Sociology

Although the size of the UK population increased throughout the twentieth century, the rate of growth was slow. In particular, during the period 1964-2000, there was a decline in the fertility rate (annual number of live births per 1000 population). This was largely due to women getting married and having children later in life. 282-284

Kerr . argued that totalitarian regimes cannot persist in advanced industrial societies, because the technologies therein are only compatible with a liberal democracy, industrial development and economic growth. This is illustrated by the case of the Soviet Union, where Stalin’s successors Khrushchev and Brezhnev dismantled some of his centralized regimes, such as that of the economy, and weakened the Communist Party’s state power. Gorbachev’s reforms in the 1980 included perestroika (restructuring society by abandoning centralized planning and administration) and glasnost (openness and democracy in the political decision-making process). 835-836

The commercialization of the mass media and the dominance of transnational corporations arguably threatened the public sphere, but the rise of the Internet can be seen as a challenge to this. The Internet is much more democratic than other forms of media, as its power is decentralized and access to it is relatively open. However, it can be argued that the Web is also becoming commercialized, and its public service functions are declining. 393-395

In his analysis of power in the USA, Domhoff talked of a ‘governing class’ that was disproportionately privileged in terms of its income, assets and life chances, and who dominated the political decision-making process in four ways. They were able to influence the government to serve their special interests; they shaped the policy formation process; they influenced the selection of candidates for election; and they disseminated their values and beliefs through a dominant ideology. 829

Part of the ‘third way’ approach of the New labour government builds upon the policies of privatization in the 1980s, by advocating that the private sector should be given a greater role in the provision of public services. Both the Conservative and Labour governments used private capital to fund service provision in the National Health Service. Individual patients are said to have more choice in deciding where to be treated, and hospital funding follows patients. Through complex partnerships between the public and private sectors, hospitals became self-governing ‘trusts’ who had to compete for contracts from the local health authorities. 606-607

A sect is a schismatic group of people whose beliefs differ from others within the same religion. Examples of sects are the Quakers and the early Baptists and Methodists within the Christian church. A sect claims a monopoly on the truth, but its membership is voluntary: people choose to join rather than being born into it, and its leadership is non-hierarchical. Members of a sect have a high level of emotional and moral commitment to the group, and often perceive a sharp boundary between themselves and non-members. 417 and 427

The mode of production was defined by Marx as part of a society’s economic base, which was one part of society (the other being the superstructure). A society’s mode of production consists of the way in which technical and human resources are organized, through such things as property relations and the division of labour. In Marx’s view, the economic base underpins the superstructure of society: the social institutions that shape our daily lives (education, the workplace, the family, religion). 28-32

White-collar crime is that committed mainly by the relatively affluent middle classes in the context of non-manual work. This can involve individual crime or corporate level crime. White-collar crime often goes undetected because it is carried out under cover of legitimate business transactions in the workplace itself, for example tax evasion and fraud. 250

Bourdieu argued that educational success depended on a person’s level of cultural capital, or cultural advantages that could be translated into economic gains. This could be embodied, objectified, or institutionalised, for example through qualifications. While this meant that material wealth alone could not ensure a person’s success, it did not prevent the education system from reproducing the class structure, for those whose family backgrounds had already given them cultural capital came to school with a hidden advantage. 324-326

Weber thought that social stratification was of central importance to any society, and that this was reflected in three aspects of the distribution of power: the economic, the communal and the authoritarian. In terms of the former, economic power underpinned class relations, through the unequal distribution of resources such as money, land and property. Thus Weber said that we could measure a person’s class situation by their position in the capital, product and labour markets, and the resources available to them in each. 773-774