Theory and methods

Durkheim + Comte - Gather objective, value free data on a macro scale - representative - generalisable - create social facts - create social policy

E.g. - (Office for National Statistics - Uk National consensus - used by the government to determine how many schools are needed)

Social policy doesn’t eradicate social issues as social issues are caused by capitalism which benefits those creating the laws.

Policies introduced to reduce class inequalities act as ‘ideological cover’ for exploitation.

Government funded research is biased as government’s may be paying for the answers they want

E.g. - (New Labour Paradox - said they want to reduce class inequality whilst introducing and tripling university fees - Taxation - top rate of tax = 50% - used to be 90%)

Lib. - say policies have introduced gender equality (e.g. Vote for women, Divorce Act 1969, Equal Pay Act 1970)

Rad. + Marx. - problems caused by patriarchy or a combo of patriarchy and capitalism

Contemporary - focus on domestic violence, beauty myth, sex trafficking, and persistence of gender inequality in work and policy

(e.g. 70% of government cuts fall on women, government cuts to public transport 2018- women took over 1/3 more bus journeys than men)

Believe that social policy is not affected by sociology

Social research should be on a micro scale and aim to achieve verstehen - focus on labelling + SFPs

Becker - government is the source of labels

Governments do not use their research as it tends to be too critical and supportive of deviants and is usually unrepresentative

AO3; research of police labelling led to compulsory multiculturalism training

Believe that state involvement in people’s lives encourages laziness (e.g. benefits)

Murray - underclass is created through welfare dependency and consists of a deviant set of norms and values

E.g. - (Zero-Tolerance Policing - Broken Windows policies)

AO3: no evidence ZTP works

• Micro

• Bottom-up

• Free will (mostly)

• Subjective - cannot be used to create social facts

Sociological explanations require two levels:

• Level of cause - explanations of objective, structural factors that affect behaviour

• Level of meaning - understanding of subjective meanings attached to actions by individuals

Calvinism:

• belief system introduced by protestant work ethic - work took a new level of meaning believing it was a calling from god which led to people wanting to work more and harder that resulted in capitalism (structural factors are caused by individuals)

4 types of action:

• Instrumentally rational - actors calculate the most efficient means of achieving a given goal

• Value-rational - action towards a goal that the actor regards as desirable for their own sake

• Traditional - customary, routine, or habitual actions

• Affectual - actions that express emotions

Symbolic Interactionism:

• Mead - we respond to the world by giving meaning to the things that are significant to us and respond accordingly

• stimulus → interpretive phase (take the role of the other) → respond

• Bulmer - actions are based on the meanings we give. These meanings arise from the interaction process and the interpretive procedures we use.

Labelling theory:

• Thomas - if people define a situation as real then it will have real consequences

• Looking glass self - our self-concept is based on our interactions with others. We see ourselves as others see us → this is how a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs

• Becker + Lemert - compare the idea of labelling to career progression, each stage of labelling having its own problems

Dramaturgical model:

• we construct our self image by managing people’s impressions of us

• we are ‘actors’ who act out ‘scripts’ using techniques such as language, tone , gestures, and props (dress/makeup)

• we study our audience and adjust/monitor our behaviour to ensure believability

• ‘front of stage’ - where we act out our roles and ‘backstage’ where we don’t have to act

Structuration theory:

• Relationship structuration - neither structure nor action can exist without the other - our actions allow structures to exist and reproduce them over time but these actions would not be possible without the structures in the first place

• e.g. capitalism cannot exist without calvinism but people could not work hard without capitalism

• Industrialisation - growth of cities where the main jobs are manual labour/factories

• Social class - main form of social division and shift from ascribed status to achieved status

• Enlightenment - Age of reason - shift from religious beliefs to scientific reason, beginning of secularisation

• Politics - parties focus policy around social/structural interests

• Nation states - countries are independent nations and identities are nationalistic

• Shared culture - based on class and nationality

Society is a fragmented, media-saturated, global village lacking ‘universal truths’

• Post-industrialisation - manual work is replaced by unstable service, no longer any ‘jobs for life’

• Death of social class - Heaton - we now live ‘fragmentary lives’. Social class no longer a major factor affecting life opportunities other factors are more important

• Decline of metanarratives -