Social and Political Philosophy

Deciding to do your dissertation on society or politics is a fantastic angle to take when writing your dissertation. Whether you are interested in society and politics of the modern day or would prefer to look at the philosophy of politics from other centuries, social and political philosophy may be the one!

Example social and political philosophy dissertation topic 1:

The philosophy of wellbeing:

Traditional measures of wellbeing centre upon tangible measurements such as economic health, the GDP of nations and income. In contrast, this dissertation looks at the measurement of well-being in terms of happiness. In so doing it looks at the state of Bhutan, the only state in the world to record an official measure of happiness. David Cameron, the UK prime minister under the Coalition Government, has suggested that the UK, too, should measure happiness, a policy that has been scorned by both ends of the political spectrum. This thesis hopes to show that subjective measures of wellbeing through happiness are indeed relevant and that they are, therefore, as relevant to issues of public policy, as more readily quantifiable measurements pertaining to issues such as data and wealth.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Ash, C. (2007). ‘Happiness and economics: A Buddhist perspective’, Society and Economy, Vol. 29(2), pp. 201-222.
• Bates, W. (2009). ‘Gross national happiness’, Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, Vol. 23, pp. 1-16.
• Thinley, L.J.Y. (2004). ‘Value and development: Gross national happiness’. In, Mukherjee, P.N. and Sengupta, C., Indigeneity and universality in social science: A South Asian response. New Delhi: SAGE, pp. 203-211.