All socioogists

• Delphy and Leonard


  Emphasise the importance of work. In their view it is men, rather than capitalists as such, who are the prime beneficiaries of the exploitation of women's labour. They believe that the family has a central role in maintaining patriarchy; the family is an economic system involving a particular set of labour relations in which men benefit from and exploit the work of women
• Oakley


  Addresses the idea of the conventional family which she defines as 'nuclear families composed of legally married couples, voluntarily choosing the parenthood of one or more children'. She explores the power of this idea, including its origins and explanations; reviews contemporary research; examines the 'strains' of being conventional and social control. She concludes that 'there are signs that official stereotypes are being felt to be increasingly archaic and that ... certain groups in the community may be moving towards a more open appraisal of other ways of living – both in and without families'
• Parsons


  Held the view that the American family retained two basic and irreducible functions which are common to all families in all societies, these are the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities. Later authors have criticised his work as presenting an idealised picture of family life centred on the middle-class experience
• Rapoport and Rapoport


  Described five different aspects of family diversity: organisational, cultural, class, life course and cohort. Their work predates the emergence of gay and lesbian households as a more open and accepted feature of society
• Willmott and Young


  Used the term symmetrical family to describe the Stage 3 (home centred) nuclear family where 'symmetry' refers to the similar contributions made by each spouse to the running of the household. They advanced the theory that this reflected the nature of work as often boring and uninvolving leading manual workers to focus on family life. The 'Principle of Stratified Diffusion' is the theory that what happens at the top of the stratification system today will diffuse downwards tomorrow. The 'managing director family' (Stage 4) cited in their research was work-centred rather than home-centred, with the wife responsible for home and children. The theory has been criticised by feminists who saw little evidence of either 'symmetry' or a move towards Stage 4 amongst working class families
• Zaretsky


  Takes the view that modern capitalist society has created an illusion that the 'private life' of the family is separate from the economy. He does not believe that the family is able to provide for the psychological and social needs of the individual. Whilst cushioning the effects of capitalism it perpetuates the system and cannot compensate for the general alienation produced by such a society. He believes that the family has become a prop to the capitalist economy whilst also serving as a vital unit of consumption. In his view only socialism will end the artificial separation of family and public life, and make possible personal fulfilment
• Ball


  Gives an account of the experience of schooling based on three years fieldwork as a participant observer in a south coast comprehensive school. The study describes a school in the process of change and raises questions about the selection and socialisation experienced by two cohorts moving through the school, one banded by ability and the other taught in mixed ability classes
• Ball, Bowe and Gerwitz


  Evaluated the impact of parental choice and the publication of league tables, eg the pressure to reintroduce streaming and setting and the tendency for some schools to focus on the more able
• Bowles and Gintis


  Argue that the major role of education in capitalist societies is the reproduction of labour power. They argue that there is a close correspondence between the social relationships which govern interactions in the work place and social relationships in the education system eg the creation of a hardworking, docile, obedient, and highly motivated workforce, which is too divided to challenge the authority of management. They reject the view that capitalist societies are meritocratic and believe that class background is the most important factor influencing levels of attainment
• Durkheim


  Saw the major function of education as the transmission of society's norms and values. He believed that it is a vital task for all societies to weld a mass of individuals into a united whole. Education, and in particular the teaching of history, provides the link between the individual and society – children will come to see that they are part of something larger than themselves and will develop a sense of commitment to the social group. He believed that the school provides a context in which children learn to cooperate with those who are neither their kin nor their friends, in his view rules should be strictly enforced in order for children to learn self-discipline and to see that misbehaviour damages society as a whole
• Halsey, Heath and Ridge


  Found evidence of clear class inequalities in education. An individual from the service class, as compared to one from the working class, had four times as great a chance of being at school at 16, eight times the chance at 17 and ten times the chance at 18. The chance of an individual from the service class attending university was eleven times greater than one from the working class. It should be noted that the research excluded females and this might have made a significant difference to the findings
• Parsons


  Believed that the school acts as a bridge between the family and society, taking over as the main agency of socialisation and preparing children for adult life. He argued that the schools operate on meritocratic principles: status is achieved on the basis of merit. His functionalist perspective has been criticised by those who argue that the values of the education system may simply be those of the ruling elite, or that equality of opportunity is an illusion in an unequal society where wealth and privilege are more important than individual merit
• Willis


  Rejected the view that there is a direct relationship between the economy and the way that the education system operates. Unlike Bowles and Gintis he believes that education is not a particularly successful agency of socialisation, he also holds the view that education can have unintended consequences that may not be beneficial to capitalism. His book is based on a study of a school in the Midlands situated in a working class housing estate; he described the existence of a counter culture, which was opposed to the values of the school. The members of this counter culture felt superior both to the teachers and to conformist students. Their main objective was to avoid attending lessons and they resented the school's attempts to control their time
• Crime and deviance
• Becker


  Argued that an act only becomes deviant when others define it as such. Whether the 'label' of deviancy is applied depends on who commits the act, when and where it is committed, who observes the act, and the negotiations that take place between the various actors involved in the interaction. The label applied to the individual becomes a master status; the young people have become criminals and this label will affect how others see them and respond to them. Assumptions will be made that the individuals concerned have the negative characteristics normally associated with the label. As a consequence the individuals will begin to see themselves in terms of the label, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Carlen


  Studied a group of mostly working class women aged between 15 and 46 who had been convicted of one or more crimes. She carried out in-depth, unstructured interviews with each of the women. Carlen uses control theory as the basis for her approach, this starts from the assumption that human beings are neither naturally good nor bad but will make a rational decision to turn to crime when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In Carlen's view, working-class women have been controlled through the promise of rewards. When these rewards are not available or prove to be illusory, then criminality becomes a viable alternative
• Cohen


  Argues that working class boys hold the same success goals as the wider society, but that as a consequence of educational failure and poor employment prospects, they have little or no opportunity to realise those goals. Cohen holds the view that cultural deprivation accounts for working class boys' lack of educational success. They become stuck at the lowest level of the stratification system and as a consequence of their lack of opportunity, they suffer from status frustration. They turn to criminality as an alternative route to success, becoming members of a criminal subculture which values activities such as stealing, vandalism and truancy
• Heidensohn


  Uses control theory as the basis for her explanation of why women commit fewer crimes than men. She argues that male-dominated patriarchal societies control women more effectively than men, making it difficult for women to break the law. Women in such societies are closely controlled in the home, where they are expected to spend the majority of their time on housework and childcare. Women who challenge these assumptions risk male violence as an assertion of patriarchal authority
• Merton


  Argued that deviance results from the culture and structure of society. He starts from the standard functionalist position of value consensus – all members of society hold the same values. However, because members of society have different positions in the social structure, for example in terms of social class, Merton believed that they did not have the same opportunity to realise their shared goals. He described five possible ways in which individuals could respond to success goals in American society: conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion
• Anomie


  A situation where 'anything goes' in pursuit of wealth and material success, as the usual rules governing behaviour in society are abandoned
• Merton's five possible ways individuals can respond to success goals in American society

  • Conformity
  • Innovation
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Rebellion
• Conformity


  Individuals who work towards achieving success by conventionally accepted means, eg by gaining educational qualifications which in turn give them access to secure, well paid employment
• Innovation


  Individuals who are unable to succeed using conventionally accepted routes and turn to deviant means, usually crime
• Ritualism


  Middle class individuals who are deviant because they abandon conventional success goals. They are unable to innovate because they have been strongly socialised to conform, but they have little opportunity for advancement and remain stuck in low paid, low status 'respectable' jobs where they may exhibit an enthusiasm for rules and petty bureaucracy
• Retreatism


  Individuals from any social class position who are deviant because they abandon both success goals and any means of achieving them. They 'drop out' of society
• Rebellion


  Individuals who reject success goals and the usual means of achieving them, but then replace those that they have rejected with different goals and means. They are deviant because they wish to create a new society
• Merton has been criticised for not taking into account power relations in society, for example by failing to consider who makes the laws and who benefits from them
• Merton has also been criticised for his assumption that there is such a thing as a 'value consensus' in American society
• It has been suggested that Merton's 'deterministic' view fails to adequately explain why only some individuals who experience anomie become criminals and that his theory exaggerates working class crime and underestimates middle class, 'white collar' crime
• Social stratification


  A 'universal necessity' for every known human society, to ensure all roles are filled by those best able to perform them, necessary training takes place, and roles are performed conscientiously
• Davis and Moore's mechanism for social stratification

  A system that attaches unequal rewards and privileges to the different positions in society, to match the most able people with the functionally most important positions
• Occupations which carry less prestige or lower economic rewards can also be seen as functionally important to society
• Differences in status and pay between different occupational groups may be due to differences in their power
• There is no proof that exceptional talent is required for important positions in society, nor is there an agreed method of measuring talent and ability
• The number of talented individuals in society may be far greater than Davis and Moore suggest and unequal rewards may not be the best method of harnessing that talent
• Privatized instrumentalism


  Social relationships centred on the home with work only as a means to an end
• Devine did not find evidence to support the idea of 'privatized instrumentalism' amongst the working class she studied
• Devine rejected the idea of the 'new working class' and denied that affluent workers had been persuaded to accept capitalism uncritically
• Marx saw social stratification as a mechanism which allows a privileged few to exploit the many
• Marx's theory of history

  Western society developed through four main epochs: primitive communism, ancient society, feudal society and capitalism