Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

Today’s issue of BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed was discussing slum-dwelling and poverty.  Interviewing Mike Davies and Patrick Wakely, Laurie Taylor examines the growth of slums and some of the issues around living conditions such as access to clean water.

There is also some discussion of the power struggles around slums that are tied up with issues such as water supplies where the authorities are reluctant to provide any services that might legitimate the existence of the slum-dwellers, and residents are often exploited through the illegitimate sale of land or the sale of water.  There is also a brief discussion of places where slum-dwellers have started to organise themselves in order to attain some rights.

BBC NEWS | Education | Schools alone ‘cannot help poor’

The report mentioned in this article by Hirsch (2007) is actually a summary of a series of reports on research in progress published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and more details can be found here: Young children see poverty holding them back at school and even more detail here: Experiences of poverty and educational disadvantage. In summary, the round up report suggests that in-school factors when taken together are far less influential in affecting children’s educational achievement than out-of school factors such as socio-economic background, parental education, parental attitudes and housing. There seems to be a strong suggestion that attitudes to education are very important, forming part of social class cultures which affect children’s and parents aspirations and expectations.

This report effectively updates Douglas’ (1964) research which found that out of school factors were more important than in-school factors and that parental attitudes towards education were the most important of all.

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.

A little while ago I visited the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame in Alice Springs, Australia. Possibly not very handy for your next college or school outing but a fascinating visit all the same! However there is a good website which has lots of information for those unable to visit the museum, including pictures and brief biographies of various pioneer women. The intention seems to be to expand the site over time and to include more educational resources. Go to www.pioneerwomen.com.au to have a look.
The museum has displays about women’s lives in Australia over the past 200 years, looking at the roles women played in the early white ’settlement’ of Australia and also in their pioneering roles in science and technology and other areas. The exhibitions also look at the ways in which individual women have pioneered the breakdown of male dominance in a wide range of fields.

Essentially the exhibitions cover women’s lives from the very ordinary to the extra-ordinary and give an insight into what life has been like in the past and tells some of the often forgotten stories about women’s roles in creating modern society.

My only criticism of the exhibitions is that they centre heavily on the contributions and lives of white European women. There does seem to be some attempt to redress this and the oral rather than written tradition of Aboriginal culture, as well as Australian society’s tendency to ignore and even suppress its Aboriginal heritage until recently, is no doubt partly to blame. However, in attempting to redress the power imbalance between men and women in Australia’s past the Hall of Fame seems to gloss over the role that white European women must have played in the oppression of less powerful groups such as Aborigines and in particular Aboriginal women.

Overall though this is a website (or a venue!) which is worth a visit for the ways in which it highlights women’s lives in what is a predominantly male history.

The Women’s Library have now announced details of their forthcoming exhibition Sinners, Scroungers, Saints: Lone Mothers past and present which will run from October 2007 to March 2008 and looks at lone motherhood both past and present in Britain.

Going on their previous exhibitions, which have always been thought-provoking, informative and absolutely packed with information, I expect that this one will be provide a real insight into single motherhood, its realities and the different attitudes towards it. In the past I have found that my A-level students have got a lot out of the Women’s Library’s exhibitions.

As usual Joanna Ingham, their Learning Coordinator, will be running debate workshops specifically for A-level students and tailored to the A-level specifications (single parenthood is of course a key issue that come up when looking at families as well as gender, welfare and poverty). The 2-hour workshops consist of a guided visit to the exhibition and a facilitated debate for AS and A2 level Sociology students, with a supporting resource pack for teachers (these are usually stuffed full of useful data and good ideas for further learning activities). For those of you on tight budgets, or for whom a trip can be financially difficult it is worth mentioning that the workshops themselves are FREE with a small charge for the resource pack.

Joanna has sent me a flyer and a booking form and has given permission for me to put these here for you to download

Lone Motherhood Flyer (PDF 200KB)

Booking Form (PDF 24KB)

For more information you can give her a call on 020 7320 3504 or e-mail her: joanna.ingham@thewomenslibrary.ac.uk

Personally I’d get booking if you’re in reach of London!

Research findings released on Monday are nicely summarised in this BBC News article

BBC NEWS | Education | Wealth gap in learning, by age 3

Although sociologists have known for some time that socio-economic group has a significant effect on educational achievement, this is some useful up to date evidence on this fact which here seems to be linked both to poverty and to parental education, as well as other factors such as family types.  The study is still ongoing, following a cohort of 15,000 children born between 2000 and 2002, so these findings are what has been found ’so far’.

If you want more detail you can follow the link below to the Institute of Education website where there are very readable ‘briefing sheets’ on the study’s findings.  The material on educational progress is under “cognitive development”.

http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/briefings.asp?section=0001000100060005 

The latest claim about changes in the occupational structure of the UK economy seems to be that the caring professions traditionally staffed by women are to gain in importance.  According to Ian Pearson there will continue to be a decline in traditionally ‘male’ manual jobs, but there will also be a decline in service economy jobs as they are increasingly computerised.

The argument of the article, which is based on Pearson’s theories, is that increasingly “soft skills” ie interpersonal, communication skills will become of key importance - something which the current education system in the UK is often criticised for not helping students to develop.  Pearson argues that by 2020 “most of us will be working in the care economy”.

Pearson’s assumption seems to be that the increased importance of such soft skills will advantage women in the work place, however, this assumption raises several questions.  Firstly, Pearson seems to take a socio-biological view of gender - similar to that of Parsons and Murdock, assuming that men and women have naturally different roles, meaning that women are better suited to caring roles.  From a viewpoint that argues that socialisation is the cause of gender differences (eg. Oakley, 1984) it could be argued that over time the socialisation of boys and girls may change to develop greater caring capacities (for example, think of the emergence of ‘metrosexual man’).

Pearson also picks out jobs such as nursing, hairdressing and care-work (eg in nursing homes and children’s nurseries) as examples of areas which are female dominated and require such skills. He argues that these are areas which will therefore grow in importance and status.  Currently such roles are typically low-status and are relatively poorly remunerated and Pearson actually states that he doubts that pay in such sectors will increase significantly.  This brings into doubt the claim that women are likely to be economically and socially better off in a new economic order.  In many ways Pearson seems to be confusing such roles with much more highly paid, high status roles in business which also require interpersonal skills.

BBC NEWS | Business | ‘The future is female’ BT predicts

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

This article highlights the ongoing, but often hidden issue of prostitution, sex slavery and human trafficking in the UK:

BBC NEWS | England | Sex slavery widespread in England

Women in the sex trade are often forced into it - either by socio-economic circumstances or by boyfriends or other males with power over them (eg traffickers). As well as the bare facts about women being forced into the sex industry against their wills, articles like this also raise wider issues about inequalities of power between men and women in wider society - although women are increasingly able to be independent of men both socially and economically, inequalities remain and these are seen at their most extreme in areas of the economy such as the sex trade.

Human trafficking associated with the sex trade can also be related to World Sociology and issues of power relations between the “developed” and “developing” world. Many of the foreign women involved in the sex trade in Britain are here because they were lured here with promises of ordinary jobs - waitressing, cleaning, kitchen work - where they would earn more than they could earn in their home countries and which would allow them to send money home to their families. International wealth inequalities can of course be linked to issues around international debt.
The issues and debates around the sex industry are explored in greater depth by an exhibition currently on show at The Women’s Library in London, they are also running workshops for groups of A-level Sociology students.

Another example of needing to put the headlines into perspective.  The following article popped up on my desktop this morning:

BBC NEWS | UK | Unemployed ‘must learn English’

The immediate image this headline brings to mind is that the majority of unemployed people do not speak English. So then you read the article and find that the number whose poor English prevents them from finding a job is 40,000 - a large number of people - and that ethnic minority workers tend to earn 1/3 less than other people.

Sounds terrible, so I spent a few minutes thinking about it:

• although no specific link has been made, the implication is that a lack of English is depressing the earnings of ethnic minorities
• ‘earn 1/3 less than other people’ - does this mean on average across the whole workforce, or than other people in the same jobs? Is this all ethnic minority groups, or just specific groups?  We aren’t given the details, so is this another case of social class effects being mixed up with the effects of ethnicity?

Then I looked at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) website - the latest figures available state that in September 2006 1.4 million people were claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, which means that the 40,000 people the article states have problems with English make up about 3% of those claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.  Given that the minority ethnic population of the UK runs at about 8% of the population, this would imply that lack of English is not as big a problem among ethnic minority groups as we might be led to believe from this article.
While it is important that people who struggle with English are helped to learn it if it will make them more employable, it does seem that this article is rather over-emphasising the scale and impact of the problem.