http://www.ruthssociology.com For budding sociologists Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:52:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The following are two articles on the same book published in two different newspapers: How adopting an angelic five year old blew our family apart Adopted Children: Sometimes you can't mend them Reading the two articles side-by-side gives two very different pictures of the situation experienced by this family, originally the headline for ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2008/04/24/read-with-care/ I am currently working on the methodology section of my PhD - it needs to be about 10,000 words long and while I have plenty to write it is always a struggle to keep a large chunk of text coherent.  This applies as much to an essay or piece of ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2008/04/16/editing-long-pieces-of-writing/ A fabulous article in the Guardian - "Bringing in Baby" takes a light but serious look at the practicalities of bringing a young baby into your workplace - apparently a promoted alternative to expensive childcare in the US where maternity leave is only 12 weeks. After making some general points, three ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2008/04/08/bring-your-baby-to-work/ I am re-reading C. Wright-Mills' book "The Sociological Imagination" although it was first published in 1959 and is therefore not exactly new, it is still a key foundational text in Sociology. Perhaps the key point that C. Wright-Mills (does anyone know his first name?!) makes is that the essence of ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2008/04/03/the-sociological-imagination/ A little while ago I visited the current exhibition at The Women's Library in London looking at Lone Motherhood. It is a brilliant exhibition with lots of information and the education workshops being run alongside it are also stimulating. While I was there I managed to interview Joanna ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2008/02/12/joanna-ingham-interview/ Private Schools' gain over State? - This is one of Mike Baker's BBC articles summing up an issue.  It addresses in a fairly succinct way some of the arguments about the impact of independent schools upon the state sector.  In particular it is picking up on the question of whether ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2008/01/22/private-v-state-education/ Many apologies for the lack of posts over the last few weeks - I am deep in the middle of data collection for my PhD research and it is definitely keeping me busy.  Although all the methods textbooks tell you that qualitative research using informal interviews is time-consuming because of ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2007/11/22/research-and-apologies/ I thought we'd got beyond heavily gendered assumptions but I've just discovered that Sixt Car Rental (a fairly large, mainstream care hire company) offer a "Sixt Ladies Card" which allows ladies to "Profit from your partner's corporate rate." There doesn't seem to be an equivalent 'Gentlemen's Card' which speaks volumes about who ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2007/10/19/gendered-assumptions/ This article looks at changing patterns in parental custody of children and the social attitudes associated with it. Hidden heartache of the weekend mothers - Times Online More fathers are now gaining custody of their children after divorce, however this article suggests that social attitudes and assumptions are not changing at the ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2007/10/10/divorce-custody-and-gender/ I spent last week staying in a Youth Hostel in Ghent attending the European Conference for Educational Research and it has been interesting noticing little cultural differences. For example, the 2 Uzbek girls in my dorm use honey-flavoured toothpaste - my initial reaction was Ooooooh YUK! - after all we all ... http://www.ruthssociology.com/2007/10/03/cultural-differences/