Sociology

Sociology is the study of whole societies and the activities that go on within them. Modern societies are organized around social institutions, which are patterns of behaviour, social roles, and practices. These institutions are specialized because they regulate activity in different contexts of social life: education, the family, religion, and so on. However, the various institutions are linked together, and so we cannot study one social institution in isolation from the others. 10

Interpreting tables can be quite difficult, and it is a real skill to learn. One technique is to quickly scan the image to identify its main features, in several stages. Firstly, read the title to find out what it is meant to be telling you, and any notes about the sources of the data. Then look at the headings of the columns or rows to find out which variables were used and how they were measured. The ‘eyeballing’ part comes next, as you scan each row or column to identify the general pattern of the data and any particularly large or small numbers. 98-100

Sociologists believe that much of social behaviour is learned through our experiences and relationships with others. The term ‘socialization’ refers to the process through which this happens, as a person learns what it means to be a member of their particular culture or group. This involves learning the social norms, rules and values of that group and abiding by them. Primary socialization occurs in infancy and early childhood, often within the family, whereas secondary socialization takes place through interactions with other children and teachers at school. 117-118

A society’s culture consists of ideas, beliefs, norms and values: these create social order at the level of everyday activities and interaction. Social norms are rules of behaviour that govern the way people relate to each other in a particular setting, group, or situation. Some norms are formalized into laws, such as those that forbid stealing. Other norms are more implicit, for example the rules of queuing, but people who break them will still be met with disapproval. 14

Davina Allen argues that nursing is a gendered occupational role, which people (mainly women) learn to play through their experiences of doing so. This is an example of secondary socialization. Contemporary nursing has been shaped by the competing values of professionalism and managerialism, which has created uncertainty about how to play the ‘nurse’ role. Allen showed how nurses resolved this by renegotiating and reconstructing the meaning of the role through interactions with their colleagues and patients. 142-143

In statistical terms, marriage appears to be in decline because there has been a fall in the number of first marriages since the 1960s and there are more and more people living alone. However, there has been a sharp rise in the rate of cohabitation in Britain, whereby couples live together without being married, and this suggests that we remain committed to the idea of long term relationships. 466-467

The working class can be defined in economic terms as sharing a common market situation and work situation, but there are also social and cultural factors that shape the working class identity. Traditional nineteenth century working class occupations were things like factory work, mining and manual labour. In the twentieth century, there was much greater working class solidarity through trade union membership, and many working class communities developed, based around socializing in public houses, working mens’ clubs and the family home. 789-792

When analyzing an abstract concept like social class, it is important to identify empirical indicators of it that can be measured. In modern, Western societies, the most commonly used indicator of social class is occupation, which can be measured by scales such as the Registrar General’s Classification Scheme, which has six classes and distinguishes between manual and non-manual jobs; Glass’s seventeen social-economic groups (SEGs); and the Hall-Jones Classification, which has seven classes. 780-783

A study by Heath (1981), using data from the general Household Survey, revealed that women tended to be concentrated in routine white collar, semi-skilled or unskilled jobs, which are relatively low paid, or to be dependent on welfare benefits. By comparing these to the occupations of their fathers (this being a generation of women whose mothers generally had not worked), Heath found high levels of downward intergenerational mobility. That is, women born into professional and middle class families would find themselves less wealthy than they had been as children. Insofar as this is a general trend, we can observe the ‘feminization’ of poverty. 759-761

Bowlby identified the relationship between a baby and its human care-giver as being crucial to the child’s healthy emotional development. His contentious argument was that infants deprived of a warm, intimate attachment to their mothers, or separated from them during the first three years of life, would be inadequately socialized; they would then be prone to psychological problems, such as anxiety and depression, later in life. 134-135