5 Further reading For further discussion and explanations of events in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, G. Squires and C. Hartman's (eds) There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster (2006, Routledge) brings together a series of social sciences essays and commentaries around different dimensions of the disaster. There are many books and studies detailing the evolution of council estates in Britain and focusing on the many problems facing some of the residents who live in them. Tony Par
3 How to reflect on your learning It is important to get into the habit of actively reflecting on your learning. This is an important skill in its own right, and will help you get the most from your study time. So, as you work though each video, we suggest that when you are writing your notes you focus your thoughts and structure your observations around three areas: 1 The process of learning from the video For example, you might ask yourself: How do I feel about le
4.5 Summary So far, then, we have seen that family meanings matter for individuals, for social policy and professional practices, and for family studies – both for the ways in which family studies are undertaken, and for the ways in which such academic work impinges upon wider understandings and social processes. Each area of family meanings may thus also shape each of the other areas.
4.4 Family meanings matter in family studies Researchers and students of family studies need to pay attention to family meanings because it is not possible to stand outside of such meanings. Thus, it is important to be able to reflect upon the ways in which these meanings shape and impinge upon research, and, in the process, come to be reconstructed and reproduced. Such reflection is relevant whether we are considering the interpretations of people's lives undertaken within qualitative research or the categories of households and relati
Module team
Prepared for the course team by Peter Hamilton and Kath Woodward
Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit:
The 1990s wedding photograph Now let us look at the 1990s image. This too depicts a wedding. What makes it different from that of
5.2 Where can we go from here? As this discussion has unfolded we have progressively shifted the focus from a description of crime, either through the common-sense story or through the detailing of statistical evidence, to competing explanations. But this is not the end of the story, well not quite. Crime is an important area of social scientific inquiry in its own right. But looking at crime has allowed us to connect with many other important topics which are of concern to all social scientists.
3.6 Summary The common-sense narratives of the crime problem in the UK can be broken down into a series of distinct claims that make assessing them easier. Those claims can be tested against quantitative and qualitative evidence. Both types of evidence suggest that the narrative of change from a secure to an insecure society is at best partial, overestimating the tranquillity of the past, and the uncertainty and riskiness of the present.
3.1 Claims about crime Definitions beg questions. So do social narratives and stories. Again, we need, as social scientists, to begin with an analytical task. What are the key claims that are being made in the common-sense story of the problem of crime? What are the core arguments that hold the whole thing together? There are a number of these, but two seem to be particularly important.
Claim 1: UK society in the immediate 2.2 Summary Developments in sports media have included a move towards more sensationalism, very similar to that in other popular cultural fields as represented in the tabloid press. Sport coverage adopts the language of popular culture and its techniques (images, personal stories about family and personal problems). Technologies and technical developments are crucial to the media–sport complex, whereby mediated sport culture creates Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to look at how: experiences of being an older person are shaped through a historical and mutually constitutive process involving an interplay between the personal, work and welfare; and the points of continuity and difference this interplay illuminates; personal experiences of being older are constituted not only through age divisions, but also through loci of social difference and inequality organised around class, (dis) 3.3 Parenthood The deeply embedded inequalities of marriage were also prevalent in parenthood, reflecting the key role of gender in structuring the inequalities found in both. Under common law fathers were given complete control over their children, while mothers had no rights of custody, care or access if the marriage broke down, or even if the husband died. A man could be adulterous or fail to provide for his family without depriving him of his rights. The Poor Laws provided the only legal requirement on 3.1 Introduction In this section the focus turns towards the supply side of the market, towards firms and industries, exploring the importance of costs and technological change in the organisation of production. The objective is to understand some of the different kinds of change in industrial structure, namely changes in the number and size of firms in an industry. One such change saw the emergence of Ford, initially one among many similar firms jostling for position in the US automobile industry, as the ind Questions for review and discussion Suppose a firm uses 200 hours of labour per day and produces 4000 mobile phones. It then reduces its labour inputs to 100 hours per day and finds it can produce 3000 phones. Which one of the following is a correct statement 4.3 Live fast, die young Both the automobile and PC industries were characterised by a great deal of turbulence in the first 20 to 30 years of their existence. In both cases, many new firms entered the industry, introduced new varieties of the product, and soon left the industry, leaving only a few dozen firms to compete during the growth phase. By 1926 only 33 per cent of the firms that had started producing automobiles during the previous 22 years had survived. In the case of PCs, by 1999 only 20 per cent of the fi Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions). This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence This extract is taken from D218: Social policy: welfare, power and diversity, produced by the BBC on behalf of the Open University. 1.6.6 Professional bodies and societies Consider joining a learned society or professional organisation. They can be very useful for conference bulletins as well as in-house publications, often included in the subscription. Don't forget to ask about student rates. Try looking for the websites of learned societies associated with your subject area (e.g. The Royal Society, the Institute of Electrical 1.6.3 Mailing lists and newsgroups Mailing or discussion lists are e-mail based discussion groups. When you send an e-mail to a mailing list address, it is sent automatically to all the other members of the list. The majority of academic-related mailing lists in the UK are maintained by JISCMail You will find details of joining these mailing lists on the JISCMail website. Mailing lists are useful for getting in touch w 1.6.1 Introduction The process of keeping up-to-date in your chosen subject area is useful for your studies and afterwards, for your own personal satisfaction, or perhaps in your career as part of your continuing professional development. There are a great many tools available that make it quite easy to keep yourself up to date. You can set them up so that the information comes to you, rather than you having to go out on the web looking for it. Over the next few pages, you will be experimenting with some
Question 9
