Sociology

Differences in educational success can be related to class background and levels of material and cultural disadvantage. Bernstein identified two distinctive speech patterns used by the working and middle classes, respectively. The restricted code involved short, simple sentences with a limited vocabulary, while the elaborated code was more grammatically complex and context-independent. Education was based on the elaborated code of speech and writing, and so middle class children found it easier to succeed at school. 323-324

As organizations grew larger and more complex, managers became an increasingly powerful group. The ‘managerial revolution’ argument suggests that this took control of the workforce and productivity away from the capitalist owners of the organizations, and passed it into the hands of the managers. However, Scott argues that owners still hold most control, in the form of loose groupings of major shareholders, or ‘constellations of interests’. 549-551

The mass media are said to have an enormous influence on popular culture, and this has become increasingly commercialised. Theorists in the Frankfurt School of the 1920s were critical of what they called the ‘culture industry’, or the way in which culture had become something to be bought and sold for profit as a commodity on the market. This created a ‘mass society’ of passive, unreflective consumers who were vulnerable to manipulation. 367

Ethnographic research aims to reach an in-depth, meaningful understanding of a particular social group or setting. It typically involves the researcher immersing themselves ‘in the field’ that they are studying, by living with the group and observing their activities; they may also interview group members and collect documentary evidence. These kinds of data are qualitative: rich in detail and meaning. 83