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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 19, 2022CategoriesSocial class, wealth and income inequalitiesTagspoverty, UK Leave a commenton Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

Resources for Wealth, Poverty, Income Inequality and Social Class

good resources for teaching wealth, poverty, income inequality and social class. Useful further reading for students studying A-level sociology!

Here you will find links to some contemporary sources for further reading organised into the following categories

Annually published statistics and reports
News articles from the last five years (often based on the above)
Videos and Documentary resources
Committed organisations dedicated to studying this specific topic.

I will endeavour to update this list at least every three years, but with so much material already on ReviseSociology.com this might be a challenge!

These resources are intended for students studying an introduction to A-level Sociology – for the main blog posts introducing the topic of social class and inequalities please see the relevant links on the introduction to sociology page.

Annual research studies on income and wealth inequalities in the UK

ONS – Household wealth in the UK (published biannually in January)

ONS – Household Income Inequality (published March every year).

Allianz World Wealth Report (Published October every year).

Social Class and Inequality In the News in 2022

The Heat or Eat Diaries from The Guardian – a varied series written from a mixture of people living in poverty, academics and journalists.

Working class people feel like they ‘don’t’ fit in’ to middle class working cultures – An excellent article from The Conversation based on research into how middle class cultural capital makes working class people feel like they don’t belong in middle class jobs – because of cultural differences rather than their ability.

Covid-19 increased social inequality in the UK – A Revise Blog Post outlining some of the ways in which the Pandemic made society more unequal.https://revisesociology.com/2022/06/14/sociological-perspectives-on-the-cost-of-living-crisis-in-the-uk/embed/#?secret=yyDtOGendP#?secret=2uNzHy7a4c

In the news in 2021 and before

31% of children in the UK are living in relative poverty
Elite Tory shames Alex Scott for her working class accent
How much poorer would the rich need to be to provide a basic income for everyone?

Videos and Documentaries on Social Class and Inequality…

Made in Britain

The Made in Britain Series from The Guardian gives video cameras to those who are themselves living with the cost of living crises and supports them to make videos of their own lives. I’m not sure what research method you could call this – video diaries I guess, with technological assistance from professional film editors?!?

Panorama – Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis (2022)

Why are so many people living in Poverty? News Night (2021)

Selected Contemporary Research Studies

How many people are in poverty in the UK? – A nuanced attempt to try and estimate the number of people in relative poverty

How does student debt affect life-chances? – Links to education and social class inequalities – and yes, as you may have thought, being in debt because of having to pay fees does have a detrimental affect on your future life-chances.

Poverty is the main cause of violent crime in London – Another way in which poverty has a negative influence on life changes, links to the crime topic.

Organisations

Mainly focussing on UK poverty, for more on Global Poverty see Globalisation and Global Development!

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) – A committed organisation working to solve UK poverty through research and advocacy

Nuffield Foundation – works to improve equality of educational opportunity

The Equality Trust – focussing on research on the harmful effects of social inequality on societies and individuals

The Social Mobility Commission – a government funded (but ‘independent’) organisation which monitors social progress (or lack of it) towards (or away from) social mobility.

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 12, 2022CategoriesSocial class, wealth and income inequalitiesTagsincome, inequality, social class, Sociology, teaching, wealth Leave a commenton Resources for Wealth, Poverty, Income Inequality and Social Class

Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

Shock Horror – groups of older children have been ‘descending’ on cinemas recently to ‘disruptively watch’ the latest Despicable Me Movie – Minions: The Rise of Gru.

These children have been meeting up at cinemas in groups as large as 50, dressed in suits and calling themselves ‘Gentleminions’ and filming themselves getting up to various antics such as walking in slow motion through cinema lobbies with hands held in a particular ‘pointy finger’ despicable me pose and being rowdy during viewings of the movie – doing things such as cheering when Gru appears on screen…

Some of these children filmed these antics and uploaded them to TikTok where some videos received hundreds of thousands of views, some into the millions.

Cinema staff and management weren’t so amused by the actions of the ‘gentleminions’ with some cinemas banning groups of older children in suits from buying tickets for the movie, and with some parents of younger children saying they were scared by these antics.

These acts of minor deviance by young people should be of interest to anybody studying the Crime and Deviance aspect of sociology – as such disruptive and rowdy behaviour is clearly deviant in the context of a cinema where the social norms are that viewers keep themselves to themselves in the lobby are and are quiet during screenings.

But there’s a lot more Sociology we can apply to this contemporary event!

Sociology Applied to the #GentleMinions

First off – I call them older children because I can’t quite bring myself to call them young men, which in terms of their biological age at least some of them are. (At least I think most of them are 16-20 judging by their physical appearance, it’s hard to tell – the older I get the younger the young seem to be!).

So the first sociological concept this event reminds me of is the ‘social construction of childhood‘ – it reminds me that childhood is something flexible, and in this case we have young adults actively choosing to regress into a state of childhood for an evening.

Think about it – these people would have grown up with the ‘Despicable Me’ Franchise, being actual biological children when most of the movies were screened – and now, once the five year wait is over for the next instalment they want to regress back into that time that was probably more comforting for most of them!

So this is an illustration of the blurring of the boundaries between adulthood and childhood and in this case of adults choosing to act like children for a short while.

A Thoroughly Postmodern Event!

Obviously (hopefully) Despicable Me and the Minions are not real, they are a media construction, a cartoon.

This event couldn’t have happened without the media – and probably wouldn’t have happened without TikTok.

These kind of stunts are much more appealing to get involved in if your going to feature in a video that gets hundreds of thousands of views, after all!

An attempt at Belonging…?

Becoming a #GentleMinion, engaging in minor disruptive stunts in the cinema, filming them and uploading to TikTok is a pretty accessible way of feeling like you’re part of of something larger.

Think about it – the Minions ‘belong’ – they are like a very large community that work together, for the most part, for shared purpose, something that it is somewhat lacking in our real world postmodern society that is increasingly divisive and fractured.

But just by wearing a suit and pranking in the cinema for an evening and being part of a TikTok upload you get to be part of a global ‘movement’ that for a fleeting moment share their love of this movie.

It may be a fleeting and desperate attempt at belonging, but I kind of get it – and it’s harmless enough.

A minor moral panic….?

They’re hardly the mods and rockers but these cinema antics were/ are deviant and they did upset people and this did cause a response from the cinema-authorities, who banned some youths in suits from watching the Despicable Me movie…

So we have present three aspects of Stan Cohen’s classic moral panic theory….

However, in terms of degree of deviance these events are clearly not that harmful, and more interestingly it’s the youths themselves sharing their antics on TikTok – not the mainstream media exaggerating how deviant or disruptive they were.

#GentleMinions – Final Thoughts…

Personally I see this as relatively harmless youthful antics, not great for young kinds watching the movie with their parents, but in the grand scheme of things this is on the low end of social harm!

And this is hardly a challenge to the social order – if anything it reinforces it – it’s young people saying how much they like to consume mainstream media – I mean if any of these people were a threat to existing power structures they’d be out campaigning with a real social movement and probably wouldn’t spend so much time identifying with a cartoon!

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 5, 2022CategoriesCrime and DevianceTagsMedia, moral panic, Sociology Leave a commenton Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

How has increased choice in personal life affected family structures in the UK today?

This question recently came up on the June 2022 A-level sociology exam paper two, the families and household topic.

It was one of the 10 mark questions which linked to an item, as follows:

‘People have more choice today than in the past over who they can be in a personal relationship with. They also have more choice when a relationship ends.

This increased choice in personal life has affected family structures in the UK today’.

Then the question: Applying material from Item C, analyse two effects the increased choice in personal life has had on family structures in the UK today.

How to answer this question

It should be quite easy to spot the two hooks in the item:

choice over WHO one can be in a relationship with.
choice over when the relationship ends.

So these are going to form the basis of your two points and the fact that the question refers to ‘family structures’ in the plural gives you plenty of options to develop each point.

Although be careful not to repeat yourself too much!

AND REMEMBER – THERE ARE NO MARKS FOR EVALUATION IN THESE 10 MARK WITH THE ITEM QUESTIONS!

This means that children who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s would, on average, not have had the experience of being around many people over the age 60, whereas today, on average, children will experience the company of people aged 60-85 as ‘the norm’.

I am talking here of course just about ‘averages’ – experiences will vary from family to family.

For those parents who have children at a younger age, say in their 20s, their children stand much more chance of experiencing a four generation family, something which would have been almost unheard of in the 1920s.

However, three generation families would still have been common 100 years ago because people typically had babies much earlier, meaning children would still have experienced grandparents, but those grandparents would have been younger, in their 50s rather than in their 70s which would be the case in the typical three generation family today.

I think with the increase in family diversity, the increase in life expectancy would mean different experiences with grandparents for children depending on the type of family… for those parents who have children young then children are far more likely to experience grandparents in good health for their entire childhood and maybe only have to deal with their death as older teenagers, whereas experiencing the death of a grandparent during childhood would have been much more common 100 years ago.

HOWEVER, for those parents who have children later, in their 40s, probably dealing with the death of a grandparent would be more likely.

A possible negative affect of the ageing population on the experience of childhood is that parents who have to care for their ageing parents may not have as much time for their children, especially if end of life care is dragged out for several months or years as can be the case with degenerative diseases which are more common in old age.

The experience of childhood may also have been indirectly affected by wider social changes brought about by the ageing population – as society has refocussed its resources towards caring for the old (some might even say pandering to the old) there are relatively fewer resources left for children, so funding in education suffers as does Higher Education with students now having to pay for it themselves.

So as children get older they may start to feel like society is set up for the old and they get very little back in return – other than facing a life of working for 50 years as young adults in order to pay for the ever increasing ratio of old to young (the ‘dependency ratio’).

We kind of saw this with the Covid-19 pandemic – society was focused on protecting the very old while schools just closed – the children suffered for the sake of the old – the experience of childhood here was one of blocked opportunities and increased fear and uncertainty caused, effectively by the government’s choice to put the over 70s first – had the Pandemic happened in the 1920s when there were hardly any over 60s alive anyway society wouldn’t have had to shut down to protect them, because the risk of dying from covid for the under 60s was significantly lower.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This question cam up in the June 2022 families and households paper two exam.

This is a response I free wrote in around 15 minutes to give students some ideas about how they might have answered it. NB it’s not formatted like an answer to a 10 mark question should be, but there is enough information in here to top band I would have thought – there are certainly TWO ways fleshed out!

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 21, 2022CategoriesFamilies and HouseholdsTagsA-level, Childhood, families, life expectancy, Sociology 1 Commenton How has Increased Life Expectancy Affected the Experience of Childhood…?

Sociological Perspectives on the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK

Inflation in the UK hit 9% in April 2022, mainly due to the rising cost of energy prices and food prices, the main cause of which was supply-line shocks caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, but also because of the longer term disruption to business caused by two years of the Covid-19 pandemic….

At least that’s the ‘official analysis’ of the causes of the cost of living crisis by the government in this recent report: ‘Rising Cost of Living in the UK‘ but while it’s hard to deny the fact that prices of basic goods and services are rising, some sociological perspectives may well go a little deeper than this in their analysis of the causes of this crisis, while others fail to explain its existence altogether…

Globalisation… and the declining relevance of Nation States…

EVEN if we look deeper at the cost of living crisis than official lines of analysis, it is still the case that global events are affecting Britain here.

Britain has very little control over the global forces that are influencing rising prices.

Moreover the British Government seems incapable of doing anything to help people. This of course is because we have a neoliberal government in power who believe in helping people as little as possible, especially the poor but even if we had a more left wing government in power it wouldn’t be able to do very much to soften the blows of the increasing cost of living other than taking on more debt by bailing people out.

This seems to be a case of Nation States being too small to deal with global problems as Anthony Giddens has pointed out in the past.

Marxism applied to the rising cost of living….

As with many ‘applications’ of ‘Marxism’ I’m applying some Marxist concepts here in a broad sense!

Most obviously Marxists would remind us that this cost of living crisis is affecting the poorest MORE than the richest – the top 10% will feel the effects of the crisis much less than the bottom 10%.

And for the bottom 10% of households by income a 10% immediate increase in the cost of living (NB it’s not just energy and food, rents have also gone up) really is a matter of choosing between ‘eating or heating’.

And Marxists would go deeper than this – reminding us that a crisis such as this was only a matter of time because Capitalism is ultimately doomed to failure. Even without the Pandemic and the War in Ukraine this rising cost of living affecting the poor more than the rich would have happened eventually, or Capitalism would have had some other ind of crisis which resulted in recession and more inequality.

In a world of finite resources and increasing population, with more developing countries developing large middle classes (such as India) this simply pushes the prices of everything up – labour, goods, resources, everything is more expensive – eventually the exploitation of the poor that cheap consumer items and food and energy are based on must come to an end.

At some point we have to start thinking about how we live in a post-capitalist world according to Marxists.

‘Micro Perspectives’ applied to the Cost of Living Crisis

This is an interesting article from the Conversation which argues that the government needs to measure poverty depth more accurately in order to effectively tackle the cost of living crisis.

It points out that not all people living in poverty face the same challenges – for example life tends to be harder for people with children rather than single people.

It also points out that government help needs to be more targeted on those that need it most – so far only 1 in 3 pounds of relief money has gone to the poorest 50% of households.

Perspectives which might struggle here..

Functionalism would struggle here, this is just dysfunctional! And clearly people aren’t all in this together!

And PostModernism – there’s nothing hyperreal about this, it’s very REAL, about energy and food prices costing enough and people going cold and hungry.

Although maybe IF people are living in hypereality this could help get them through – maybe the government jus needs to subsidise people’s Netflix subscriptions…?

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

This topic is most likely to be useful in the Theory part of the theory and methods exam – it is a contemporary event that can be used to illustrate understanding of sociological concepts and perspectives.

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 14, 2022CategoriesSocial class, wealth and income inequalitiesTagscrisis, perspectives, poverty Leave a commenton Sociological Perspectives on the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK

Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

A recent report produced by the Home Office (by an unnamed historian) has found that the Windrush Scandal was caused by decades of racist immigration policies.

In case you don’t remember it, the Windrush Scandal first came to public attention in 2018 when it came to light that 83 ethnic minority immigrants to the UK had been wrongly deported, with some of them having been living in the UK (legally) for several decades.

A larger, and still unknown number of victims were subjected to Home Office interrogation over their legal immigration status in the UK and had their lives seriously disrupted as a result, some of them losing their jobs.

Previous analysis of the causes of the scandal have pointed to the ‘hostile environment’ towards immigrants which existed under the Home Office when Theresa May was in charge, but the report goes further and suggests a ‘deeper cause’ of decades of institutionalised Racism at the Home Office.

This article in the Guardian outlines the history of some of the racist immigration policies, some of which included quotas for Black and Asian people but not white people (so overt restrictions on the numbers of immigrants from the Caribbean but NOT from the USA or Europe, for example)….

Relevance to A-level Sociology

This update is a useful addition to the migration topic within the family. It shows how government policies influence the type of people that are allowed to move freely between different countries.

It might also help to explain (if you believe the stats) the higher levels of poverty, educational failure, expulsion and crime among Black Caribbean children – the analysis above points out that the experience of black migrants to the UK (and their children) has been very different (for the worse) than that of white people, resulting possibly in blocked opportunities.

This is also of more general application to any question about inequalities in British Society.

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 7, 2022CategoriesRace and EthnicityTagsgovernment, immigration, racism Leave a commenton Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

The Queen’s 70th Jubilee – It feels like the last gasp for Modernity….

I can’t think of any individuals who represent Britishness, continuity and stability better than THE QUEEEN – she’s just always been there throughout my entire life, and through all my Dad’s adult life too.

And, unlike younger members of the royal family, The Queen it seems has never put a foot wrong – she’s just done her queen thing for 70 years – attended thousands of national events, given her speech at Christmas, opened Parliament nearly every year (until recently) – she is very possibly THE ONLY continuous symbol that’s just ‘carried on’ for that length of time.

When she was coronated in 1953 (that date’s from memory I think it’s right), Functionalism was in its heyday, at least American Functionalism exemplified by the work of Talcott Parsons – and and events such as the Jubilee and the way the majority of people come together around The Queen seem to be good examples of a shared collective conscience.

And even the way the Royal Estate seems to be managing the succession – giving Charles more of a central role and making him more visible (he opened Parliament this year) seems very ordered, very MODERN – orderly change within a centralised authority – there really is something very modern about the whole institution of royalty.

And it seems to me that there’s a general feeling that the 70th Jubilee is something good – there’s almost a sense of relief that there’s something positive to celebrate post-covid and amidst the Cost of Living Crisis – I doubt there will be many overt protests this year.

However I also get the feeling there’s a kind of ‘disbelief in relief’ at having The Jubilee to celebrate – it’s obvious the Royal family has faded in ‘glory’, it’s obvious that this will probably be The Queen’s last significant jubilee, there’s almost a tinge of sadness about the whole affair.

It’s as if we’re witnessing a celebration of a bye gone era – it’s like a flashback to Modernity when things were more certain – kind of similar to when you go to an 80s party – you dress up and make believe for an evening – and so here does the Nation for the Jubilee Weekend.

Because in truth the Royal Family is more post-modern than ever – with Meghan and Harry having ‘divorced themselves’ from the institution, and with their very own paedophile-prince (Andrew) showing that they don’t all have the same norms and values.

And once The Queen is gone we are left with Charles and Camilla – it’s just not the same rally-round is it? Much more chalk and cheese!

And when the Jubilee weekend is over, it’s back to postmodern/ late modern reality for us all – the grind, the uncertainty, the increasing cost of living, the fear of the next Pandemic.

This Jubilee celebration is just a pit stop to the past, pleasant to play modernity dress up for a weekend, but that’s all it is.

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 3, 2022CategoriesSocial Theory (A2), Sociological conceptsTagsjubiliee, modernity, postmodernity, royalty Leave a commenton The Queen’s 70th Jubilee – It feels like the last gasp for Modernity….

Marxism Applied to Topics in A-level Sociology

The easiest way for students to prepare for the Theory and Methods parts of the A-Level Sociology Paper 1 and Paper 3 exams is to revise how Marxism applies to the different topic areas usually taught as part of the specification – typically the Family, Education, Religion and Crime and Deviance.

For an overview of these two papers please see my ‘exams advice page’.

This post is a summary of how Marxism applies to these topic areas.

Research Methods Implications

Scientific Marxism – The purpose of research is to find out more about the laws of Capitalism to see when revolution is ripe
Requires a Cross National Macro-Approach to social research focusing on economics and how the economy affects society
Humanistic Marxism – Research can be more varied, focusing on highlighting social injustices in order to make people more critical of Capitalism (Not value free!)

Marxism applied to the family

Capitalism, Private Property and The Family
The family as a safe haven

Marxism and Education

The ideological state apparatus
Reproduction/ Legitimation of class inequality
Correspondence Principle
Cultural Capital

Dependency Theory

Colonialism and Slavery
The Modern World System
Unfair trade rules
TNC exploitation

Marxism applied to Crime and Deviance

Private Property and Crime
The costs of Corporate Crime
Selective Law Enforcement
Criminogenic Capitalism (‘Dog Eat Dog“ Society)

For more see The Marxist Perspective on Crime and Deviance.

Marxism – more advanced theory

Using what Marxists say about the above topic areas is just one way to approach a theory question on Marxism, another way is to use the work of specific Marxists such as Althusser and Gramsci, and of course Marx himself. These ideas are outlined in this revision post: Marxism A-level Sociology Revision Notes.

For more links to Marxist theory please see my Theory and Methods page for A2 Sociology.

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onMay 31, 2022CategoriesSocial Theory (A2), Sociological conceptsTagsA-level, crime, education, exams, family, marxism, Sociology 1 Commenton Marxism Applied to Topics in A-level Sociology

Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?

Small confession…. I’ve had way too many Netflix binge sessions over the last year, and one thing I’ve noticed is that most of the Netflix shows have a wider range of representations of gender than I’m used to seeing on the BBC.

In fact practically every series features pretty major characters who are gay, bisexual or (more recently) transgender and as a general rule these sexuality-identities are incidental to the plots – that is to say that for the most part characters are just gay (for example) and that’s that, rather than their ‘gayness’ being part of the plot itself.

In other words Netflix seems to be doing a great of job of normalising gender diversity.

I imagine most students are familiar with Netflix and this should offer some accessible evidence to update the topic of the representation of gender in the media.

A few examples…

The Hundred

FINALLY, A T.V. series which features a bisexual woman as the MAIN CHARACTER – she starts off with a boyfriend, he dies, and then she seems to develop a preference for always women as the series progresses – but no big deal, that’s just how it is!

The 3%

Most characters are heterosexual but the ‘Utopia’ in the series is founded by a ‘founding trio’ who are in a three-way relationship, and later on in the series it turns out one of the main characters is a Lesbian, but actually very reticent about sex (not that interested in emotional closeness for various reasons) and there is also one transgender character, B list rather than A-list though.

Ozark

One of the best pieces of T.V. I have ever seen – featuring a bad gay FBI agent and a closet gay Hillbilly – they are not the most savoury of characters, but then again neither are most of the characters in this series which also features possibly the most dysfunctional yet functioning ‘cereal packet nuclear family’ ever.

Star Trek Discovery

The only show I’ve ever seen which features a non-binary character – the show does make a bit of a thing out of this as at one point they explain their sexuality to someone else (not identifying with any gender in particular.

Incidentally the main character ‘ is a woman, but with a traditionally male name – Michael – NEVER questioned which I kind of like. Almost like a subtle challenge to one of the most obvious gender markers.

There are MORE examples…

I kept this to just FOUR examples, but there are many many more – drop your suggestions in the comments.

Or it might be more useful/ difficult to drop new shows which DON’T have a gender diversity theme going on – it seems to be the new norm on Netflix..

For more posts on related topics please see my page on Media Studies

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onMay 31, 2022CategoriesMediaTagsGender, Media, representations Leave a commenton Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?SearchSEARCH

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A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

A very useful contemporary resource which does just this is a recent documentary from Panorama which aired in April 2022 and is called simply ‘Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis‘.

The documentary does a good job of showing how much stress being in poverty causes is also clearly a good deal of anxiety around future price rises and how they are going to cope.

Find our More/ Related Posts

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 19, 2022CategoriesSocial class, wealth and income inequalitiesTagspoverty, UK Leave a commenton Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

Resources for Wealth, Poverty, Income Inequality and Social Class

good resources for teaching wealth, poverty, income inequality and social class. Useful further reading for students studying A-level sociology!

Here you will find links to some contemporary sources for further reading organised into the following categories

Annually published statistics and reports
News articles from the last five years (often based on the above)
Videos and Documentary resources
Committed organisations dedicated to studying this specific topic.

I will endeavour to update this list at least every three years, but with so much material already on ReviseSociology.com this might be a challenge!

Annual research studies on income and wealth inequalities in the UK

ONS – Household wealth in the UK (published biannually in January)

ONS – Household Income Inequality (published March every year).

Allianz World Wealth Report (Published October every year).

Social Class and Inequality In the News in 2022

The Heat or Eat Diaries from The Guardian – a varied series written from a mixture of people living in poverty, academics and journalists.

In the news in 2021 and before

31% of children in the UK are living in relative poverty
Elite Tory shames Alex Scott for her working class accent
How much poorer would the rich need to be to provide a basic income for everyone?

Videos and Documentaries on Social Class and Inequality…

Made in Britain

Panorama – Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis (2022)

Why are so many people living in Poverty? News Night (2021)

Selected Contemporary Research Studies

How many people are in poverty in the UK? – A nuanced attempt to try and estimate the number of people in relative poverty

Poverty is the main cause of violent crime in London – Another way in which poverty has a negative influence on life changes, links to the crime topic.

Organisations

Mainly focussing on UK poverty, for more on Global Poverty see Globalisation and Global Development!

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) – A committed organisation working to solve UK poverty through research and advocacy

Nuffield Foundation – works to improve equality of educational opportunity

The Equality Trust – focussing on research on the harmful effects of social inequality on societies and individuals

The Social Mobility Commission – a government funded (but ‘independent’) organisation which monitors social progress (or lack of it) towards (or away from) social mobility.

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

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Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

Shock Horror – groups of older children have been ‘descending’ on cinemas recently to ‘disruptively watch’ the latest Despicable Me Movie – Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Some of these children filmed these antics and uploaded them to TikTok where some videos received hundreds of thousands of views, some into the millions.

But there’s a lot more Sociology we can apply to this contemporary event!

Sociology Applied to the #GentleMinions

So this is an illustration of the blurring of the boundaries between adulthood and childhood and in this case of adults choosing to act like children for a short while.

A Thoroughly Postmodern Event!

Obviously (hopefully) Despicable Me and the Minions are not real, they are a media construction, a cartoon.

This event couldn’t have happened without the media – and probably wouldn’t have happened without TikTok.

These kind of stunts are much more appealing to get involved in if your going to feature in a video that gets hundreds of thousands of views, after all!

An attempt at Belonging…?

Becoming a #GentleMinion, engaging in minor disruptive stunts in the cinema, filming them and uploading to TikTok is a pretty accessible way of feeling like you’re part of of something larger.

It may be a fleeting and desperate attempt at belonging, but I kind of get it – and it’s harmless enough.

A minor moral panic….?

So we have present three aspects of Stan Cohen’s classic moral panic theory….

#GentleMinions – Final Thoughts…

Personally I see this as relatively harmless youthful antics, not great for young kinds watching the movie with their parents, but in the grand scheme of things this is on the low end of social harm!

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Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 5, 2022CategoriesCrime and DevianceTagsMedia, moral panic, Sociology Leave a commenton Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

How has increased choice in personal life affected family structures in the UK today?

This question recently came up on the June 2022 A-level sociology exam paper two, the families and household topic.

It was one of the 10 mark questions which linked to an item, as follows:

‘People have more choice today than in the past over who they can be in a personal relationship with. They also have more choice when a relationship ends.

This increased choice in personal life has affected family structures in the UK today’.

Then the question: Applying material from Item C, analyse two effects the increased choice in personal life has had on family structures in the UK today.

How to answer this question

It should be quite easy to spot the two hooks in the item:

choice over WHO one can be in a relationship with.
choice over when the relationship ends.

So these are going to form the basis of your two points and the fact that the question refers to ‘family structures’ in the plural gives you plenty of options to develop each point.

Although be careful not to repeat yourself too much!

AND REMEMBER – THERE ARE NO MARKS FOR EVALUATION IN THESE 10 MARK WITH THE ITEM QUESTIONS!

I am talking here of course just about ‘averages’ – experiences will vary from family to family.

HOWEVER, for those parents who have children later, in their 40s, probably dealing with the death of a grandparent would be more likely.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This question cam up in the June 2022 families and households paper two exam.

Like this:

Sociological Perspectives on the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK

Globalisation… and the declining relevance of Nation States…

EVEN if we look deeper at the cost of living crisis than official lines of analysis, it is still the case that global events are affecting Britain here.

Britain has very little control over the global forces that are influencing rising prices.

This seems to be a case of Nation States being too small to deal with global problems as Anthony Giddens has pointed out in the past.

Marxism applied to the rising cost of living….

As with many ‘applications’ of ‘Marxism’ I’m applying some Marxist concepts here in a broad sense!

At some point we have to start thinking about how we live in a post-capitalist world according to Marxists.

‘Micro Perspectives’ applied to the Cost of Living Crisis

This is an interesting article from the Conversation which argues that the government needs to measure poverty depth more accurately in order to effectively tackle the cost of living crisis.

It points out that not all people living in poverty face the same challenges – for example life tends to be harder for people with children rather than single people.

It also points out that government help needs to be more targeted on those that need it most – so far only 1 in 3 pounds of relief money has gone to the poorest 50% of households.

Perspectives which might struggle here..

Functionalism would struggle here, this is just dysfunctional! And clearly people aren’t all in this together!

And PostModernism – there’s nothing hyperreal about this, it’s very REAL, about energy and food prices costing enough and people going cold and hungry.

Although maybe IF people are living in hypereality this could help get them through – maybe the government jus needs to subsidise people’s Netflix subscriptions…?

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

Like this:

Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

A recent report produced by the Home Office (by an unnamed historian) has found that the Windrush Scandal was caused by decades of racist immigration policies.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

This update is a useful addition to the migration topic within the family. It shows how government policies influence the type of people that are allowed to move freely between different countries.

This is also of more general application to any question about inequalities in British Society.

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 7, 2022CategoriesRace and EthnicityTagsgovernment, immigration, racism Leave a commenton Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

The Queen’s 70th Jubilee – It feels like the last gasp for Modernity….

And once The Queen is gone we are left with Charles and Camilla – it’s just not the same rally-round is it? Much more chalk and cheese!

And when the Jubilee weekend is over, it’s back to postmodern/ late modern reality for us all – the grind, the uncertainty, the increasing cost of living, the fear of the next Pandemic.

This Jubilee celebration is just a pit stop to the past, pleasant to play modernity dress up for a weekend, but that’s all it is.

Like this:

Marxism Applied to Topics in A-level Sociology

For an overview of these two papers please see my ‘exams advice page’.

This post is a summary of how Marxism applies to these topic areas.

Research Methods Implications

Scientific Marxism – The purpose of research is to find out more about the laws of Capitalism to see when revolution is ripe
Requires a Cross National Macro-Approach to social research focusing on economics and how the economy affects society
Humanistic Marxism – Research can be more varied, focusing on highlighting social injustices in order to make people more critical of Capitalism (Not value free!)

Marxism applied to the family

Capitalism, Private Property and The Family
The family as a safe haven

Marxism and Education

The ideological state apparatus
Reproduction/ Legitimation of class inequality
Correspondence Principle
Cultural Capital

Dependency Theory

Colonialism and Slavery
The Modern World System
Unfair trade rules
TNC exploitation

Marxism applied to Crime and Deviance

Private Property and Crime
The costs of Corporate Crime
Selective Law Enforcement
Criminogenic Capitalism (‘Dog Eat Dog“ Society)

For more see The Marxist Perspective on Crime and Deviance.

Marxism – more advanced theory

For more links to Marxist theory please see my Theory and Methods page for A2 Sociology.

Like this:

Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?

In other words Netflix seems to be doing a great of job of normalising gender diversity.

I imagine most students are familiar with Netflix and this should offer some accessible evidence to update the topic of the representation of gender in the media.

A few examples…

The Hundred

The 3%

Ozark

Star Trek Discovery

There are MORE examples…

I kept this to just FOUR examples, but there are many many more – drop your suggestions in the comments.

Or it might be more useful/ difficult to drop new shows which DON’T have a gender diversity theme going on – it seems to be the new norm on Netflix..

For more posts on related topics please see my page on Media Studies

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onMay 31, 2022CategoriesMediaTagsGender, Media, representations Leave a commenton Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?SearchSEARCH

REVISION MIND MAPS AND REVISION NOTES FOR SALE

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Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

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BLOG STATS

34,128,950 hits

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

A very useful contemporary resource which does just this is a recent documentary from Panorama which aired in April 2022 and is called simply ‘Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis‘.

The documentary does a good job of showing how much stress being in poverty causes is also clearly a good deal of anxiety around future price rises and how they are going to cope.

Find our More/ Related Posts

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 19, 2022CategoriesSocial class, wealth and income inequalitiesTagspoverty, UK Leave a commenton Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

Resources for Wealth, Poverty, Income Inequality and Social Class

good resources for teaching wealth, poverty, income inequality and social class. Useful further reading for students studying A-level sociology!

Here you will find links to some contemporary sources for further reading organised into the following categories

Annually published statistics and reports
News articles from the last five years (often based on the above)
Videos and Documentary resources
Committed organisations dedicated to studying this specific topic.

I will endeavour to update this list at least every three years, but with so much material already on ReviseSociology.com this might be a challenge!

Annual research studies on income and wealth inequalities in the UK

ONS – Household wealth in the UK (published biannually in January)

ONS – Household Income Inequality (published March every year).

Allianz World Wealth Report (Published October every year).

Social Class and Inequality In the News in 2022

The Heat or Eat Diaries from The Guardian – a varied series written from a mixture of people living in poverty, academics and journalists.

In the news in 2021 and before

31% of children in the UK are living in relative poverty
Elite Tory shames Alex Scott for her working class accent
How much poorer would the rich need to be to provide a basic income for everyone?

Videos and Documentaries on Social Class and Inequality…

Made in Britain

Panorama – Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis (2022)

Why are so many people living in Poverty? News Night (2021)

Selected Contemporary Research Studies

How many people are in poverty in the UK? – A nuanced attempt to try and estimate the number of people in relative poverty

Poverty is the main cause of violent crime in London – Another way in which poverty has a negative influence on life changes, links to the crime topic.

Organisations

Mainly focussing on UK poverty, for more on Global Poverty see Globalisation and Global Development!

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) – A committed organisation working to solve UK poverty through research and advocacy

Nuffield Foundation – works to improve equality of educational opportunity

The Equality Trust – focussing on research on the harmful effects of social inequality on societies and individuals

The Social Mobility Commission – a government funded (but ‘independent’) organisation which monitors social progress (or lack of it) towards (or away from) social mobility.

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

Shock Horror – groups of older children have been ‘descending’ on cinemas recently to ‘disruptively watch’ the latest Despicable Me Movie – Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Some of these children filmed these antics and uploaded them to TikTok where some videos received hundreds of thousands of views, some into the millions.

But there’s a lot more Sociology we can apply to this contemporary event!

Sociology Applied to the #GentleMinions

So this is an illustration of the blurring of the boundaries between adulthood and childhood and in this case of adults choosing to act like children for a short while.

A Thoroughly Postmodern Event!

Obviously (hopefully) Despicable Me and the Minions are not real, they are a media construction, a cartoon.

This event couldn’t have happened without the media – and probably wouldn’t have happened without TikTok.

These kind of stunts are much more appealing to get involved in if your going to feature in a video that gets hundreds of thousands of views, after all!

An attempt at Belonging…?

Becoming a #GentleMinion, engaging in minor disruptive stunts in the cinema, filming them and uploading to TikTok is a pretty accessible way of feeling like you’re part of of something larger.

It may be a fleeting and desperate attempt at belonging, but I kind of get it – and it’s harmless enough.

A minor moral panic….?

So we have present three aspects of Stan Cohen’s classic moral panic theory….

#GentleMinions – Final Thoughts…

Personally I see this as relatively harmless youthful antics, not great for young kinds watching the movie with their parents, but in the grand scheme of things this is on the low end of social harm!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 5, 2022CategoriesCrime and DevianceTagsMedia, moral panic, Sociology Leave a commenton Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

How has increased choice in personal life affected family structures in the UK today?

This question recently came up on the June 2022 A-level sociology exam paper two, the families and household topic.

It was one of the 10 mark questions which linked to an item, as follows:

‘People have more choice today than in the past over who they can be in a personal relationship with. They also have more choice when a relationship ends.

This increased choice in personal life has affected family structures in the UK today’.

Then the question: Applying material from Item C, analyse two effects the increased choice in personal life has had on family structures in the UK today.

How to answer this question

It should be quite easy to spot the two hooks in the item:

choice over WHO one can be in a relationship with.
choice over when the relationship ends.

So these are going to form the basis of your two points and the fact that the question refers to ‘family structures’ in the plural gives you plenty of options to develop each point.

Although be careful not to repeat yourself too much!

AND REMEMBER – THERE ARE NO MARKS FOR EVALUATION IN THESE 10 MARK WITH THE ITEM QUESTIONS!

I am talking here of course just about ‘averages’ – experiences will vary from family to family.

HOWEVER, for those parents who have children later, in their 40s, probably dealing with the death of a grandparent would be more likely.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This question cam up in the June 2022 families and households paper two exam.

Like this:

Sociological Perspectives on the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK

Globalisation… and the declining relevance of Nation States…

EVEN if we look deeper at the cost of living crisis than official lines of analysis, it is still the case that global events are affecting Britain here.

Britain has very little control over the global forces that are influencing rising prices.

This seems to be a case of Nation States being too small to deal with global problems as Anthony Giddens has pointed out in the past.

Marxism applied to the rising cost of living….

As with many ‘applications’ of ‘Marxism’ I’m applying some Marxist concepts here in a broad sense!

At some point we have to start thinking about how we live in a post-capitalist world according to Marxists.

‘Micro Perspectives’ applied to the Cost of Living Crisis

This is an interesting article from the Conversation which argues that the government needs to measure poverty depth more accurately in order to effectively tackle the cost of living crisis.

It points out that not all people living in poverty face the same challenges – for example life tends to be harder for people with children rather than single people.

It also points out that government help needs to be more targeted on those that need it most – so far only 1 in 3 pounds of relief money has gone to the poorest 50% of households.

Perspectives which might struggle here..

Functionalism would struggle here, this is just dysfunctional! And clearly people aren’t all in this together!

And PostModernism – there’s nothing hyperreal about this, it’s very REAL, about energy and food prices costing enough and people going cold and hungry.

Although maybe IF people are living in hypereality this could help get them through – maybe the government jus needs to subsidise people’s Netflix subscriptions…?

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

Like this:

Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

A recent report produced by the Home Office (by an unnamed historian) has found that the Windrush Scandal was caused by decades of racist immigration policies.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

This update is a useful addition to the migration topic within the family. It shows how government policies influence the type of people that are allowed to move freely between different countries.

This is also of more general application to any question about inequalities in British Society.

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 7, 2022CategoriesRace and EthnicityTagsgovernment, immigration, racism Leave a commenton Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

The Queen’s 70th Jubilee – It feels like the last gasp for Modernity….

And once The Queen is gone we are left with Charles and Camilla – it’s just not the same rally-round is it? Much more chalk and cheese!

And when the Jubilee weekend is over, it’s back to postmodern/ late modern reality for us all – the grind, the uncertainty, the increasing cost of living, the fear of the next Pandemic.

This Jubilee celebration is just a pit stop to the past, pleasant to play modernity dress up for a weekend, but that’s all it is.

Like this:

Marxism Applied to Topics in A-level Sociology

For an overview of these two papers please see my ‘exams advice page’.

This post is a summary of how Marxism applies to these topic areas.

Research Methods Implications

Scientific Marxism – The purpose of research is to find out more about the laws of Capitalism to see when revolution is ripe
Requires a Cross National Macro-Approach to social research focusing on economics and how the economy affects society
Humanistic Marxism – Research can be more varied, focusing on highlighting social injustices in order to make people more critical of Capitalism (Not value free!)

Marxism applied to the family

Capitalism, Private Property and The Family
The family as a safe haven

Marxism and Education

The ideological state apparatus
Reproduction/ Legitimation of class inequality
Correspondence Principle
Cultural Capital

Dependency Theory

Colonialism and Slavery
The Modern World System
Unfair trade rules
TNC exploitation

Marxism applied to Crime and Deviance

Private Property and Crime
The costs of Corporate Crime
Selective Law Enforcement
Criminogenic Capitalism (‘Dog Eat Dog“ Society)

For more see The Marxist Perspective on Crime and Deviance.

Marxism – more advanced theory

For more links to Marxist theory please see my Theory and Methods page for A2 Sociology.

Like this:

Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?

In other words Netflix seems to be doing a great of job of normalising gender diversity.

I imagine most students are familiar with Netflix and this should offer some accessible evidence to update the topic of the representation of gender in the media.

A few examples…

The Hundred

The 3%

Ozark

Star Trek Discovery

There are MORE examples…

I kept this to just FOUR examples, but there are many many more – drop your suggestions in the comments.

Or it might be more useful/ difficult to drop new shows which DON’T have a gender diversity theme going on – it seems to be the new norm on Netflix..

For more posts on related topics please see my page on Media Studies

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onMay 31, 2022CategoriesMediaTagsGender, Media, representations Leave a commenton Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?SearchSEARCH

REVISION MIND MAPS AND REVISION NOTES FOR SALE

REVISION MEGA BUNDLE

SOCIAL

View Realsociology’s profile on Twitter

FOLLOW BLOG VIA EMAIL

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 6,081 other subscribers.

BLOG STATS

34,128,950 hits

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

A very useful contemporary resource which does just this is a recent documentary from Panorama which aired in April 2022 and is called simply ‘Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis‘.

The documentary does a good job of showing how much stress being in poverty causes is also clearly a good deal of anxiety around future price rises and how they are going to cope.

Find our More/ Related Posts

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 19, 2022CategoriesSocial class, wealth and income inequalitiesTagspoverty, UK Leave a commenton Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis: Case Studies

Resources for Wealth, Poverty, Income Inequality and Social Class

good resources for teaching wealth, poverty, income inequality and social class. Useful further reading for students studying A-level sociology!

Here you will find links to some contemporary sources for further reading organised into the following categories

Annually published statistics and reports
News articles from the last five years (often based on the above)
Videos and Documentary resources
Committed organisations dedicated to studying this specific topic.

I will endeavour to update this list at least every three years, but with so much material already on ReviseSociology.com this might be a challenge!

Annual research studies on income and wealth inequalities in the UK

ONS – Household wealth in the UK (published biannually in January)

ONS – Household Income Inequality (published March every year).

Allianz World Wealth Report (Published October every year).

Social Class and Inequality In the News in 2022

The Heat or Eat Diaries from The Guardian – a varied series written from a mixture of people living in poverty, academics and journalists.

In the news in 2021 and before

31% of children in the UK are living in relative poverty
Elite Tory shames Alex Scott for her working class accent
How much poorer would the rich need to be to provide a basic income for everyone?

Videos and Documentaries on Social Class and Inequality…

Made in Britain

Panorama – Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis (2022)

Why are so many people living in Poverty? News Night (2021)

Selected Contemporary Research Studies

How many people are in poverty in the UK? – A nuanced attempt to try and estimate the number of people in relative poverty

Poverty is the main cause of violent crime in London – Another way in which poverty has a negative influence on life changes, links to the crime topic.

Organisations

Mainly focussing on UK poverty, for more on Global Poverty see Globalisation and Global Development!

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) – A committed organisation working to solve UK poverty through research and advocacy

Nuffield Foundation – works to improve equality of educational opportunity

The Equality Trust – focussing on research on the harmful effects of social inequality on societies and individuals

The Social Mobility Commission – a government funded (but ‘independent’) organisation which monitors social progress (or lack of it) towards (or away from) social mobility.

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

Shock Horror – groups of older children have been ‘descending’ on cinemas recently to ‘disruptively watch’ the latest Despicable Me Movie – Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Some of these children filmed these antics and uploaded them to TikTok where some videos received hundreds of thousands of views, some into the millions.

But there’s a lot more Sociology we can apply to this contemporary event!

Sociology Applied to the #GentleMinions

So this is an illustration of the blurring of the boundaries between adulthood and childhood and in this case of adults choosing to act like children for a short while.

A Thoroughly Postmodern Event!

Obviously (hopefully) Despicable Me and the Minions are not real, they are a media construction, a cartoon.

This event couldn’t have happened without the media – and probably wouldn’t have happened without TikTok.

These kind of stunts are much more appealing to get involved in if your going to feature in a video that gets hundreds of thousands of views, after all!

An attempt at Belonging…?

Becoming a #GentleMinion, engaging in minor disruptive stunts in the cinema, filming them and uploading to TikTok is a pretty accessible way of feeling like you’re part of of something larger.

It may be a fleeting and desperate attempt at belonging, but I kind of get it – and it’s harmless enough.

A minor moral panic….?

So we have present three aspects of Stan Cohen’s classic moral panic theory….

#GentleMinions – Final Thoughts…

Personally I see this as relatively harmless youthful antics, not great for young kinds watching the movie with their parents, but in the grand scheme of things this is on the low end of social harm!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJuly 5, 2022CategoriesCrime and DevianceTagsMedia, moral panic, Sociology Leave a commenton Sociology Applied to #GentleMinions

How has increased choice in personal life affected family structures in the UK today?

This question recently came up on the June 2022 A-level sociology exam paper two, the families and household topic.

It was one of the 10 mark questions which linked to an item, as follows:

‘People have more choice today than in the past over who they can be in a personal relationship with. They also have more choice when a relationship ends.

This increased choice in personal life has affected family structures in the UK today’.

Then the question: Applying material from Item C, analyse two effects the increased choice in personal life has had on family structures in the UK today.

How to answer this question

It should be quite easy to spot the two hooks in the item:

choice over WHO one can be in a relationship with.
choice over when the relationship ends.

So these are going to form the basis of your two points and the fact that the question refers to ‘family structures’ in the plural gives you plenty of options to develop each point.

Although be careful not to repeat yourself too much!

AND REMEMBER – THERE ARE NO MARKS FOR EVALUATION IN THESE 10 MARK WITH THE ITEM QUESTIONS!

I am talking here of course just about ‘averages’ – experiences will vary from family to family.

HOWEVER, for those parents who have children later, in their 40s, probably dealing with the death of a grandparent would be more likely.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This question cam up in the June 2022 families and households paper two exam.

Like this:

Sociological Perspectives on the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK

Globalisation… and the declining relevance of Nation States…

EVEN if we look deeper at the cost of living crisis than official lines of analysis, it is still the case that global events are affecting Britain here.

Britain has very little control over the global forces that are influencing rising prices.

This seems to be a case of Nation States being too small to deal with global problems as Anthony Giddens has pointed out in the past.

Marxism applied to the rising cost of living….

As with many ‘applications’ of ‘Marxism’ I’m applying some Marxist concepts here in a broad sense!

At some point we have to start thinking about how we live in a post-capitalist world according to Marxists.

‘Micro Perspectives’ applied to the Cost of Living Crisis

This is an interesting article from the Conversation which argues that the government needs to measure poverty depth more accurately in order to effectively tackle the cost of living crisis.

It points out that not all people living in poverty face the same challenges – for example life tends to be harder for people with children rather than single people.

It also points out that government help needs to be more targeted on those that need it most – so far only 1 in 3 pounds of relief money has gone to the poorest 50% of households.

Perspectives which might struggle here..

Functionalism would struggle here, this is just dysfunctional! And clearly people aren’t all in this together!

And PostModernism – there’s nothing hyperreal about this, it’s very REAL, about energy and food prices costing enough and people going cold and hungry.

Although maybe IF people are living in hypereality this could help get them through – maybe the government jus needs to subsidise people’s Netflix subscriptions…?

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

Like this:

Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

A recent report produced by the Home Office (by an unnamed historian) has found that the Windrush Scandal was caused by decades of racist immigration policies.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

This update is a useful addition to the migration topic within the family. It shows how government policies influence the type of people that are allowed to move freely between different countries.

This is also of more general application to any question about inequalities in British Society.

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Like this:

Loading…AuthorKarl ThompsonPosted onJune 7, 2022CategoriesRace and EthnicityTagsgovernment, immigration, racism Leave a commenton Decades of Racist Immigration Policy

The Queen’s 70th Jubilee – It feels like the last gasp for Modernity….

And once The Queen is gone we are left with Charles and Camilla – it’s just not the same rally-round is it? Much more chalk and cheese!

And when the Jubilee weekend is over, it’s back to postmodern/ late modern reality for us all – the grind, the uncertainty, the increasing cost of living, the fear of the next Pandemic.

This Jubilee celebration is just a pit stop to the past, pleasant to play modernity dress up for a weekend, but that’s all it is.

Like this:

Marxism Applied to Topics in A-level Sociology

For an overview of these two papers please see my ‘exams advice page’.

This post is a summary of how Marxism applies to these topic areas.

Research Methods Implications

Scientific Marxism – The purpose of research is to find out more about the laws of Capitalism to see when revolution is ripe
Requires a Cross National Macro-Approach to social research focusing on economics and how the economy affects society
Humanistic Marxism – Research can be more varied, focusing on highlighting social injustices in order to make people more critical of Capitalism (Not value free!)

Marxism applied to the family

Capitalism, Private Property and The Family
The family as a safe haven

Marxism and Education

The ideological state apparatus
Reproduction/ Legitimation of class inequality
Correspondence Principle
Cultural Capital

Dependency Theory

Colonialism and Slavery
The Modern World System
Unfair trade rules
TNC exploitation