National Identity

Apologies for the rather self-indulgent posts this week - but here’s another. Hopefully you can bend it to something useful.

My new American passport arrived today. Yes, reader, I marr...., ahh, b******, I mean, yes, reader, I am neither one thing nor the other. Or am I?

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Waterloo Road

I’ve just had the misfortune to watch about 20 minutes of this dreadful BBC series - Waterloo Road - tonight.

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What is university for?

Asks Richard Garner in The Independent today.  Lord Mandelson has one answer.

This might be a useful device to allow teachers to get students thinking about sociological perspectives on education.

White Collar Crime Special

A hurried posting today - trying to finish off mini-book on the Twin Towers. Spreads are always fiddly - I spend ages looking for just the right quote of 40 words. 38 words won’t do. It’s got to be 40. Talk about technological determinism.

I heard that Laurie Taylor on R4 Thinking Allowed is having a 2 programme special on white collar crime.  Catch it live or on podcast - should be good.

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Marking Time

An action packed day for me yesterday in Cambridge; marking, listening to the radio, and putting a book on my desk.

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The Homeless

Why not think about using some examples of homelessness to teach the topic of poverty (Wealth, Welfare and Poverty) or stratification and inequality? It’s different, there are some good books on it,and it’s really important.  And, many students will surely have seen homeless people selling The Big Issue or begging.

I’m about to start some part-time teaching work with the homeless and that’s what has prompted me to make this comment.

Living near Cambridge, it’s hard not to have missed all the publicity gained by Alexander Masters book ‘Stuart - A Life Backwards’ , which was also made into a film. 

Check out this review and why not get a copy from your local library.  It’s a great read and a chance to inject something different into the sociology syllabus.

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Acceptable Face of the Filthy Rich?

A bit of half-term light entertainment for you all today.  Here’s an interview the BBC’s Evan Davis did with master investor Warren Buffett.  Amazing - Buffett at one point seems to be arguing for the redistribution of wealth - or did I mis-hear him?  Oh well, I guess I better send him my address and bank details.  I’m sure he’d appreciate that I am a very deserving cause.

Quote for the Week (Foucault)

I’m feeling in an anti-authoritarian mood today, so, just for all you fans of quality assurance and the value-for-money approach to life, here’s something from Foucault. See what you can make of it.

“The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements.”

Discipline and Punish, p304.

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Quiz - What Do You Know about the UK (Part Two)

Part Two of our interactive quiz on UK society

Launch interactive version of quiz

Download printable pdf version

Download SCORM-VLE Import file

Education and Equality

A bit political, a bit controversial today, but I saw this today in The Guardian and thought it was spot on. There’s a fair bit of sociology in it too, towards the end. I guess you could argue that Hanley oversimplifies a bit, but I’ve been one of those who have found New Labour, well, just a bit too ‘New’ if I can put it that way for now. For me, this hits the nail pretty much on the head. But then, perhaps I’m just a simplistic, unreconstructed old leftie?

Quote for the Week coming up tomorrow and somewhere in the T2U machinery there’s another quiz waiting to be published.

Have a great weekend.

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The Lolita Effect

Re- The Lolita Effect.  I blogged about this book a while ago and said I would do a summary.  Fool!  I’ve just ordered it on Amazon, but it will take me a while to read it and summarise it, what with all the other jobs I have on the go.  Do rest assured though, it will appear in due course.  Just hope you’re not in a hurry.

David

The BNP, Education and the British Working Class

The furore over the inclusion of BNP Nick Griffin on tonight’s Question Time, has prompted a lot of discussion in the media. Last night the BBC’s Newsnight, got in their two pence worth.  If you missed it, click on the link to iPlayer and have a listen. It’s somewhere around halfway through I should think.

In amongst all the debate about Griffin, Newsnight did some very interesting contextualisation.

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Sociological Words

A good lesson for me yesterday.  I was looking at an exam paper.  Explain the meaning, said the questions, of the terms ‘professional’ and ‘status’.  So, being a typical teacher parent, I tried them out on my 15 year old son. Intriguing answers…

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Here is the News

Here are some links to what I hope teachers and students will think is a great little resource.

It’s a poem by Tom Leonard. I first heard it several years ago. Since then, its had the bad luck to be adopted for GCSE - and the reason why that’s bad is explained pretty clearly in the links.  It’s good for a writer’s work to have a bigger audience - unless that is, the work is distorted or misinterpreted. But that’s a risk in all communication I guess.

Anyway here are the links:

www.tomleonard.co.uk/main-publications/intimate-voices/notes-on-the-six-oclock-news.html

www.tomleonard.co.uk/main-publications/intimate-voices/the-six-oclock-news.html

One of the links will take you to a recording, so if you aren’t confident that you can imagine, or even imitate a Scottish accent, have no worries. 

I think that the poem should be useful for - well, obviously mass media.  But also education, and culture and identity.  And remember, as Leonard explains, the poem is not about ‘Scottishness’ in particular; it’s much more, he says, about class. Students may have come across it before at GCSE - but its worth a try and with luck, if it is a re-introduction for some students, the new context can help give it back some of its shine.

Enjoy it.

Mixed Race Marriages

Here’s something (I’m tempted to say ‘another thing’) our textbooks rarely mention - mixed race marriages.

This interesting snippet from the BBC shows that prejudice still exists and also begs many questions - such as:

What percentage of UK marriages are mixed or inter-ethnic?  (Hint - check back to the quiz two weeks ago)

What are the implications of mixed race marriages in terms of culture and identity?

What is racism?

Quote for the Week

This is one of my all time favourites -its so radical, such a turning on its head of our conventional ways of thinking. What do you make of it?

“ Social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’.

Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, Free Press, New York, 1963.

Yes, I know - you’ve only just got to grips with the quote from last Friday - gosh these weeks go quickly. I’ll try to get the quote of the week on a more regular basis to keep the ‘spacing’ about right.

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Using the Quiz

Just a quick hint for the teachers about using that quiz posted up on Monday.

When students have finished the quiz, one exercise that you can get them to do is to write up a true statement for each fact provided. Or you can modify it and get them to write a paragraph describing Britain’s ethnic composition, or some other aspect reflected in the quiz (or use last week’s quiz on the family), using the data provided.  The first maybe a bit more of a GCSE oriented task, but if you mix it up with other activities or tasks, it seems useful enough.. 

What do you know about the UK?

Here is our latest quiz -

Here are some links for those who want a paper version:

Download printable pdf version:
http://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/quiz/ukpart1/ukpart1.pdf

Download SCORM-compliant VLE version
http://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/quiz/ukpart1/sociology-uk1.zip

Quote for the Week

I thought I’d do a quote for the week (rather than ‘of the week’ since its historical).  Also there’s another quiz on the way soon - just waiting for colleagues to post it up.

So meanwhile.... here’s the quote....

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What do you mean ‘out of date’?

Today a little rant on one of my bugbears - the criticism that a sociological study is ‘out of date’.

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A Career in Crime

Part of the great attraction of sociology - for me at least - has always been the way that it sheds light on our personal lives. The American sociologist C.Wright Mills famously wrote about this in his book The Sociological Imagination.  Mills wrote:

“ Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is between the ‘personal troubles of milieu’ and ‘the public issues of social structure.’

By ‘milieu’ Mills just means ‘environment’ and he’s getting at the point that there is a connection between the way our environment shapes us and the larger social structures which influence us, like class, race and gender.

Why do I mention it? Because I was struck tonight by my son’s interest in Curtis Warren.

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In the land of the Living

I had to go to a funeral today - the mother of an old colleague of mine. I must say, I’d like to be invited to a few more weddings these days, so if any one has any spare invites - may be send one my way.

I’ve been to a fair few funerals in the past few years. Sociologically they are rather fascinating occasions and maybe some of the points here can get you thinking about rituals, norms, values, culture and identity and the social functions of funerals.

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Two useful resources

Just a quick bit of gossip today: check out these links. One is for the Nuffield Review and the other for the ESRC Society Today site.  The Nuffield Review is a review of educational provision for the 14-19 age groups which has been completed after several years of work.  It’s lengthy to read through the whole thing, but you can skim and get an idea of what the authors see as the key issues in our current education provision for the 14-19 age group.  It will help students and teachers ensure their knowledge is up to date.

The ESRC site will tell you all about the ESRC’s publication - Britain in 2009 - as well as the previous issues - Brtain in 2008, etc. These are really interesting publications which bring a breath of fresh air to the sociology syllabus. They are always tied in to current research by professional social scientists. They don’t just include sociology though - they are interdisciplinary - personally I think this is a good thing. It helps sociology teachers and students to look beyond their own specialist discipline, and that’s important - to help integrate knowledge into its proper context and also to appreciate more the strengths - and limitations - of each discipline.

Authoring Opportunities for Sociology Teachers & Examiners with tutor2u

tutor2u, the leading publisher of digital learning resources for Economics, Business Studies & Politics, is expanding!  We’re keen to expand our range of free and subscription teaching resources for GCSE & AS/A2 Sociology using many of the ideas and formats that have proved so popular in our original subjects.  Here is some information if you fancy getting involved as an author…

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Choose Your Parents, and Your Country, Carefully

This report in The Independent is not just about science or medicine - its about society and what sociologists call lifechances. Lifechances is a rather general term referring to a person’s chances of success in life - e.g. gaining a certain level of job, education, income and of course, their life expectancy - how long will they live.

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Quick Quiz - Families and Households in the UK

Many thanks to David for producing this 10-question quiz on the size and composition of households and families in the UK:

Launch interactive quiz

Sexism in the News

There was something interesting on R4 Today about women newsreaders. So here’s something to think about - why is it that TV news channels have seemed to prefer young female news readers? Could you conduct a content analysis and generate some data on this topic? People often complain that older male news readers can stay in their jobs longer than women do - is that fair?  And if the BBC are going to do something about it, will things change much?

Is the media sexist? Research and Discuss. Back tomorrow.

Mind how you go

Research on women and work often walks on thin ice. Is it really neutral, disinterested research, just telling us - ‘the facts’?
The trouble is, research can always be used or misintepreted by those with a particular axe to grind.

That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I heard about research into working mums and children’s health on the Radio and TV news this morning.  You can find out about the research in The Independent and on the BBC. 

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What’s so bad about books?

I’ll admit it - I’m a bookworm. Worse still, I have this dreadful habit of buying books and then not reading them, so that my work space, and in fact, my house, is a daily affront to the failure of my good intentions.  Today there’s been a little bit in the news about this development in the public library system. Not many of the media seemed interested in this story - Radio 4’s Today programme and The Guardian covered it, but not many others as far as I can see from a quick surf.  That said, it wasn’t clear to me how the new scheme will differ from inter-library loans and how you are supposed to know what books are available elsewhere in the country.  The basic upshot is, you will be able to borrow a book from any library in the country. As I said though, reports are a bit short on the detail.

But anyway - here’s a plug for the local library service. As a student, do try to use it.  If you can work ahead and order books you’ll find its a great way of saving money (unlike me).  And increasingly, libraries are being refurbished with good computers and services, and lots of stuff as well as books - DVDs, CDs and so on.

Then again - as this article on the BBC Magazine explains, there’s a fascinating sociology of books isn’t there?  There are all sorts of interesting class and other social divisions (e.g. age, girls books, guys books). Not just in terms of a broad, ‘who reads’ and ‘who doesn’t read’, but in all the fascinating divisions in terms of what people do read - how we make the distinctions between ‘high culture’ and ‘popular culture’ for example.  And of course, reading is a great marker of cultural capital.  So if you’re doing culture and identity there are a lot of interesting questions you can pose by thinking about books - and they are worth considering, even if a lot of examples used by teachers might be to do with music, television, or drama.

For the record, my own bookshelves groan under the weight of too many sociology books, books on politics, and economics. I am trying to read some of them - honestly, I really am.  And sociology teacher or not, I do try to read some fiction for pleasure.  What does my reading say about me - ‘low brow poseur’ no doubt - I like David Lodge, Scottish Tory boy Alexander McCall Smith (strange and sad I know, but he does calm me down), and I’ve even been known to read cheap thrillers - they’re much easier than social theory.

As it said on a free book mark I once got from a public library in Los Angeles - ‘Expand your mind - read a book’. 

For Better, For Worse

Hello, apologies for my absences this week - it all got just too much. But back to work now - here is what I hope will be a helpful little resource or snippet.

I found this material on the Open University/BBC site - Open2.net - well worth a look - they have some great stuff.

This particular article is has some interesting background/context material about how the legal system has tackled divorce. I’m sure pre-nuptial agreements have been in the media elsewhere this week? 

There are some good links here - including a discussion of the French system - good - sociology students need to look at comparative data.

Given the background in this article and the high profile of pre-nuptial agreements, I think it’s worth thinking about whether the Marxists aren’t right after all.  Not in terms of the standard points trotted out in every A level text. No, I’m thinking of the idea that in capitalist society, everything is turned into a commodity.

Isn’t that what pre-nups actually do? Put a value on the marriage (or the partners participation) and then make it into a legally binding contract?

Isn’t this rather a sad state of affairs?  Or would a cool, logical, functional approach be better? That is, just to see it as an inevitable and necessary outcome of the increase of individual freedom - the freedom to divorce.

Discuss.

Gender, Friendship and Culture

Apparently some of the links haven’t been working - apologies for that, we think its sorted out now. Do let us know if any don’t work.

Bit under the weather today, so just a quick parasitic ref to Laurie Taylor on R4 this week - there was good stuff on friendship, gender and globalisation and culture. Do take 30 minutes to listen to it.

Back soon.

Gender Inequalities

I confess I forgot to post up this article on the gender pay gap.  But its interesting to reflect on how a sociological point of view on inequality could be shaped here by current concerns; so the focus is now on equality to earn huge bonuses.  Maybe the sceptical sociologist needs to step back and ask why anybody needs such huge bonuses?

There is also a lot of useful material on ‘women in the workplace’ here.

Poverty

A poverty of material from myself today, I’m afraid - a day when what could go wrong, did go wrong. Well, pretty much so. Anyhow, enough of my problems, but all I can offer today is this BBC report that Lesley Ward, President of teachers union, ATL, claims that poverty today is as bad as it was in Dicken’s time.

Interesting - while all us sociology teachers have been carefully explaining the relative nature of poverty, here’s someone popping up and saying it does not in fact seem to have kept up with the times.  It was hard enough trying to convince my students in sunny Cambridge that not everyone was as well off as they were; goodness knows what they’d have made of this.  It just shows - one really good way to learn about your own society is to get on the bus, train or whatever, and travel around it. Failing that, talk to people who have done that.

Lesley Ward certainly knows about living conditions in Doncaster. Mrs Ward’s testimony is not just interesting on account of what it tells us about poverty- it’s also relevant to education - note her comments about parental interest in children’s education.

Now, I must get on and keep working on that quiz.  Back next week.

The Lolita Effect

Well folks, I’ve spent most of the day in the car, but I have managed to get back to post, so here we go. 

I had to drive down to Bexhill on Sea to collect my father’s ashes -but that’s another story.  What do you do on a long drive but listen to the radio? What should pop up after an erudite chat about St Thomas Aquinas with Melvin Bragg but Women’s Hour - OK, stop sniggering at the back.  But maybe there is a link, and maybe there is a god, because yet again, my belief that ‘ask and ye shall receive’, (where sociology resources are concerned at least) proved to be right once again.

What am I on about? Regular readers will know how I love to moan and whinge about how old all the key studies in sociology textbooks are.  But what comes up on Woman’s Hour ? A great reference, that’s what - to a book called ‘The Lolita Effect’.  The author and others engaged in an interesting discussion about the contemporary sexualisation and objectification of the young female body.They even had some material from interviews with young women from London.  Highly recommended. If you ask nicely I might even buy a copy of the book and make a summary handout, to be made available, on this blog. Free. 

Restorative Justice

Just a quick posting today to bring this to your attention. Laurie Taylor on Thinking Allowed today had an interesting discussion on restorative justice.  It doesn’t get much of a look in at AS/A2 level and I guess that might be because you can argue that it’s more of a policy response, rather than a sociological theory as such, to crime.

But one sociological question at least must emerge:

What assumptions does restorative justice make about the nature of crime and the criminal?

And I can’t leave out Durkheim - What do you think Durkheimian’s might say about the policy of restorative justice - would they approve or disapprove?

May not post tomorrow as I’m out all day, but I am working on some quizzes. Back soon.