking and reasoning, consciousness, memory, learning, language, sensation and perception.
Courses: Term Two
In their second term, students will continue their studies in CAP 101 and Psychology, and take an Economics course. Bringing our focus from the individual to the society, macroeconomics will highlight the ways that we study economic behaviour on a larger societal scale. The study of social and personality psychology will also help us to explain how society might shape an individual’s personality and behaviour.
CAP_V 101-I01 (MWF 11-12) - Instructor: Dr. Moberley Luger
Responsibility, Advocacy, and Counter/narratives
“How do we best understand the ways that decolonization has become divorced in media from the material realities of Indigenous dispossession and genocide?” – Roopika Risam
This quote is not the only question that we will ask in this class, but it offers an example of one we will – and it also gestures to some broader topics that we will address. Specifically, Risam wants us to consider the effects of social media activism in the context of decolonization. More generally, we might ask: how do we distinguish activism and slacktivism? What makes advocacy effective and what are our responsibilities as media consumers, media makers, or academics? What stories do we need to see, hear, and tell to represent and perhaps change the “material realities” of marginalized groups? Perhaps most broadly, how do we critically analyze media and other representations?
In this class, we will practice media, as well as literary and cultural, analysis. We will focus on stories that illuminate the history and present of the land on which we learn: for example, we’ll listen to Crackdown, a podcast about the opioid crisis, and read Injun an experimental book of poetry about the oppression—and empowerment—of Indigenous peoples. We’ll also read a short novel and some scholarly articles as we learn about, and practice, how scholars intervene in important conversations through thinking critically and analyzing closely.
CAP_V 101-I02 (MWF 12-1) - Instructor: Dr. Andrew Connolly
Course description TBD.
CAP_V 101-I03 (MWF 1-2) - Instructor: Dr. Kirby Manià
Course description TBD.
CAP_V 101-I05 (TTh 11-12:30) - Instructor: Dr. Adrian Lou
Course description TBD.
ECON_V 102-010 (MWF 9-10) - Instructor: Dr. Robert Gateman
Students examine economic behaviour at aggregate/national level. We begin with measuring different macroeconomic, labour market, and monetary market variables like GDP, employment-unemployment and inflation, and measuring economic growth, shedding light on growth theories.
PSYC_V 102-003 (MWF 10-11) - Instructor: Dr. Mark Lam
This course brings students deeper into certain research areas within the field of psychology: the scientific study of the mind, the brain, and behaviour. This course further addresses applied areas in psychology and will introduce such topics as intelligence, personality, human development, health psychology, social psychology, and the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.
Sample Projects
Cities of the Future
Thinking about and imagining urban futures has become the focus of artistic expression, academic research projects, conferences, city planning agendas, and corporate think tanks. The goal of this assignment is to demonstrate understanding of academic writing and qualitative research as activities with the potential to create change in the world around us. The assignment asks students to respond to this prompt: “The year is 2223. You live in a Vancouver that few citizens of 2023 would recognize. You have invented a new form of time travel that allows you to send not people, but messages, back through time. In 2000 words, describe your Vancouver to the Vancouver citizens living in 2023, and explain to them how their society can achieve or avoid this future.”
Short Group Presentations: Selling Our School
This assignment, a short group presentation, approaches concepts from authors and critics in the course from a localized point of view, examining how the shared space of our university is branded, bought, and sold. This narrow focus creates opportunities for students to draw from first- hand knowledge as inhabitants of this institution: site-specific presentations and field trips around campus are encouraged!. Students select one topic, site, or commodity in tandem with one research question or “thesis.” This research question specifically addresses a cultural issue under discussion as it relates to individual social experience on campus, focusing explicitly on commodification and the course theme of “culture on sale.”
On-line experiments
On-line experiments, conducted on three selected evenings during the term, give students the opportunity to participate in real-time, online markets with their classmates and the professor. These experiments help students understand how real markets operate, how they organize the economic activity of disparate consumers and businesses, and how the market collects and processes information. Students are assigned a variety of roles to play in each experiment and their success as market participants becomes a (small) part of their overall course grade.
Article Report
A psychological research article is assigned for students to read and summarize during Term 1. Each student writes a short article report summarizing and critiquing the article. Students are welcome to work in groups when discussing the article report, but the paper is written independently.
Group Project
During Term 2, students (working in teams of 2 or 3) conduct their own psychological experiment on an assigned topic. Students are responsible for designing and conducting the experiment and submitting a report.
