Matthew Benjamin, 28, who studied geography at Jesus College, Oxford, said: “I was very aware that I was the only black student in my year at my college. I was never made to feel out of place, but it was certainly something I was conscious of. “When I arrived and they wanted to do a [...]

Some of you might find this useful – my ‘What is Social Class’ handout from 2009. I put this together for the AS unit in Culture and Identity before dodgey standardisation practises (AQA exam board) meant we had to change our option to The Family. Some might argue that the fact that the chief examiner [...]

Who does the housework and childcare – men or women? This is a classic question for the AS Family module, below are a few updates of survey data and a few pointers at the end to get some analysis marks in the exam. Oh and shame on the timeservers who write the main AS level [...]

SCLY1  AS Sociology of The Family – Easy to understand breakdown of what we teach Hi, it’s occured to me that we really don’t cover that much material in this module. Despite the main text books over convoluting a lot of the stuff – I think all that we cover boils down to the following 7 [...]

According to latest Private Eye – Pamela Nash, Britain’s youngest MP at 26, has only put forward one written question to parliament in the last sixth months, and spoken only six times. The Eye points out, however, that she has plenty of time to Tweet about the X factor and Corination Street. Her predecesser in her [...]

Some recent examples of agenda setting in the news – both taken from Private Eye – Firstly, on December 15th, the BBC devoted 3 minutes of air time to promoting its remake of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ – more important than providing more detailed analysis of other events that day? Secondly – you may remember way back in [...]

Definately one of the most ‘sociological movies’ of all time – fighting for the boys, Brad Pitt for the girls, and Meatloaf for us all! Perfect for the end of term. A quote from the movie… “God dammit, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, [...]

Private Finance Initiatives involve private companies providing services for government departments for a profit. They were first introduced by John Major, expanded massively under New Labour and they remain popular with the current government. The theory behind PFIs is that it should enable the government to provide services for less money – the theory is [...]

The findings of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Ashe) were released last week. The gross median* full-time salary in the UK for the year ending April 2010 was £25,879, but there is obviously considerable variation across careers. Heads of major organisations and doctors come out on top while waiters and bar staff come [...]

No doubt you will have to suffer through this classic song by band aid again this Christmas.    While in sufferance, you may as well do the following –   1. Try to find at least four misreprentations of ‘Africa’ in the song.  2. Think about whether you agree with Chumbawamba’s reasons behind releasing  ‘Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records’ 1986 [...]