2.2 Gender categories Young children's gender categories are highly stereotyped. This can lead to assured predictions of an individual's preferences based upon knowledge of their gender, and the kinds of activities that they may typically engage in. Children develop such rigid gender categories in their search for certainty about gender. These categories are essentialist, having a simple in-group and out-group distinction that children use for understanding masculinity and femininity, and for defining their own ge
Learning outcomes This unit will help you to develop your ability to: understand what we mean by the entanglements of social welfare and crime control, by exploring the tensions and relations between ‘watching over’ and ‘watching out for’; understand policy responses and their relevance; identify different kinds of evidence – in particular, visual evidence and interview evidence; develop your ICT skills, including how to make the most of usin
2.3 Realist and conventionalist approaches In most modern, urban, industrial societies, still images surround people for much of their daily lives: at home, at work, during leisure, while travelling. Does the evidence they offer differ fundamentally from that which comes from facts and figures printed on a page? It may be presented differently but we can derive socially relevant information as readily from a photograph as we can from written or numerical data. In some ways, it can be argued that the information that we can acqu
1.1 They think it's all over They think it's all over … it is now! (Kenneth Wolstenholme, 1966) This is one of those iconic sporting media moments. It happened a long time ago, when Geoff Hurst's third goal in the dying seconds of extra time clinched England's 4–2 win over Germany in the 1966 football World Cup final. People who were not even born, let alone at Wembley or watching the game on television, still reco
7.2 The importance of the market and the state: neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism To begin with neo-liberalism, it is a key premise that the market is the primary means of coordinating economic activity, including the allocation of people to jobs. This assumes that rational actors make judgements about their earnings prospects to decide their best options – training to improve employability, as in Mandy's case, or accepting subsistence-level earnings, as Tamarla Owens did. To neo-liberals, both Mandy and Tamarla Owens would have used information they gleaned in their eve
4.3 Reconstituting older people's personal lives in uncertain times The multiplicity of different ‘work-endings’ at the close of the twentieth century, combined with the increasing mobilisation of older people through pensioner and ‘third age’ movements, effectively destabilised the institution of retirement and the associated orthodoxy that older age began at the age of 60 or 65 years. However, voices from within the pensioner movement were marginalised in the process of reconstitution that ensued. A neo-liberal redrawing of the boundari
Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. This extract is taken from D218: Social policy: welfare, power and diversity, produced by the BBC on behalf of the Open University. © 2007 The Open University. withonef [Details correct as of 7th December 2007]
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1.4.5 M is for Method Method is about the way in which a piece of information is produced. This is quite a complex area as different types of information are produced in different ways. These are a few suggestions to look out for:
Opinions - A lot of information is based on the opinion of individuals. They may or not be experts in their field (see P for Provenance) but the key message is to be clear that it is just an opinion and must be valued as such.
Research - You don’t have to be
1.3.8 News sources Many news sources are now available online. Searching an online version of a newspaper is easier, quicker and more effective than searching through printed indexes, microfilm or actual newspapers.
