1.3.10 Choosing the right tool for the job Before searching it is always a good idea to check what the source you have chosen covers to make sure it will unearth information that matches your search need (you will notice that all the resources we’ve covered in this guide have short descriptions to enable you to decide which to use). Some of the decision makers, depending on the context of your search might be: Does it have full text? Does it cover the right subject?
1.3.6 Journals Journals and articles written by academics or experts are an excellent source of information. Journals are usually published monthly or quarterly, and contain a selection of articles providing details of recent research. Often they will also contain reviews of relevant books. They are usually published more quickly than books, and so are often more up to date. To access content of journals, most publishers require a subscription. There are, however, some journals which you can freely ac
1.3.2 Search engines and subject gateways Although both search engines and subject gateways will help you find the resources that you need, the types of information that you find will differ. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! search the internet for keywords or phrases, and then show you the results. These results are not mediated by the search engines, and th
2.2 Postscript A headline-grabbing weekend of ‘midsummer madness’, when six murders occurred in (parts of) Glasgow over the weekend of 5–6 August 1995, reinforced the ongoing nature of contestation and debate about the issues discussed in the programme. As noted in The Scotsman (8 August 1995), the legacy of the imagery of No Mean City was quickly resurrected by the press – for example, ‘a darker side to that much-vaunted transformation of Glasgow from No Mean City to Culture City’
2.4 Information and communication technologies The new economy is much more than a shift from manufacturing to services and the increased integration of economies on a global scale. It is also strongly linked to the development of ICT, which has facilitated the development of new processes and products, especially ‘knowledge goods’ which are described below. The internet has increased the ‘connectivity’ or interconnectedness between economies by making textual communication possible in real time as well as providing a new me
2.3 The representation of ‘celebrity’ We have already seen the way in which texts gain meaning from other texts by the operation of contrast, but multiple texts are useful to the textual analyst in another way. Looking at a large number of texts dealing with the same subject – celebrity – enables us to detect common themes and narratives (stories), to the extent that with enough repetition we become able to talk about the representation of that subject. Working through a large number of texts about celebrities, we beco
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able: describe New Labour's approach to Welfare Reconstruction.
Introduction This unit will introduce the notion of social citizenship in relation to rights and obligations within society, with particular reference to women and disabled people. The material is primarily an audio file, originally 23 minutes in length and recorded in 1998. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Social policy: Welfare power and diversity (D218) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to e
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.
Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence This extract is taken from D315: Crime, order and social control, produced by the BBC on behalf of the Open University.
7.1 History So far, I have provided a brief historical background for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, one that accounts for their distinctive identities and for the origins of their differing role within the UK. I have also defined devolution as an asymmetric decentralisation process which responds to the claims advanced by the nations constituting the UK state. What, then, do we mean by Britain? Is it a nation? If so, when did the British nation begin to exist? The historian Linda Colley
6.4 Summary of Section 6 The Labour government introduced a Greater London Authority (Referendum) Bill in 1997. The referendum took place in 1998. A Mayor and Assembly for London were first elected in 2000. At present the eight English regions have a tripartite structure with responsibilities and powers divided in each region between the Government Office for the region (GO), the Regional Development Agency (RDA) and the Regional Chamber (most of which have now ren
3.1 What makes a nation, a state or a nation-state? Why do England, Scotland and Wales take part in the Six Nations rugby championship alongside Italy, Ireland and France? Are they all ‘nations’? What do we mean by calling them ‘nations’? The nation has become one of the most contested concepts of our times. Scholars, politicians and political activists present different definitions of the nation, usually focusing on a variety of cultural, political, psychological, territorial, ethnic and sociological principles. The lack of an agreeme
2.2 Scotland Having enjoyed political independence until 1707, the survival of many of Scotland's institutions – notably its systems of law, religion and education – after Union with England contributed to the preservation of its singular identity. The different way in which Scotland was incorporated into the UK, through a monarchical take-over rather than by conquest (as was the case in Wales and Ireland), may account for the lesser impact the development of the UK exerted on Scottish distinctiveness
Learning outcomes After studying this unit, you should be able to: understand the process of political devolution in the UK; relate this process to both historical developments and to the wider context of contemporary events in Europe; practise the skill of reading, summarising and evaluating academic arguments; engage more actively as a citizen in relevant political debates (especially if you are a citizen of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland!).
3.1 Gender-based disadvantage The post-war period has seen a significant increase in the participation of women in the labour market, with women now making up around 45 per cent of the UK workforce. Although women still undertake the major share of family responsibilities and domestic activities, an increasing number of women are entering the labour market. This increase is evident in many countries and has been associated with an improvement in the relative earnings of women. This trend towards greater equality is eviden
3.2 Poverty as natural/inevitable There is a construction of poverty that identifies it as a necessary feature of social life: some people will be better endowed, try harder or be more successful than others, and inequality will be an inevitable result (see, for example, Herrnstein and Murray, 1994, who argue that low levels of intelligence are the main determinants of poverty in the USA). Interfering with this natural order of things is dangerous, particularly because it prevents poverty acting as a spur to try harder. This
2.1 Common sense and social problems This concern with social construction may seem troubling or even a distraction from the real business of studying social problems. However, it is built on one of the starting points of the social scientific approach, namely that in order to study society we must distance ourselves from what we already know about it. We need to become ‘strangers’ in a world that is familiar. The defining characteristic of a ‘stranger’ is that she or he does not know those things which we take for grant
4.2.2 ATM layer The primary functions of the ATM layer are associated with the routing and switching of ATM cells. Because ATM cells are packets, the switches are packet switches and the switching operation can be called forwarding, but by convention, because the ATM layer provides a connection-oriented service, the term ‘forwarding’ is generally not used. The path cells take and the resources allocated to them depend on their service category. This is determined when a virtual connection is
3.5 Internet protocol (IP) At the time of writing (2002), two versions of IP are available: versions 4 and 6. In this section I shall describe version 4, which is abbreviated to IPv4, as it is the more widely available version. Version 6 may eventually replace version 4 because it has some additional features that may prove essential for multiservice networks. IPv4 is the main TCP/IP protocol in the internetwork layer of the TCP/IP reference model. It supports a connectionless service between hosts in an interne
