Quote for the Week

I’m being a bit naughty here, but I guess sometimes it can be good to pose provocative questions. So here’s this weeks quote:

“Sociology’s great intellectual contribution is to have recognised that the self is very much a social product. Although people have instincts, dreams, private thoughts, human experience is heavily influenced by our membership in important social groups such as family, church, school, neighbourhood, class, race, gender, generation, nation. The self, for every sociologist, is largely but perhaps not entirely, an outcome of social structure - our economies, political systems, cultures, media, religions, military, policing, education.  To ignore all of these external influences is to be a psychologist!”

Ben Agger (2004) The Virtual Self, p44, Blackwell.

Lots to discuss here and it doesn’t need to mean that we consign psychology to the dustbin.  As so many students now are studying psychology, it might be useful to highlight why there is a bit of tension between sociologists and psychologists around the vexed issue of structure and action.  Maybe both subjects have their uses and their limitations?

A Broader Perspective

I remember from my Open University teaching that the claims of those who argue that the world has been transformed by globalisation can be somewhat dented when the empirical facts are examined.  Take the media for instance. The ‘globalisers’ claim that the world has shrunk and we no longer slavishly follow just our national press and media. Well, the OU sources I read, pointed out that in the UK, in fact, most people consume media products which are made in the UK.  I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that is still broadly the case.  But that seems a pity to me: I’m a keen believer that the social sciences should broaden students minds and we can’t do that if we don’t look at other parts of the world.  So why not make use of this resource from the NewYorkTimes? The NY Times has a section called the Learning Network and there you can find some potentially useful lesson ideas. Look under ‘Social Studies’.  I particularly liked the look of some lesson plans I saw on age and on gender representations in the media.

Society Now

If you don’t know about it already, check out the free downloadable publication called Society Now, available from the ESRC - the Economic and Social Research Council. I might even pick out a few items myself over the next few days. As it contains details of current sociological and social scientific research going on in universities, it’s a very good way of keeping your sociology fresh.

Round and Round in Circles

Exam Advice: If you want to gain good marks it’s a good idea to avoid giving circular answers to questions.  You know the sort of thing I mean.  It’s when the question says - ‘Describe what is meant by participant observation’ and the student writes ‘ It is when you participate and observe at the same time’.  Ha Ha. The word ‘describe’ means a bit more than throw back the question into the examiners face.  On a related theme, the standard joke of course, is this:  Oxford Philosophy Final Paper, Question 1. Is this a fair question?  Answer: ‘Yes, if this is a fair answer.’ Result: First Class Honours.  But, remember, that’s a joke, and it’s old, so if you try it, you will get a well-deserved fail.

Do some students really not see the problem with answers like this?  Or are they just embarrassed and desperately trying to fill the paper, or perhaps they think it is amusing?

I really don’t know, but I would just advise all students out there - avoid this like the plague.  Make sure you know and can define the basic concepts of your subject.  There are many complaints these days about standards, but one thing is constant; you still need to have some knowledge to pass an exam.

Christianity Survey

I’ve just spotted that the OU/BBC have a very useful Christianity survey up on their site. I’m sure teachers can make good use of this.  And remember - be careful in how you interpret the results. How valid is the survey? How representative are the results?

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Quote for the Week

I think I missed a quote last week. Here’s one for now though. I don’t know if this will go down as well as Foucault the other week, but let’s just see.  To all the teachers out there I would though respectfully suggest that this one is useful and really can and should be used in the classroom.  It’s from Manuel Castells:

“Only ‘bad news,’ relating to conflict, drama, unlawful deals, or objectionable behavior, is interesting news. Since news is increasingly framed to parallel (and compete with) entertainment shows, or sports events, so is its logic. It requires drama, suspense, conflict, rivalries, greed, deception, winners and losers, and, if possible, sex and violence. Following the pace,and language, of sports casting, “horse race politics” is reported as an endless game of ambitions, maneuvers, strategies and counter-strategies, with the help of insider confidences and constant opinion polling from the media themselves.”

M. Castells, The Power of Identity, p32, OUP.

Women Drivers

You can thank my wife for today’s posting - she suggested this was worthy of inclusion.

Today the BBC have reported that the RAF Red Arrows have appointed their first female pilot.  The film clip by the way, made me feel sick.

So, no cracks from the guys about women drivers.  One sociological question about this however, might be why it has taken so long for us to reach this landmark appointment.  Clue - check out the Equal Opportunities Act and the Sex Discrimination Act in the 1970s.  Also note changes in the education system which may have helped.

Prof. David Held of the LSE, would I’m sure - because he’s pointed to things like this before - say that this shows what a success sociology has been. Yes folks, Flt Lt. Moore can partly thank Sociology for her success! Why? Because, according to Prof Held, its the work done by Sociologists which has, over a long period of time, helped to change social attitudes.

But another question; does this mean that men and women are now equal? Have all the old attitudes gone forever? I’ll leave you to find evidence for or against that.

Finally - that thing about women drivers. Ever heard of ‘essentialism’?  It’s the concept that each sex has ‘essential’ or fixed characteristics which are natural and cannot be changed. Part of their essential nature.  Flt Lt Moore shows that essentialism must be wrong: if one women can do it, so can others.  So, it can’t be down to sex.

News Just in from Pennsylvania

It’s important for sociology teachers - and students - not to be parochial.  Or present-fixated.  The sociologist Loic Wacquant has been fashionable to quote (or name drop?) in academic sociology for some time now.  Read this review in The Daily Pennsylvanian to find out why and get a bit of taste for his brand of sociology.

What parents might do to get the right school

I know this case turned out to absolve the parents, but it does raise one issue which tends to get neglected by the press focus on surveillance; how far will parents go to get their children into what they consider a ‘decent’ school?

Here’s a link to the BBC take on the matter.

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