ac 4.2

• Social values, norms and mores


  Aspects of culture that regulate people's behaviour
• Values


  General principles, beliefs or guidelines about how we should live our lives
• Values


  • Modern societies value pursuing individual wealth
  • Tribal societies value the group over the individual
• Norms


  Specific rules or socially accepted standards about how we are expected to behave in specific situations
• Norms


  • Informal, unwritten rules like not queue-jumping
  • Formal, written rules like laws
• Mores


  Very basic, essential norms that society sees as vital for maintaining standards of decency and civilised behaviour
• Mores


  • Taboo against incest
  • Prohibition against taking human life other than in very exceptional circumstances
• Laws can change over time due to changes in a society's culture-its norms and values
• An act that used to be acceptable may now be seen as wrong by today's values</b>
• Drink driving


  An example of how views on an issue have changed over time, leading to changes in laws and policies
• Changes in drink driving laws and policies

  1. 1925: First law making driving while drunk an offence

  2. No clear definition of 'drunk' and no legal limit

  3. Public attitudes tolerant, not seen as serious offence

  4. 1967 Road Safety Act introduced blood alcohol limit

  5. 1968 breathalysers introduced

  6. Tougher laws and penalties introduced over time
• Increasing car ownership


  Resulted in more deaths from drink driving
• Public concern about accidents caused by drink driving


  Drink driving moved up the political agenda
• Breathalysers and advertising campaigns

  Helped reduce road deaths and serious injuries from drink driving
• Now only about 5% of road casualties involve alcohol
• Campaigns have been an important factor in changing public perceptions of drink driving as a crime</b>
• In 1979, half of all male drivers admitted drink driving at least once a week, but by 2014 91% agreed drink driving was unacceptable
• England and Wales have the highest legal alcohol limit in Europe, with calls to lower it further
• In 1945, there were fewer than 20,000 non-White residents in the UK, mainly Irish and Jewish immigrants
• During the 1950s and 1960s, non-White immigrants came from former British colonies, often filling jobs the British refused to take
• The UK's demographic structure has changed to a multi-ethnic one
• Windrush generation


  The early non-White immigrants who faced hostility and racist stereotypes
• In the 1950s and 60s, immigrants often met with discrimination in housing, employment and services
• Race Relations Acts


  Laws passed to ban racial discrimination and the promotion of racial hatred
• Direct discrimination


  When someone treats you less favourably because of your colour
• Indirect discrimination


  When a policy or rule applies to everyone but has a worse effect on some groups than others
• The Race Relations Act was replaced by the Equality Act in 2010, which brought together laws on racial, sex, age and disability discrimination
• Direct discrimination


  When someone treats you less favourably, for example because of your colour
• Indirect discrimination


  When there is a policy or rule that applies to everyone, but it has a worse effect on some groups than others
• In 2010, the Race Relations Act was replaced by the Equality Act, which brought together laws on racial, sex, age and disability discrimination. It is overseen by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
• Since the 1960s, there has been a cultural change-a decline in prejudice towards ethnic minorities. The 1987 British Attitudes Survey found that 39% of people said they were racially prejudiced, whereas by 2017 this had fallen to 26%.
• According to a 2018 survey by British Future, 66% of the over 65s in ethnic minorities said the level of racial prejudice today is lower than it was in 1968, while both minorities and the wide population are at ease with the idea of mixed-race relationships and a more integrated society.
• As a result of changing attitudes, there has been a change in the public perception of discrimination and race hate as crimes. People are now more likely to accept that these should be criminal offences.
• According to some psychologists, if we are made to change our behaviour, we tend to change our attitudes to fit. Thus, if the law is changed to prohibit discrimination, people may abandon their prejudiced attitudes to bring them into line with how they are now required to behave.
• The British Future survey found that people thought factors such as the mixing of different backgrounds at school, and workplace contact with people from other ethnicities, were both more important than race relations laws in improving race relations in Britain.
• However, this does not mean discrimination has disappeared. As well as racism towards non-Whites, there is Islamophobia, racism towards White East Europeans and Gypsies/Roma, and antisemitism towards Jews. In 2018 The Conservative government was accused of creating a "hostile environment' that led to the wrongful deportation of members of the Windrush generation' who had lived in the UK for decades.
• The Empire Windrush brings 802 migrants from British colonies in the Caribbean to London

  1948
• For centuries, same-sex sexual activity was condemned as immoral or sinful and severely punished by the law. For example, the 1533 Buggery Act made sodomy between men punishable by death and men were executed until as late as 1835.
• Although the death penalty for sodomy was abolished in 1851, an Act of 1885 extended the laws to include any kind of sexual activity between men. (Sexual activity between women has never been a crime in the UK.)
• In the 20th century, the law continued to be enforced against gay men. By 1954 there were over 1,000 men in prison as a result, and trials of individuals such as the wartime code-breaker Alan Turing, who played a central role in cracking the codes of the Nazis' Enigma cipher machine. One estimate suggests that Turing's work shortened the Second World War by over two years and saved 14 million lives.) Turing committed suicide in 1954