My top four video ‘hub sites’ – These sites are what I believe to be the best for finding up-to-date information about contemporary sociological video resources.
An excellent site for documentaries relevant to Sociology as well as just for general interest too. The site features mainly American and British documentaries, but there are also plenty from around the world too, all organised into useful categories such as ‘society’ and ‘economics’, with short summaries and embedded links to the videos if they are available online, which most are, although some have been removed due to copy right reasons, which can be frustrating. There are thousands of documentaries, all of which are hosted on other sites such as YouTube or Google video, but what makes this site so useful is the categorisation system – you can browse very easily by category
This site is designed to help sociology instructors incorporate videos into their classes. I t does have a somewhat American focus, but it is still very useable for many topics in Britain, most obviously if you teach global development
Each post consists of a brief summary of the relevant film or documentary and, if available a link to the film or short excerpt. Many of the entries are, in fact, short excerpts, which are fine for teaching many issues.
To give you an example of how up to date and potentially useful the site is – check out their globalisation category: there are about a dozen entries from 2012 alone.
TED stands for Technology, Education and Design, and some of these talks are ‘jaw dropping’ – which is actually one of the categories you can search via. Although the subject material ranges far beyond the scope of Sociology, there is much of Sociological relevance here – to find talks on specific topics use this tag page. They also have playlists – but many of these are just celebrities pointing to their ‘favourite talks’ so these lists probably won’t be that useful to most people.
4. – RSA Videos (Royal Sociological Association Videos)
Videos here are organised into three basic categories – Lectures/ discussions, RSA shorts (although these are a bit thin) and the excellent RSA animate videos which introduce fairly complex topics in 10 minute animations.
I really like the simplicity of the mission of the RSA – Which is to continually reinvent the Enlightenment project for the 21st century through developing and promoting new ways of thinking about human fulfilment and social progress. OK the site isn’t really for your average A level student, but the RSA is ‘real sociology’ as far as I’m concerned – It cuts across disciplines – looking at politics, society, economics and psychology, and if you ever need an example of a reflexive organisation – look no further than the RSA! Oh, it’s also British, so this biases the RSA up the rankings too. The RSA also has a YouTube channel where you can access the videos
The Young Apprentice is one of the very few programmes I make a point of watching. What’s odd is that I enjoy it even though it spreads three messages that I have a real problem with –
Firslty, it gives the impression that there is opportunity out there if ‘you only work hard enough’, when in reality the current crisis means it’s actually very tough to start up a small business or find employment, especially for young people.
Secondly, the show spreads the myth of meritocracy – We are typically presented with a range of candidates from all manner of social classes, gender and ethnic backgrounds suggesting equal opps, but in real life class privilege etc. still conspire to subvert genuine talent’s rise to the top.
Thirdly the show suggests that making a profit is more important than doing something socially useful, an idea I find odious,
To explore these message one at a time…
Problematic Message One – Even though we’re in ‘tough economic times’ there’s still opportunity if you work hard enough.
OK Maybe this will come across as a little sad that I’ve done this, but if you calculate the profit per head per task and then divide by 2, you get the ‘day rate’ per candidate. The figures look something like this…
Approximate earnings per day for five tasks in the young apprentice
Task
Platinum
Odyssey
Average per team
Average per candiadate
Average per candidate per day
Clothes
453
330
391
65
32.5
Cook Books*
7500
800
4150
754
377
Sandwiches
316
91
204
45
22.5
Kids Club**
11000
470
5735
1433
716.5
Womad
370 (sales)
283 (sales)
327
109
54.5
Average per candidate per day
—
—
—
—
240
*This of course assumes that all books are sold and that candidates receive £1 per book, which I think is a realistic estimate as to royalties on the type of books they produced.
* and ** These two ‘big profit tasks’ of course don’t actually take into account the costs of hiring the following
Half a day with the chefs to make the recipes/ half a day with the publishers
Half a day with the experts to help with the ideas generation of the kids club, or the costs of the materials for the demonstrations
Also neither of these projects are actually realistic in terms of your average teenager being able to start up such business because of the quality of the ‘laid on contacts’ with industry insiders, and the social desirability of purchasing a young apprentice product of course.
Given the above it might actually make more sense to look at the three ‘realistic’ business a teenager might set up – and for these the results are much worse.
Task
Platinum
Odyssey
Average per team
Average per candiadate
Average per candidate per day
Clothes
453
330
391
65
32.5
Sandwiches
316
91
204
45
22.5
Womad
370 (sales)
283 (sales)
327
109
54.5
Average per candidate per day
—
—
—
—
36.50
If this is what the eleven brightest young people in the country can do (plus one hot-housed posh kid with inflated GCSEs) then Socialism help the rest of them is all I can say
Max – Defo the right candidate to go in week 1
Misleading Message Two – In the world of business it doesn’t matter what your class or ethnic background or your gender identity there’s a level playing field. OK I accept that in the apprentice the working classes seem to come good – In fact if anything Lord Sugar seems to have a deep suspicion of the posh – very probably because he’s ended up working with a lot of talent-less individuals who have risen up the ranks because of contacts rather than well, err talent.
In the real world of business what happens is that you need a leg up to be able to get yourself established – this will either mean money from your parents or an internship – often networked into, and in which you work for nothing for some months or even years. For evidence see below…
In addition to this if you’re a female looking to break into business, OK things are changing – but check out these stats from a previous blog of mine
All of this doesn’t stop me finding the apprentice hugely entertaining, I just hope a few people read this and think again about some of the potentially misleading messages it puts out….
Problem Message Three – Profit is more important than social utility
The contestants really have been asked to produce crap this year haven’t they?
Basically just crap – The Wetsuit Kimono
In episode 1, the task was to resell old clothes, which otherwise would have probably gone towards making money for charity but instead ends up with either the BBC or Alan Sugar or the candidates (Actually I’ve no idea where the money ends up TBH!). You could in fact argue that taking from charity results in negative social utility.
Episode two saw the candidates producing cook books – With one team producing a student cook book and the other a book which, in a total throwback to the 1980s, ended up with the title ‘the professional woman’. Whatever spin you put on a new cook book – the fact that there are are over 60 000 cookery books currently available on Amazon does suggest we don’t really need any more.
Episode three was all about sourcing a list of ten items for the very inclusive (NOT) Royal Opera House – Sugar putting the youth to work for the benefit of elite (kind of like apprenticeships and workfare).
Episode four revolved around the teams putting on a themed afternoon tea experience and sell them at a Stately Home – resulting in a ‘1940s’ theme and a ‘Mad Hatter’s’ theme – both of which I think we can agree are frankly pretty naff.
In episode five the candidates were required to develop a new kids club in order to attract investors who would potentially buy licenses. I will at this point concede that this venture does, finally, have some kind of genuine social utility – for parents at least.
The product of the most creative young business minds in the UK
Episode six saw the teams developing a new brand of hair spray and hair gel – Possibly the very epitome of products that lack any genuine social use value
In the penultimate episode candidates disturbed the ‘peace and love’ of the Womad festival to sell a combination of a cardboard box toilet and an umbrella seat on the one hand and onesies and camping washing machines on the other. Actually maybe these are even more useless than the hair products?
So of the seven episodes, there is only one potential product or service that has any genuine social utility, and that only for parents wealthy enough to pay for their kids’ extra curricular activities.
I’ve just spent an hour (yes on Saturday morning!) playing around with some mind mapping software and ended up with this mind map on modernity and Postmodernity –
Been a while since I posted so I thought I’d post up this document
Studying Sociology at University
What do you study at University?
Sociology at university is very different to ‘A level’ Sociology. There is some overlap in terms of basic content but this is minor. As a general rule, most Sociology departments will offer the ‘core modules’ in Sociological Theory, Sociological Methods, Modernity and Post-Modernity, and Globalisation, but besides these, courses will vary depending on the particular specialisms of lecturers in each department. Besides the above, some of the other topics you could end up studying include –
Ethnicity, race and racism
Gender
Marriage, family and interpersonal relationships
Media
Migration and citizenship
Globalisation
Friendship
Popular culture
Political participation
Religion
The Environment
In addition, many departments will offer degrees in related subjects such as:
Social Policy
Social Work
Criminology
Anthropology
Where to study
A good website for more information about studying Sociology at University is the British Sociological Association. This has a leaflet you can download and a hub page that contains links to most of the 80 odd universities that offer Sociology and related subjects.
To be blunt, for pretty much any Humanities or Social Science degree you need to be looking at the top 20 universities or you will probably end up unemployed afterwards.
*Average UCAS points – one A grade = 120 points, so 3 As = 360
**These don’t do research, hence there’s no research score!
Career ‘Prospects’ – Sociology
A range of different types of employers are likely to recruit sociology graduates. Typical employers include: local and central government; industry; commerce; the NHS; education authorities; further and higher education institutions; and charitable, counselling and voluntary organisations.
Jobs directly related to Sociology
Social researcher
Counsellor
Community development worker
Advice worker
Further education lecturer
Jobs where a sociology degree would be useful
Probation officer
Social worker
Charity fundraiser
Housing manager/officer
Primary school teacher or Secondary school teacher
A 2010 HESA survey of 2009 graduates indicates that six months after graduation, 60% of sociology graduates were in employment in the UK or overseas with a further 8% combining work and further study. Of those entering employment, graduates entered a wide variety of jobs.
15% went into social and welfare professions
8% went into public and private sector management.
20% entered occupations not categorised, which could include those working in not-for-profit organisations, project-based work.
14% went into clerical and secretarial positions
24% went into retail, catering and bar work
So to put it bluntly, of those students who graduated with a Sociology degree in 2009 2/3rds of them had a job 6 months later and about 1/3rd of those had a ‘real’ (professional) job that actually requires a degree. Overall this means that 1/3rd of Sociology graduates end up with a ‘proper job’ 6 months after graduating.
Of course, 3 years on, you now have less chance of getting a job and will be £30 000 in debt by the time you graduate too.
Hi – Decided I can do a useful (and easy) weekly blog flagging up what’s on TV this week that could be of sociological interest – For my own benefit, as well as that of others…. So here goes… These days of course you can always just search on iplayer for when the programme was!
Sunday (BBC News Channel) – Panorama – Billionaires behaving badly – looking at Glencore, possibly one of the world’s worst mining companies
Sunday (BBC2) – Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve – he goes to 3 south African countries – there might be something in here relevant to global development
Sunday (BBC2) – Ewan McGregor’s Cold Chain – following the Vaccine Trail – bound to be something relevant to the ‘biomedical intervention’ aspect of health and development, and I’ll grate my own eyeballs out if Gates doesn’t get a mention somewhere in this show.
Monday (BBC3) – A look at car crime, and the impacts of filming it and posting it online
Monday (BBC2) – This world – the story of the Norway Massacre
Tuesday (BBC3) – I woke up gay – pop – but about a straight rugby player who had a stroke and woke up gay. He’s now a hairdresser.
Tuesday (BBC1) – The Estate – not sure about this – looks like it might be interesting tho’
Wednesday BBC4 – Wild Swimming – Alice Roberts, the thinking man’s totty natural swimming in a bathing costume or a wet suit, not especially educational, but it can’t be bad!
Friday Channel 4 – Unreported World – in Afghanistan – cheery!
Water Aid works in 23 countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, with a total of 606 staff. Its mission is to ‘transform lives by improving access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation in the world’s poorest communities’
According to this 2010-11 annual review – Last year they spent about £50 million – of which £32 million went to water and sanitation delivery service, £11 million on fundraising and £6 million on governance. You might criticise the £11 million on fundraising, but given that nearly 3/4 of their income comes from donations (the rest mainly from grants – which still need to be chased) – one imagines that without this, they’d have considerably less to work with…
The stats really add up – Last year Water Aid helped 1.5 million people gain access to clean water, and improved sanitation for 1.6 million people.
If you look at worldometers – you’ll notice the numbers of people without access to clean water are going down! Partly thanks to the work of water aid –
Incidentally, I’m raising money for water aid by running a half marathon this coming Sunday – You should sponsor me – £15 saves a life!
Episode one of Gok Wan’s ‘Teen’s The Naked Truth’ focussed on Body Dysmorphia – offering us three tragic tales of teens in anguish over their imperfect bodies.
Gok Wan - Teens the Naked Truth
I want to just focus on two of these cases – two girls – One a 15 year old who spent several hours a day surfing ‘pro-anorexia sites’ and another 14 year old who had been through anorexia and seemed to now be coming out the other side.
Gok Wan’s approach to dealing with their body anxiety was to firstly, literally, just sit down with them and discuss the fact the ‘beauty myth’ they were trying to obtain was just that – a myth, and that the images they saw on pro-anorexia sites and in fashion magazines were not real.
One girl aspired to be so skinny as to be able to have a gap between her inner thighs when she had her legs closed: Gok simply pointed out that even the skinniest models he knew didn’t have such a gap and that the look had been engineered in photoshop; he took another to a photoshoot to demonstrate how it took 3 hours of make-up and just as long with photoshop to create the ‘glamour look’.
At this point I have to congratualate Gok (although I’m far from putting him in the ‘National Treasure’ category!) for actually putting in the effort to educate teens out of ‘chasing the beauty myth’ and encouraging them to be happy with whatever body shape they’ve got. Recognising that body dysmorphia has social causes is certainly a positive step beyond the BBC’s advice site – which treats body dismorphia as a genetic condition – Simply stating, in answer to the question ‘what causes it’ that ‘The cause of BDD is unclear, but it may be genetic or caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain’ which can be treated through antidepressant medication, cognitive behavioural therapy or a combination of both. Antipsychotic medication is sometimes used.
However, I would have liked to have seen Gok go further in criticising the ‘beauty industry’ – at one point he was actually face to face with someone who ‘retouched’ images in fashion magazines for a living – someone who actually gets paid to create the ‘beauty myth’ – and it would have been akward, but maybe he could have probed a little? – ‘Here is evidence of a 15 year old whose anorexia seems to have been inspired by the unrealistic photos in your magazine… given the direct social harm your industry contributes to, can you please explain to me, in your view, what justifies the job you do?’ – It would be interesting to hear from the ‘myth creaters’ – On this note – The Illusionists – is a good film to look out for that will hopefully be released relatively shortly.
Also, the programme could have been more informed by statistics – there is considerable evidence that, as Gok said more than once, if you suffer from these body issues, then you are not alone! – Chapter one of the Equality Illussion by Kat Banyard is especially good on this matter – which notes, among other things that…
1.5 million people in the UK have an eating disorder – 90% of them women and girls
A survey conducted by Dove of 3000 women found that 90% of them wanted to change some aspect of their body with body weight and shape being the main concern.
One in four women has considered plastic surgery.
The more mainstream media high shcool students watch, the more they believe beauty is important according to the American Psychological Association.
Some studies have shown that the more a girl monitors her appearance, the less satisfied she will be with her appearance.
Two thirds of women report having avoided activities such as going swimming or going to a party because they feel bad about their appearance while 16% of 15 -17 year olds have avoided going to school for the same reason.
Also, it has to be said that the programme oversimplified the issues somewhat – while I am critical of the ‘beauty-myth’ industry – it isn’t as simple as ‘see images of skinny girls’ – ‘become anorexic’! There could have been more recogition of this
Finally, I am not convinced by the ‘individualised therapeutic approach’ to sorting out problems that have social roots – but I will return to this in another blog…
This is, of course, thanks to the iphone and ipad – (Apple has sold 183 million iphones since its launch 5 years ago) which together now make up about 70% of the companies revenue.
There is mounting evidence that the chinese workers who manufacture apple products aren’t exactly benefitting from that £13 billion profit – in fact, it’s becoming apparent that many of them suffer human rights abuses – To list just a selection of the mounting evidence – (much of which is take from this New York Times Report and this summary from digital journey)
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms
Some workers say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk.
Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products
Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iphone screens.
Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions.
Finally – A message displayed on a banner above one ‘ipod factory’ reads “Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow.”
The scary thing about all of the above is that we probably only know about these abuses because the iphone is so high profile – the actual company that manufactures the ipad concerned, its actually a Taiwanese company called Foxconn
Foxconn's Chengdu plant
Foxconn happens to manufacture a whole load of other well- known brands – including the Kindle, the Xbox, and Playstation 3, and its customers also include other big name phone manufacturers – such as Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung
Foxconn has an annual revenue around $60 billion dollars, employs about 1 million people and has factories in China, India, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Brazil, but the bulk of its manufacturing is based in China where it has 11 factories – the biggest of which is estimated to have between 250 – 400 000 workers in residence.
Now if we know that Foxconn and Chinese government collude to allow worker-abuse in the manufacture of apple products, my suspicion is that it probably goes on with other products too…!
I started off this post wanting to calculate how much surplus value is being extracted by Apple from its workers, but I quickly realised this is impossible – In order to calculate this accurately we’d have to know precisely what proportion of workers in those Foxconn factories are working exlusively on apple products – rather than making products for all the other companies that Foxconn supplies. This, along with the actual numbers of workers in these factories, are not available.
What I can do, however, is calculate how much apple could afford to give to each worker if we assume that every Foxconn worker works on apple products – and that figure stands at about $13 000 – for the last quarter! – based on
$13 000 000 000 – Apple’s profits for one quarter – divided by
1 000 000- the global total of Foxconn employees
If you quadruple that – and reduce it slightly to reflect the fact that last quarter was ‘Christmas quarter’ – you end up with the $40 000 figure at the top of this post. Obviously these stats underemphasise what each worker could be paid out of that profit pool – if you factor in the profits from Foxconn itself and all the other electronics ‘branding companies’ the figure would increase!
To finish, just a final postscript on surpluss value. If you didn’t already hate Apple enough – if you just look at Apple employees – Apple extracted more than $400 000 from each employee last year…
Firslty, like many others, I have to say ”Hats of off to Hans’ and of course everyone else who works on the ‘gapminder project’ – With his truly amazing moving data visualisations combined with his enthusiasm – front man Hans Rosling works wonders with stats and maybe makes you think being 60 odd ain’t that bad after all…?!
Secondly, Worldmapper which produces the wonderful maps below – which shrink or expand countries according to whatever variable is being examined – The actual original maps are now a bit dated, but this related views of the world’ site – has a much borader scope and much more up to date information! On ‘views of the world’.
Thirdly, and in at number three because they give us an immediate impression of global inequalities – I still think these colour coded maps are very useful – especially if you project up the map for income, and then HDI/ infant mortality – you can really see the high degree of correlation! The Map below shows HDI – from darkest to lightest blue – Very high to low, 2011 data
Fourthly, these United Nations Human Development Index data trees are cool – which have different colours for the three different elements of data shown in the HDI – Gross National Income per capita, Education levels and Life expectancy.
Fifthly – there is this more in depth data from the UN site – I like this because you can track compare how different elements of the HDI relate to eachother and how they change over time – for numerous countries.
Seventh – there is this miniature earth video – part of the miniature earth project – related to the above obviously – This is the 2010 version – not as nice as the original, as this one’s to whale music…. but the most up to date version!
Eighth – there is some great material on this site – Information is Beautiful – not least the ‘International number ones’ infographic – because every country is best at something! (Click on the link above, the pic below doesn’t do it justice!)
Ninth, and only ninth because it’s not really a data visualistaion – but still pretty fab for inducing panic – Worldometers is a counting clock that looks population trends, spending on certain things, environmental decline, deaths from certain diseases and society and media. Some of the things you learn are –
The world population is 7 billion and counting
There are 2.3 billion Internet users – growing (rapidly) – also over 3 million blog posts today alone!
There are 900 billion undernourished people and
1.5 billion overweight people
More than 4 billion a day is spent on the military and 26 billlion so far this year has been spent on drugs!.
And tenth – well I didn’t get to ten – If you really can’t deal with my stopping at 9. then why not suggest youre favourite ‘global data visualisation’?
… Hopefully in a response that’ll land me with a link to some nice.. err.. wealth distrbution graphs or pie charts…
I’ve spent the last 5 years or so looking for some nice up to date visual resources on wealth distribution in modern Britain, to update the pie chars I’ve gto from about 2006 – with really limited success – is it just me or is it just impossible to find easily accessible information on wealth stats in the UK… Or are pie charts on wealth distribution just not 2012? (or 2007-11 for that matter?)
You might think that searching around the government’s own Office for National Statistics, you’d get some info about wealth, but no, this gets you nowhere – not if you want any data from the last few years at least.
Out of desperation you might try typing in any combination of ‘wealth distribution 2010 or 11 and UK or Britain’ to google but, with the exception of the excellent report mentioned below from 2010, you simply get directed to old stats or stats on income distribution – so this is hopeless.
So unless I’m missing something – it’s actually very difficult to get reliable, up to date info on Wealth Stats – but here’s five, well four, sources of info.. no nice pie charts tho’!
Firstly there is this recent government report The most comprehensive recent source on wealth distribution seems to be this report from 2010 ‘An anatomy of economic inequality in the UK’ (summarised in this Guardian Article) which found that by retirement age the top 10%, led by higher professionals, had amassed wealth of £853 000, while the bottom 10% of households, led by routine manual workers, had amassed less than £8,000. This means – and this is my headline figure – the richest 10% are 100 times richer than the bottom 10%
For an even starker comparison – the top 1% had, by the time they reached retirement age, accrued an average wealth of £2.6 million, making them more than 300 times richer than the bottom 10%
The report measured wealth inequalities by looking at total assets accrued over the course of a lifetime – the findings were hardly surprising – the older you are the richer you are, the poorer your parents were, the less likely you were to accrue wealth and so on…. but it is informative to have such data to hand.
Secondly, the most recent data from the Office for National Statistics (summarised in a blog which I’m not going to link to because it doesn’t link to anyone else) – reports that
The richest fifth have nearly two thirds of the wealth. More startling is that the poorer half of us speak for just 9p in every £1 of privately held wealth. Private household net wealth in Great Britain totalled £9 trillion in 2006/08 and nearly 80% of this is accumulated in property and private pension entitlements.
Median household net wealth was £204,500 in 2006/08. The least wealthy half of households accounted for only 9 per cent of wealth, while the wealthiest 20 per cent of households had 62 per cent of total wealth.
The least wealthy 10 per cent of households had negative total net wealth Median net wealth – including pensions, houses and cars, but excluding mortgages and other debt – of a household in the South East is £287,900. In Scotland, it is £150,600.
Thirdly, you could use the recent Barclay’s wealth report I blogged about two blogs back
Fourthly, everyone of course knows about the rich list – I’m now reliant on other people’s summaries of this because of the Time’s paywall, and in any case, its international so the this list isn’t UK focussed and it doesn’t talk of ‘distribution’ focussing merely on the worst excesses.
Finally, For income inequalities – we can rely on the JRF’s yearly report on Poverty and Inequality – but this is based on income measurements rather than wealth.
You might like to think about why it’s so hard to find info on this stuff… Or if you know more about where to get this data from than I do, let me know!
A hyperreflexive blog focussing on critical sociology, infographics, Buddhism and extreme early retirement
