Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

BBC NEWS | Health | Teen drinking ‘remains a worry’

This article on teenage alcohol consumption is interesting as much for what it reveals about cultural attitudes towards alcohol and teenagers as for what it tells us about actual teenage drinking and health.

There is a suggestion that teenagers should not be drinking any alcohol at all, however, there is as yet no evidence as to the harm of alcohol upon adolescents as distinct from adults. This suggestion can therefore be seen to some extent as something which is a reflection of a culture in which childhood is seen as discrete and separate from adulthood and alcohol consumption is seen as a mark of adulthood - a pint of beer is one symbol of adult masculinity in particular. There are cultures where the consumption of alcohol is seen very differently - for example in many other European countries where children are given wine with meals from an early age and the consumption of alcohol is not seen particularly as a symbol of maturity.

I would suggest that these cultural differences in attitudes to alcohol have two effects - firstly it impacts upon teenage drinking behaviour - in the UK where alcohol is both a ‘forbidden’ substance for children and its consumption (and the associated drunkenness) is a symbol of maturity it encourages teenage drinking without adult supervision. Secondly it affects our reactions to teenage drinking - you can make links to Cohen’s ideas about moral panics as that is essentially what is happening in this article - there are allusions to crumbling families, irresponsible parents and anti-social behaviour.

The statistics are also unfortunately vague: “among pupils at 290 English schools who had drunk in the last seven days, the average consumption was 11.4 units” - so the average consumption of 21% of students was 11.4 units - was this per drinking session? or in the previous week?

It would also be helpful here to know the modal consumption of the 21% - the mean of 11.4 units makes it difficult to tell whether there is a very small group of teenagers among that 21% who are consuming a lot of alcohol or whether 1 in 5 teenagers is consuming 11.4 units of alcohol per week.

You may remember that in December I reviewed a talk given by Les Back at a conference I went to. Well last Thursday (22nd March 2007) I went to Goldsmith’s College in London to interview Les Back about some of the themes he raised in that talk. Les Back is best known for his work on ethnicity, racism and ethnic identities in the UK, but he was talking to me about his new book The Art of Listening which will be published this July and about the role of sociology in today’s rapidly changing society.

The interview covers issues around the media, politics, social change and challenges to sociology and can be listened to by clicking on the buttons below.

Introduction

Les talks about his new book, The Art of Listening

Les talks about how sociology can relate to our moral system

Big brother

The art of listening

The role of theory, the role of history, and individuals and structures

Dark times

To read an extract from the book just follow this link: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-11-15-back-en.html

Here is an image of the cover of The Art of Listening - look closely at the photo! If you want to pre-order a copy of Les’ new book you can of course do so - just click on the link below:

The Art of Listening

Radio 4’s programme The Long View had an excellent programme this week on gun culture.  It looks at the history of gun use and links it to today’s use of guns as part of criminal culture.  It draws some interesting links with guns as symbols of masculinity and also looks at guns as part of youth culture today and their importance in establishing and maintaining status.

Interestingly it highlights the fact that worries about gun culture are nothing new, but rather can be traced back almost 400 years.  It also illustrates the different associations of guns with different social classes.
BBC - Radio 4 The Long View - Homepage

Unfortunately the sound file for this is only available on the website for one week (ie until Tuesday 6th Feb), so listen to it while you have the chance!

Short but sweet, this is a lovely illustration of some of the problems with official statistics in general and crime statistics in particular.  A study suggests that crime has increased rather than decreased during Labour’s term in office, the Conservatives accuse Labour of manipulating the statistics.

BBC NEWS | UK | Labour crime claims ‘misleading’

All sorts of issues are raised here, including:

• the reliability and validity of official statistics
• to what extent are official statistical measurements a reflection of political/official motives and viewpoints rather than of reality?
• the difficulty of operationalising the concept of crime (or even individual crimes) so as to make them objectively measurable - even though these are in Durkheimian terms “social facts” and therefore able to be studied using scientific methods to produce absolute measurements

The following article is a classic example of the debates around young people and crime that go on in real life and also a mini example of the ways in which theories of crime and deviance can be applied.

BBC NEWS | UK | Asbos ‘demonising’ young people

The article mentions labelling theory - the idea that when society labels an individual as ‘criminal’, ‘anti-social’ or even positively as ‘hard-working’ or ‘responsible’, that person is likely to take on that identity and fit their behaviour to society’s expectations of them. The argument is therefore that by giving out numerous ASBOs to young people they are being labelled ‘criminal’ and therefore are more likely to live up to this label. Labelling theory was of course developed by Howard Becker (although the article fails to mention this) and for those of you looking for a synoptic link it has also been applied to education and the creation of anti-school subcultures among pupils.

Also raised by the article is the issue of the unclear line between ‘normal’ behaviour, deviance, and criminality, as it asks where the line should be drawn between “high jinks” behaviour on the part of young people and behaviour that should be deemed criminal. Such behaviour is often seen as deviant by wider society but is also to some extent accepted as part of a youth subculture.

The discussion of labelling and subcultures, in many ways leads on naturally to the discussion of Cohen’s (1972) ‘folk devils‘, moral panics and deviance amplification. This comes out in a less theoretical manner in the article above. Essentially, in labelling certain groups of young people as criminal and deviant by giving them ASBOs, it can be argued that they are being created as ‘folk devils’ - a group who essentially become scape goats - seen as responsible for societal problems. This can in turn lead to a ‘moral panic’ in society whereby there is great concern over certain behaviours. The argument is that the labelling of a certain group and public reactions can actually lead to a process of ‘deviance amplification’. This is essentially a cyclical process whereby:

• a group is labelled deviant
• public/media attention is brought to bear on that group
• this can result in stricter policing of the group (eg the imposition of ASBOs)
• because of greater policing of their activities they are more likely to be found to be deviant, and also they may be excluded from other non-deviant activities (social exclusion)
• the label is confirmed and the cycle continues

Freedom’s Orphans: Raising youth in a changing world by Julia Margo and Mike Dixon  is a research report from the IPPR due to be published next Monday (6 November, 2006).
It is this report that was discussed extensively in yesterday’s news, with its findings that young people in the UK are more likely than those elsewhere in Europe to commit anti-social behaviour, to try drugs and to have sex at a young age.  The report links this to a dislocation of relationships between adults and young people, saying that adolescents are essentially left alone to make the transition into adulthood, relying on their peer groups rather than being helped by strong relationships with adult role-models at home and in wider society.
This raises a host of interesting issues about youth culture, crime and deviance, the family and education in the contemporary UK:

1. Is the report (and/or the media response to it) an indication of an existing moral panic in the UK surrounding youth cultures? - ie when we look for problems we tend to find evidence of them.
2. It raises once again the question of what is anti-social behaviour? and the fact that the definition and therefore the proscription of such behaviour is relative and subject to shifting norms and values in society.
3. This report could be taken as supporting evidence for the New Right view which supports traditional family structures and close family relationships, arguing that these lead to greater social order.  The report seems to suggest that the continuance of traditional family forms and significant leisure time spent within the family, as found in countries such as Italy and Spain is associated with lower levels of anti-social behaviour by young people.  Although at the same time the implication seems to be that it is the amount of time shared by adults with young people that is important and that traditional family structures tend to facilitate this.
4. The report’s evidence may well be read with interest by those involved in education, particularly the home-education movement.  Numerous advocates of home education have argued that home educated children benefit from greater interactions with adults than their conventionally educated peers, and that home education removes children from an artificial environment at school in which their socialisation is restricted to their age-mates (Dowty, 2000).  Up until now, one of the key arguments against home education is that it could negatively affect a child’s socialisation by removing that child from its peers (see for example the case of Leuffen v. Germany discussed by Monk (2003)).  The suggestion of Margo and Dixon’s report would seem to be, however, that young people benefit from interaction with adults and that assuming that a child’s main socialisation will be carried out by their peer group has negative effects on their tendency to anti-social behaviour.  (All this of course rests on the assumption that home education does give children more interaction and close relationship with adults than they would receive in school)

BBC NEWS | UK | UK youths ‘among worst in Europe’

I’m sure there are many other possible analyses of this report and the discussions surrounding it - please let me know if you have other relevant points to add (or just add a comment to the post!).

New statistics on truancy were released today, and there has been much outcry in the press that despite government attempts to “crack down” on truancy there has actually been a rise in truancy from schools over the past year, and the greatest rise has been in truancy from primary schools.

See for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5365416.stm

This raises several questions in my mind:

1. How big is the problem? For primary schools the truancy rate is less than 0.5% of half days - ie for every 200 pupils in school about one will be truanting. For secondary schools the figure is about 1.2% - ie for every 1000 pupils about 12 will be truanting. This suggests that the problem is still significantly greater at secondary schools than primary despite today’s hype. A large number of these truancies are from a small number of children who persistently miss school, suggesting that the number of children to be seriously worried about is small (not that this means that they should not be considered)
2. Why does the government see this as a problem? What are the motives behind the concern? Is it because league tables and exam results are being harmed; is it because there is a fear that some children’s education is being impoverished (which is undoubtedly true); is it because this might harm the economy and the unemployment figures in the long run; is it because we have a set of in-built assumptions that say that children should be in school, without really questioning why; or is it a mixture of all of the above? While there may be no easy answer to this question it is one worth posing - why is truancy a problem?
3. Why do children truant? This is a question that is rarely raised - are the children the problem, or the schools that they truant from? Illich (1976), Freire (1996) and Tooley (2003) all argue from different perspectives that schools as we know them do little to educate children, instead teaching them to conform and not to question; instead they argue that true education is something much more individual, flexible and stimulating, with real purpose for the student. Even Woods (1984) and many others who have no problems with school as a notion, found that the relationships between teachers and students were all important in determining how children behaved in the classroom (and whether they turned up at all). Undoubtedly some parents have an influence on their children’s truancy, but there are probably also significant numbers of children who do not want to go to school because of negative experiences and relationships - soemthing which also needs consideration.
4. How much has truancy been affected by increased government focus on targets and results and resulting changes in teacher practice? I am not sure if there has been any research on this but it is a question worth asking in the light of criticisms of teachers “teaching to the test”.

The answers to these questions are not clear cut - certainly not as clear cut as either the media or the government often portray them to be, so I leave them with you for contemplation.

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

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.

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?