Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

It is very noticeable that this article starts with statistics on which crimes have gone up. Good news rarely wins an audience for the media, and often people only reaad the first part of a news article. It could be argued that this kind of tactic influences the formation of moral panics and moral crusades in society.

It’s important to remember that the Home Office Statistics are a statement of crime that was reported to and recorded by the police - it is commonly acknowledged that not all crimes are reported to the police and that some crimes are more likely to be reported than others (e.g. people tend to report car theft because they need a crime number in order to make an insurance claim). The types of crimes reported also change over time, as do crime recording procedures.

The British Crime Survey is a victim survey and is often seen as a more reliable and valid than statistics on recorded crime as it surveys a representative sample of the population and asks them about their expereinces of crime over the previous year. However, even this has its drawbacks and leads us to the question of whether crime statistics are really social constructions.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Robberies up 6% but crime stable
This article looks at young people’s experiences of crime, the lack of quantitative research into it and the conflicting findings of those research projects that have been carried out.
BBC NEWS | UK | The hidden victims of crime?

Welcome to the new-look site, this site should now be easier to navigate and use, with some new content and a more standardised format.  The new arrangement should also mean that it gets updated much more frequently, with links and info on up-to-date relevant information to help you relate sociology to the real world.

This site is also now fully accessible to users of Firefox and hopefully we’ve fixed all the broken links and disappearing images - if you find any glitches please let me know and I’ll get them fixed.

Many thanks to my brother, Robert Laing, who’s a graphic designer and has done a lot of the work on sorting this out.

Enjoy!
Ruth

The growth of celebration of St George’s day suggests that English national identity is growing and is increasingly distinct from any British identity. The question is what kind of nationalism is this? Is it inclusive or exclusive? And how does it link to globalisation - is this an example of what Giddens (1997) argues, that increased globalisation actually encourages the strengthening of regional and national identities?

BBC NEWS | England | St George’s Day grows in strength

Another example of the changing occupational structure in the UK, with a decline in unskilled or semi-skilled manufacturing jobs as they move to countries where the costs of production are lower. Not that long ago there were several motor manufacturing plants around Coventry.

Have a think about the wider social and economic impact this may have both on Coventry and on Slovakia - types of jobs, unemployment levels, roles within the family (think about Mac en Ghaill’s “crisis of masculinity”), other local businesses, education…..

BBC NEWS | Business | Slovaks flock to Peugeot plant

This is a fascinating article about an small alternative school where students do not take GCSEs or A-levels and the focus is on independent learning rather than a rigid curriculum.

Rather more expensive than home-education, although it might not be that different.

BBC NEWS | Education | The school that becomes a family

BBC NEWS | England | Hampshire | Second chance for excluded girls

This is an interesting example of compensatory education coming from the private sector, as well as dealing with the rarely addressed issue of anti-school subcultures among girls.