...The Roles of the Sociologist Like all scientists sociologists are concerned with both collecting and using knowledge. As a scientist the sociologist's foremost task is to discover and organize knowledge about social life. A number of full time research sociologists are employed by universities, government agencies, foundations or corporations and many sociologists divide their time between teaching and research. Another task of the sociologist as a scientist is to clear away the misinformation and superstition which clutters so much of our social thinking. Sociologists have helped to clear doubts about hereditary, race, class, sex differences, deviation and nearly every other aspect of behaviour. By helping replace superstition and misinformation with accurate knowledge about human behaviour sociologists are performing their most important role. Sociologists make sociological predictions. Every policy decision is based upon certain assumptions about the present and future state of the society. Most social science prediction consists not of predicting specific developments as the astronomer predicts an eclipse but of forecasting the general pattern of trends and changes which seem most probable. All such predictions or forecasts should be offered with certain humility for no certainty attends them. Instead social scientists offer them as the best most informed guesses available upon which to base our policy decisions and expectations for the future. Sociological prediction...
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...Unit 1 Sociologists Willmott and Young: - Bethnal Green study - The symmetrical family trends away from segregated roles. Due to changes in the household (working women, men helping with domestic tasks, spending leisure time together) and social changes (technology, position of women, standards of living, geographical mobility) - Take a March of Progress view Elizabeth Bott - Two types of conjugal roles (segregated and joint) Gershuny - The longer the wife spends in paid work, the more housework the husband does - If the woman is working full-time, there is a more equal division of labour at home - Earnings are still unequal - Social values are adapting to full-time working women - Roles are becoming more symmetrical (similar to Willmott and Young’s MoP view) - Women who didn’t work did 83% of the housework. Part-time = 82%. Full-time = 73%. Duncombe and Marsden - Women do a triple shift as they do paid employment, housework and emotion work. Wilkinson - Domestic abuse is the result of the stress of family members caused by social inequality - Some families have fewer resources than others - Not all people are equally in danger of domestic abuse Yearnshire - A woman suffers around 35 assaults before reporting it Mirlees-Black - 6.6 million assaults each year, half involving physical injury - 99% are committed by men against women - ¼ women suffer domestic abuse at least once in their life, 1/8 repeatedly so. David Cheal - State agencies...
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...The Roles of the Sociologist Like all scientists sociologists are concerned with both collecting and using knowledge. As a scientist the sociologist's foremost task is to discover and organize knowledge about social life. A number of full time research sociologists are employed by universities, government agencies, foundations or corporations and many sociologists divide their time between teaching and research. Another task of the sociologist as a scientist is to clear away the misinformation and superstition which clutters so much of our social thinking. Sociologists have helped to clear doubts about hereditary, race, class, sex differences, deviation and nearly every other aspect of behaviour. By helping replace superstition and misinformation with accurate knowledge about human behaviour sociologists are performing their most important role. Sociologists make sociological predictions. Every policy decision is based upon certain assumptions about the present and future state of the society. Most social science prediction consists not of predicting specific developments as the astronomer predicts an eclipse but of forecasting the general pattern of trends and changes which seem most probable. All such predictions or forecasts should be offered with certain humility for no certainty attends them. Instead social scientists offer them as the best most informed guesses available upon which to base our policy decisions and expectations for the future. Sociological prediction...
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...(Functionalist) They identified 4 main functions of the education system * Passing on society’s culture and building social solidarity * Passes social values by the hidden curriculum and actual subjects * Builds social solidarity by shared values * A bridge between the family and the society * Durkheim: Schools are a small society and prepare you for the wider society. * Parsons: Schools are an important place for secondary socialisation, and provides a bridge between the ascribed status of the family and the achieved status of the meritocratic society. * Developing a trained and qualified labour force * Selecting people for roles in meritocratic society and legitimising social inequality Education Sociologists Davis and Moore (Functionalist) They argue that education is a means of selecting people for jobs according to talents and qualification and is therefore a method in role allocation. * They suggest that there is an equality of educational opportunity and therefore inequalities in society are legitimised. Davis and Moore (Functionalist) They argue...
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...Key Roles of Sociologist: 1. Is to organize and discover knowledge about social life. 2. is to clear away the superstition and misinformation which hinder so much of our social thinking. 3. To deals more with group problems. 4. With a higher degree, they teach it at a college or university. 5. To work in the human resources development, training and development and also in research. 6. The sociologists studies the society, sociologists are interested in the processes in the society, they study the interaction between people and what are the reasons for the different things that happen. They try to answer different questions as why is there racism, how does religion affects the morals of the society, who is going to be president etc. Using sociology you try to uncover the things that stay unseen in the everyday life. Sociology searches the factors of high crime rate and others. 7. Sometimes his duty is voluntarily but most often He is paid by Organization. 8. To do research and they get hired and paid by a research company. 9. A sociologist is someone who's like a psychologist, but rather than studying the nature of one person, they study the nature of a group of people in society. 10. Sociologists study patterns of human behavior. 11. To study social trends, some even work in the advertising industry. 12. You could be a teacher, or work at an institution that conducts research, or you could be a writer of your own books, or you...
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...Master status was a concept coined by sociologist Everett Hughes in the 1940s. Master status is the dominant social label that describes a person's position in society which can include anything ranging from occupation, race and sex. A couple of master status that describe me would have to be the burger girl and student. Since I am really into the burger records scene, friends of mine started to associate that with me. I know this because anytime a friend hears anything associated with burger records they think of me apparently. I also started to gain the nickname “burger girl” by some people. It was established because I am always going to the their shows and it is a culture that I am included in in a way. Another main master status of mine...
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...advantages for sociologists in using unstructured interviews in their research (20 marks) An unstructured interview has no format and the questions are not prearranged. The interviewer chooses the questions depending on the interviewee and the situation. There are many advantages for sociologists in using unstructured interviews in their research, and one of the main advantages is the work of William Labov. Labov found that to build a good relationship with the interviewee you need more of an informal style approach. Labov also found that when using a formal interview the black American children appeared to be tongue-tied and linguistically deprived, which shows that these black American children must have felt under pressure when they had been given these questions. When Labov implemented more of an informal style, he saw a change; he was receiving completely different responses to how they were with the formal interview. The children opened up and spoke freely, showing that they were capable of speaking out. This is an advantage for sociologists as it puts the interviewee at ease, this will make the interviewee feel more comfortable, so they may express their feelings more and open up which will enable the sociologists to gain more effective research. Furthermore, another advantage is that it’s the interviewees view, there are not set questions so it gives the interviewee an opportunity to express what he thinks that’s relevant to say. This is an advantage for sociologists as they...
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...In this essay the contribution of functionalist sociologists to our understanding of the family will be discussed, sociologists such as Murdock (1949), Parsons (1979) and Young and Wilmott (1973) will be mentioned in this essay. Functionalists believe that society is based on a shared value consensus, this is a set of shared norms and values into which society socialises its members, this enables society to work harmoniously and meet society’s needs and goals. Functionalists believe that the family is regarded as a basic building block of society. Murdock (1949) argues that the family performs four essential functions to meet the needs of society and its members. These functions are; economic needs, reproduction, primary socialisation and sex. However, he believes that those needs can only be achieved within a nuclear family. But some sociologists would argue that these needs can be met in other ways than within the family such as in institutions other than the family such as education, health services and the government. Marxist and Feminist sociologists have criticised Murdock’s theory. They say that functionalism ignores conflict and exploitation within society. Feminists see the family as being patriarchal and serving the needs of men and Marxists see the family as meeting the needs of capitalism and not the needs of the family members. According to Parsons (1979) there are two types of basic functions that the family provides these are the primary socialisation of childhood...
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...Asses the contribution of functionalist sociologists to our understanding of the family. A function is a purpose and explains how this institution contributes to the maintenance and smooth running of society this approach to society is called functionalism. From a functionalists point of view a family is a heterosexual couple with dependent children, male is the breadwinner and woman is the housewife. Functionalists believe that the nuclear family supports society because it is geographically mobile and allows the family to move around with little trouble. Functionalists believe that society is based on a shared value consensus, this is a set of shared norms and values into which society socializes its members this enables society to work harmoniously and meet society's needs and goals. George Murdoch said that their are four main functions of the nuclear family these are; sexual, it strengthens relations in the family. Reproductive, family is the main unit of production. Educational, family is responsible for primary education. Economic, the family has to produce and consume something in order to satisfy its needs and wants. The nuclear family can be extended vertically, horizontally or by polygamy. Some may argue that Murdoch's definition is weak because at that time sex before marriage was not accepted as was single mothers and homo-sexual families. Talcott Parsons argued that although there are many functions that the family has...
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... in his study of in 1897 used official statistics drawn from coroners' reports from different societies to establish that suicide rates varied within societies. By doing this, he was able to argue that social factors, such as religious belief, were significant variables and influences in the explanation of why people committed suicide. For some topics, therefore, secondary research is the only way to find data that relates to your study. You cannot go back in time to collect data so you have to use what has already been collected. Despite the fact that Statistical data makes a piece of research highly reliable it also has it’s weaknesses. The definitions used by the collector of statistics may not be the same as those used by the sociologist. For example, we need to ensure that the...
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...Assess the contribution of functionalist sociologist to our understanding of the family Functionalists believe that society is based on a value consensus into which society socialises its members, which enables to cooperate harmoniously and meet society’s needs and goals. Functionalist’s sees that society is made up of a range of different sub-systems which depend on each other, and that society needs these functions or order for survival and is vital towards society. Functionalists see the family as a very important sub-system, as it raises and teaches children norms and values. According to Peter Murdock, he argues that the family performs four main functions to meet the needs of society and the members of society. One of the functions is the stable satisfaction of the sex drive, this is husbands and wives having sexual access to each other and that this maintains stability and limits sexual access of other members of society as you are with the same person. The second function is the reproduction of the next generation, this function is based on bearing and raising children and to provide the society with new members and take on the responsibility as parents to raise them and without this function society would not be able to continue. The third function is the socialisation of the young/educational function this is transmitting norms and values of the younger members, as without this function the norms would disrupt the stability of society. The last function is meeting...
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...roles can be joint and equal or they can be segregated. Some sociologists would suggest that in modern life, conjugal roles are becoming more equal. Conjugal roles were studied by two sociologists named young and Wilmot who stated that traditional segregated conjugal roles, which were that partners had very distinctive and separate roles in a household e.g. Men have the instrumental role and work to get money for the family and women are in the expressive role which is where they provide the emotional support, have become more equal and turned into joint conjugal roles which are that the partners roles within a marriage or relationship are mostly shared, which has led to a ‘symmetrical family’. By symmetrical family they mean one in which the roles of husbands and wives are now much more similar, for example women now go out to work although it may be part time instead of fulltime. Young and Willmott found that the symmetrical family was more common in young couples who were geographically and socially isolated. The positive of the symmetrical family is that having women bring a second wage into the home raises the standard of living. However Oakley sees the housewife role as becoming dominant role for married women rather than a move towards symmetry. Another way to study gender roles is to examine time spent on different tasks. This helps to show whether men or women spend more time on paid and un-paid work. Sociologist Gershuny...
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...Using material from item 2b and elsewhere, assess the contribution of functionalist sociologists to our understanding of the family Functionalists believe that everyone has a role to play in society in order for it to work effectively. Not only does the family have practical uses like reproduction and primary socialisation, but also things that personally benefit each member of family like economic provision. Each individual has a different belief on the importance of family and how it impacts our lives; however, I think functionalism only covers the basic understanding of family and how we are impacted by our own. One functionalist who has a theory regarding family is George Murdock, who published his research in 1949. Murdock believe there are four functions to a family: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. The sexual function is for the married parents. In order to stay together and uphold the traditional happy family, they enjoy a healthy sex life to prevent affairs and unhappiness within the marriage. This is important as it ensures the children of the couple are raised by their biological parents. The economic function is the means of the man going off to work in order to provide food and shelter for the rest of the family. Education is the primary socialisation of the children, they will have the expected norms and values of moral people, helping them to fit into society as they grow older. This ‘education’ will also help them learn their place in society...
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...Sociologists use different types of interviews in their research, these ranging from completely structures to completely unstructured interviews. The difference between them lies in how free the interviewer is to vary the questions and how they are asked. In its simplest form, a structured interview involves one person asking another person a list of predetermined questions about a carefully-selected topic. The person asking the questions (“the interviewer”) is allowed to explain things the interviewee (or “respondent” - the person responding to the questions) does not understand or finds confusing. Moreover structured interviews are like questionnaires; the interviewer is given strict instructions on how to ask the questions. The interview is conducted in the same way each time, asking each interviewee precisely the same questions, word for word, in the same order and tone of voice. Both a questionnaire and structured interviews involve asking people a set of prepared questions. In both cases, the questions are usually closed-ended with pre-coded answers. The main difference is that in the interview, the questions are read out and the answers are filled in by a trained interviewer rather than by the interviewee. There are many practical advantages for the use of a structured interview for example training interviewers is relatively straightforward and inexpensive, since all they really required to do is follow a set of instructions. Moreover surveys that use structured interviews...
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...Asses the contribution of postmodernism to sociologists understanding of crime and deviance in todays society. Some sociologists believe that we now live in a post-modern society that has a distinct set of characteristics in comparison to modern society; Postmodernists reject the views of the modernist theorists as they claim that they are metanarratives (big stories). They believe that sociology needs to develop new theories so we can fully understand postmodern society, as society is constantly changing it is marked with uncertainty and therefore society is split into a variety of groups. This essay will discuss the changes that have taken place in postmodern society and how this impacts upon our understanding of crime and deviance. Postmodernity has brought changes from modernity these changes include independence and choice. There is less focus on science, postmodernists reject scientific research methods in their research therefore postmodernists are criticised for being subjective. Lyotard argues that society is expanding due to the economic and scientific growth, knowledge is no longer a tool of the authorities, and we now have choice and freedom to believe what we want. Whereas Baudrillard argued that we are isolated and knowledge is filtered through businesses such as the media. We pursue the images attached to products; we now live in hyper-realities in which appearances are everything. This has lead to ‘death of the social’ which is a breakdown in social solidarity;...
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