Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

This is a link to a BBC News “In Depth” collection of articles on prisons in the UK. Some of the articles are fairly trivial whereas others provide interesting insight into life inside UK prisons and some of the policy ideas around prisons that are being discussed.

It raises questions of crime, deviance and punishment - what they are and what the best ways are of dealing with them. Some of the comments and ideas concur with Durkheim’s idea that the punishment of crime is a powerful deterrent - in many ways this can be linked to New Right views of crime and punishment. Others point much more to Merton’s strain theory or to subcultural theories about the reasons for crime.

The article “Facing Up” talks about some people’s experiences of “restorative justice” (sometimes known as “reintegrative shaming”) where offenders are brought face-to-face with victims in an effort to get offenders to realise the often far-reaching consequences and human faces of their offences. There is evidence from several studies that similar and community based programmes can be effective in preventing reoffending see the summary produced by the Restorative Justice  Consortium.

There is also some interesting data on prison populations in the UK and around the world.

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Prisons

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | The asylum process is failing too many women

This article outlines some of the horrors women endure, both leading them to seek asylum in the UK and during the asylum process - a real reminder of the fact that women are still the subjects of patriarchal abuse of power, both in the UK and abroad.

It also reminded me that the following is the definition of a refugee as set out in the 1951 Convention on Refugees - a worldwide definition:

A
refugee is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being
persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country
of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is
unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…”

Notice that the above definition does not include persecution on the grounds of gender.  This has meant that women have not been able to claim refugee status when fleeing from genital mutilation, forced marriage, or other social norms that can be seen to oppress women. 

However, some individual countries and groups of countries have decided that the oppression of women can be grounds for refugee status.  This includes Europe:

“In 1984,
the European Parliament determined that women facing cruel or inhumane
treatment because they seemed to transgress social mores should be
considered a particular social group for the purposes of determining
refugee status.” - UNHCR website

Despite this, the article mentioned at the beginning of this post suggests that women seeking asylum still face discrimination and often the dismissal of their cases because of their gender.

This is just to say best wishes to everyone who is taking their AS research methods exam tomorrow.  Hope it goes well.

Remember - read the questions carefully, stop and think and don’t forget to plan your answer to the essay question!

Booth Poverty Map & Modern map (Charles Booth Online Archive)  Booth’s Poverty map is famous as it mapped London in 1898-9, classifying residential areas and essentially mapping wealth and poverty across the capital.  If you follow the link you can browse the 1898-9 map in comparison to a contemporary map of London - particularly if you know London well this is fascinating as you can look at how the social mix of the capital has changed (or not) over the past 100 years.  From this you can find out a fair amount about social mobility in the area, the gentrification of some areas of London.  Also, particularly if you look at the East End, especially around Wapping,  you can see some interesting evidence of how the occupational structure of the capital has changed, with the disappearance of many of the dock basins and if you walk those streets now you will note that there is much more residential housing now than in 1898, as warehouses have been converted into expensive flats.  You can also see how London was essentially segregated by social class - it would be interesting to see a map like this for London today and see whether such class segregation has decreased or is much the same.

If you click on “Home” you can browse the site further and there is lots of fascinating information on how the data was collected, people’s living conditions at the time and other aspects of Booth’s work.

The Economist also had a fascinating article on this on May 6th 2006 (pp.31-32), looking in detail at how Chelsea has changed.  They have created their own modern Booth map of Chelsea using Census data and talk about some of the social changes that have occurred in the area.  Unfortunately you need a subscription to access this on-line but any library worth its salt will have a hard copy of The Economist and the article is well worth reading.

One of my students told me about this site - she’s been using it for revision.  It seems to have lots of PowerPoint files, with quite detailed notes, and some nice interactive quizzes using Hot Potatoes.  You will need a Flash to view a lot of the site.  The site seems  to be aimed at distance learning  which is presumably why it is so comprehensive.

The site is constructed around the AQA syllabus so OCR students will not find all the material on the site and will find some stuff for A2 in the AS section.  Nevertheless a very useful site by the looks of it.

A Level Sociology

I’ve just read an interesting piece of research into students’ perceptions of Curriculum 2000 comissioned and published by the ATL (teachers’ union). It interviewed 77 students partway through the Upper Sixth about their experiences. It found that students felt under pressure from the workload of the AS year and also from the concentrated period of assessment at the end of the AS year. What I found very interesting and which runs counter to traditional stereotypes about hard-working sciences students and lazy arts students, was that the arts and humanities students had a greater workload outside school hours than the science students.

Thus far there has been very little research published into the impact of Curriculum 2000 with the new A-level and Vocational qualifications and there is also relatively little research into sixth-form students. My anecdotal experiences would tend to back up the findings of the research regarding the pressures on students, especially around the May-June exams - rushing into them and then attempting to return students to lessons for the final part of the summer term.

The report is by Elseta Elsheikh and Tom Liney and was published in 2002. It is available as a PDF download from the ATL website or can be ordered in hard-copy (free to members or about £7 to non-members). The ATL has a wealth of material on all sorts of aspects of education and much of it, especially in the research section, is easy to read and pitched at a level that most 6th formers would be able to cope with. I’ve included the link below to their publications page.

Publications

So we’re still confused about what it means to be middle class or working class?  As suggested by other sociological studies, it seems that people have varying views on what defines their social class and what influences their social class identities.
BBC NEWS | UK | Most Britons ‘are working class’

However, you also have to remember that this survey was done by what is essentially an insurance company - we know almost nothing about the method and research design used - if you click on the link to the company you don’t find out anything more.  We know the sample size - 1000 people, and we know that they were asked questions about their perceptions of social class, however we don’t know:

• sampling technique - was the sample representative? how reliable and generalisable are the findings?
• the wider purpose of the survey - was social class the only aspect tackled, if not, how might this have affected the responses?
• were the questions asked leading? - what kind of bias might this have introduced? how valid is the data as a result?
• what method was used - self-completion questionnaires, pre-coded questionnaires, structured interviews, unstructured interviews?

In order to take this survey seriously you need to know some more about it - yes it could be useful evidence, but always remember that it has some real problems.