Sociology-Paper 1

• Agencies of socialisation


  • Parent/carer
  • Religion
  • Media
  • Peers
  • School Workplace
• Parent/carer


  Gives values and norms
• Primary socialisation


  • Family is the first place for a child to learn and internalise the formal and informal rules of society
  • Helps the child to become integrated into society
• Murray would argue


  Family is less effective than designed institutions in shaping personality
• Secondary socialisation


  • Hidden curriculum in schools shapes attitudes and behaviours
  • Important source of desirable values and norms
• Bowles and Gintis


  Argue that the hidden curriculum has an ideological function to benefit the H/C and M/C bc it produces ppl who conform to demands of teachers and schools in general- Myth of meritocracy
• Religion


  Injects certain social and moral codes that shape behaviour
• Davie


  Argues the opposite to Bruce - millions believe in God without belonging to a religion so religious socialisation isn’t as visible
• Media


  • Many sociologists argue it has replaced religion in importance when socialising, particularly for young people in constructing their identity
  • Postman- Blurs the distinction between childhood and adulthood because children are exposed to images and info about ’adult things’
• Lees


  Peers Exert pressure on each other, e.g. double standards in sexual behaviour
• Sewell's concept of cultural comfort zones


  We associate with those who are similar to ourselves

  • Staying in our comfort zone is linked to ethnic groups sticking together
• Agencies of social control


  • Formal: law, police, courts, government
  • Informal: Family, peer group, media, religion, education, workplace
• Formal social control agencies


  Enforce law established by government, supposedly reflect the will of the people
• People conform/consent to formal social control agencies as they benefit - law protects law abiding citizens
• Formal social control in society


  Ordered society, desirable and beneficial, have written rules expected to follow, formal punishments for breaking rules
• Formal social control in workplace

  Formal disciplinary procedures, employees are praised to identify strengths and value to organization, incompetency and other failures may invoke sanctions like written warnings
• Informal social control


  Exercised without the use of written codes of behaviour
• Examples of informal social control


  • Family - express praise or materially reward children to encourage particular types of behaviour, may punish by denying particular things
  • Peers - informally sanction via bullying or more subtle forms of acceptance/rejection
  • Media - reporting of deviance, moral panics may be created to sanction deviant social groups
  • Religion - uses notions of eternal reward or punishment
• School has a hidden curriculum that contributes to informal social control
• Cultural diversity


  Differences within society despite some lifestyles being more widely accepted
• Cultural hybridity


  Merging of different cultures
• Cultural capital


  (Bourdieu) Knowledge, skills, and education that provide advantage in achieving a higher social-status in society
• Globalisation can contribute to the emergence of aspects of global culture
• Types of culture


  • Global: Shared culture followed around the world. Domestic cultures: Can no longer exist in isolation, are now shaped by Globalisation (challenged as a form of cultural imperialism). High culture is products and practices seen as intellectually and aesthetically superior
• Young We live in a ‘bulimic society’ There is a constant pressure to consume in modern society
• Identity


  Sense of self - how individuals perceive, understand, and judge themselves in terms of individuality and group membership
• Wall Extended families are declining, with only 5% of elderly people living with relatives by the mid-1990s, down from 40% in the 1950s
• Lone parent families are headed by women in approximately 90% of cases
• The number of lone parent families with dependent children under 16 decreased by 987,000 since 2009
• An increasing number of middle-class career women are electing to have children in their late 30s and early 40s to bring up alone
• Phoenix (Feminist)- maintain that lone parents, who are predominantly female, are unfairly discriminated against because of familial ideology
• Ford and Millar- 47% of children in lone parent families experience relative poverty, which is twice the risk of children in couple families
• Mooney- Being raised in a lone parent family may be more beneficial than being in a family with fighting parents
• Reconstituted families, formed mainly due to divorce and remarriage, were the fastest-growing family type in the UK up to 2000, but have since fallen by 14%
• Children in reconstituted families may keep relationships with both parents and be part of the reconstituted family
• De’Ath and Slaters- Challenges facing reconstituted families include children finding themselves pulled in two directions and conflict can be a norm if a child rejects a new half-sibling
• The nuclear family, consisting of two heterosexual married parents and their children living in the same household, is the most common family type in the UK, with 12.8 million such families
• Not all nuclear families are categorised as such by the ONS, as they also include same-sex couples
• Wall- Extended families have declined from 40% of elderly people living with relatives in the 1950s to 5% by the mid-1990s
• Hoban- extended kin may live nearby and provide support on a regular basis, with 78% of elderly people seeing their adult children at least once a week