TABLE OF CONTENT

AS LEVEL NOTES

CHAPTER 1 SOCIALIZATION & THE CREATION OF IDENTITY………………01

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY…………………………………………..33

CHAPTER 3 FAMILY…………………………………………………………………………73
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Socialization and the creation of

identity
The process of learning and socialization
1.1. Culture, roles, norms, values, beliefs, customs,
ideology, power and status as elements in the social
construction of reality.
Defining Society
 The concept of in-group and outgroup constitutes a society. People see
themselves as having something in common with others in their society, but
consider themselves to be different from people in other societies.

1. Physical space: a distinctive physical border mark where one society ends
and another begins.
2. Mental space: Beliefs about the similarities shared by people in one society
and the differences from people in other societies.

 Anderson (1983) describes societies as “imagined communities” whereby

mental images of communion exist due to:
 Geographic borders
 System of government e.g. monarchy, democracy, civil service
 Common language, customs and traditions
 Sense of belonging and in-group/out-group identifications

 Since societies are mental constructions, their reality is socially constructed

as well, via the existence of culture.
 Culture refers to a ‘way of life’ that has to be taught and learnt through
primary and secondary socialization. All cultures comprise of two basic
elements:
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1. Material culture: All the physical objects that reflect cultural

knowledge, skills and interests of a community e.g. artefacts, cars,
phones, clothing.
2. Non-material culture: the knowledge and beliefs held by a particular
culture, for instance, religious and scientific beliefs, past customs.
Merton (1957) states that a material such as clothing can either serve
the basic function of keeping an individual warm, however it may serve
a latent function of being a status symbol in a culture.

 The non-material element of culture further branches into roles, values and
norms.

 Roles: These are expected, labelled patterns of behaviour, expected in each

social interaction to foster cooperation between people for successful
performance of certain tasks.
o Roles help individuals develop the ability to form groups and
communities, because they add dimensions in the cultural framework
by emphasizing on an array of relationships, routines and
responsibilities.
o Any role involves a set of different relationships with different people
e.g being a friend, brother, father, student or teacher, a doctor’s
relationship with nurses, fellow doctors, patients, patients’ families.

 Values: These are expectations that provide a sense of order and

predictability. These are based on beliefs about how people should behave.
o Any role is governed by a set of values that provide basic behavioural
guidelines- a teacher should teach their students; parents should
nurture their child.
o However, it must be noted that values do not guide behaviour in a
broad spectrum. Norms serve that function, in particular.

 Norms: These are specific rules that show people how to act in a particular
situation.
o Merton (1938) asserted that behaviour becomes risky and confusing if
predictability and order ceases to exist, leading to anomie.
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o He defined anomie to be a condition where people fail to understand

the norms operating in a particular situation react in a range of ways-
from confusion to anger or fear.
o Goffman (1959) argued that norms are more open to interpretation and
negotiation than roles or values since they can quickly adapt to changes
in a social environment. For example, a teaching role exists, but the
norms of teaching are subjective. Some teachers may take a strict
approach while they fulfill their role of teaching the students a lesson,
whereas some teachers take a friendly approach, albeit, either of the
two approaches being flexible to changes in the classroom
environment.

 Beliefs: These are important, deep-rooted ideas that shape our values or are
sometimes shaped by values.

o While all values stem from belief systems, belief systems are simply
more generic behavioural guidelines that include ideas, opinions,
views and attitudes that may or may not be factually true.

o Belief systems in contemporary societies are many and varied in

nature.

 Customs: established and accepted cultural practices and behaviours.

 Socialization: the process through which people learn the various forms of
behaviour that go with membership of a particular culture. Constituent of
roles, norms and values that young people learn in order to become fully
functional members of the society.

 Social construction: the idea that our perception of what is real is created
through a variety of historical and cultural processes, rather than something
that is fixed and naturally occurring.

1.2. The importance of socialisation in influencing human

behaviour, including the nurture versus nature debate.
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Nature v/s nurture debate and socialization

 Humans seem to be programmed genetically to a certain extent i.e the
genetic drive for procreation and self-preservation that governs behaviour.
 Theorists supporting the nature view assert that our instincts are fixed and
innate, therefore not being shaped in any way by the cultural environment.
Many females have a mothering instinct that is innate.
 ‘Nature’ predominantly gives strong guidelines about behaviour however,
the nurture part governs whether the instinctual guidelines are to be followed
or not.
 One way to test the nature/nurture elements behind the roles adapted by
individuals is by socialization.

Feral children
 Sociologists have studied feral or unsocialized children in order to determine
the effect of their lack of primary socialization on their later lives.
 Feral children are either raised by animals or survive on their own.
 Saturday Mthiyane, 1987, was discovered living with a pack of monkeys in
South Africa. Later still behaved in ways that are more associated with
monkeys than humans.
 Genie, a 13 year old Californian girl discovered in 1970, was isolated in a
small room and had not been spoken to, by her parents since infancy. She
was malnourished, abused, unloved, bereft of any toys or companionship.
Upon discovery, she could not stand erect or speak, only whimper.
Conclusion: Children, when raised without human contact, fail to show the
social and physical development we would expect from an ordinary raised
child.
o Children raised by animals, learn by imitation.
o It is also noticeable that human behaviour is not instinctive, which
explains why Genie could not develop similarly to other children with
human contact.
o It is not possible for feral children to quickly adapt to normal human
behaviours once they return back to human society, suggesting that
lack of primary socialization cannot be rectified later.
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Further evidence for socialization’s influence:

 If human behaviours were ruled by instinct, there would be few differences
between societies. However, we notice vast variations between cultures.
 Billikopf (1999) noted that in Russia, a man peels a banana for a lady as a
romantic gesture.”
 Wojtczak (2009) argued that in Victorian Britain, most women lived “in a
state little better than slavery.” On the contrary, modern British society is far
more evolved than it was in Victorian era.

“I” and “Me”

 Symbolic interactionists like George Herbert Mead asserted that social skills
have to be taught and learned just like any other basic human skill. The social
context conditions how people behave.
 Self-awareness: the ability to see ourselves as others see us and react
accordingly- is learnt, rather than instinctively acquired. It involves
developing a concept of the “Self”, which has 2 aspects:
 “I”: it is based around our opinion of ourselves as a whole. The
unsocialized self, according to Mead. For instance, if you accidentally
touch fire, the ‘I’ part involves your reaction to the pain.
 “Me”: an awareness of how others expect us to behave in a given
situation.
o The social self: developed through socialization, according to
Mead.
o For instance, if you accidentally touch the fire, the ‘Me’ part
revolves the social context i.e. who you are, where you are and
who you are with, while you touch the fire.
o Each context arouses different reactions, children cry, adults
wouldn’t find it socially acceptable to cry and so on.
 Goffman argues that who we believe ourselves to be is constructed socially
through how we present ourselves to others.
o He proposed a model of self and identity in which he described social
life as a series of dramatic episodes, in which people are actors with
personal identities and social identities (social situations and roles).
o He suggests that when we adopt a particular identity- we ‘perform’ to
others in order to ‘manage’ the impression they have of us. Identity
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performance is about achieving a socially desirable impression of

oneself.
 Cooley (1909) presented a similar view that in majority of social encounters,
other people are used as a looking-glass self; when we look into the mirror
of how others behave towards us, we see reflected an image of the person
they think we are.
 Identities differ historically and across different cultures. Always open to
discussion and negotiation.
Alternative theories
 Social Darwinism: survival of the fittest in terms of sociobiological
development.
 Wilson argued that although human behaviour is not genetically determined,
it is largely influenced by biological programming.
o He believed that men and women are biologically programmed with
different traits that led to their different cultural roles of nurturer and
provider.
 Functional sociologists such as Parsons argued that family roles are
organized on the basis of female nurturer and male provider ideologies and
based on evolutionary biological principles and avoiding these rules can
create more social problems.
 Evolutionary psychology theorizes that behaviours that are evolutionarily
successful are selected and reproduced.
 Social psychology places greater stress on how environmental factors such
as family and work relationships affect the development of genetic or
psychological predispositions.

1.3. Agencies of socialisation and social control, including

family, education, peer group, media and religion.

Types of socialization
 Primary socialization occurs mainly within the family and is first stage of
socialization.
o It is essential because human infants need other people in order to
develop on an individual level and as members of a particular culture,
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behaviours such as learning language are fundamental aspects of

socialization from parents and other family members.
o Primary socialization involves emotionally charged identification, as
per Berger and Luckmann.
 Secondary socialization involves secondary groups by a ‘sense of
detachment from the ones teaching socialization’ according to Berger and
Luckmann (1967).
o These are based on situations in which we do not necessarily have
close, personal contacts with the people we are interacting with.
o Parsons (1959) argued that one of the main purposes of secondary
socialization is to liberate the individual from a dependence on the
primary attachments and relationships formed within the family group
wherein we develop instrumental relationships with people, based on
what people can do for us and what we can do for them.
o As per Berger and Luckmann, socialization characterized by formality
and anonymity.

Agencies of socialization
 The process of socialization brings order, stability and predictability to
people’s behaviour by emphasizing on right and deviant ways.
 It is a life-long process of rule-learning, built on sanction.
 The agencies of socialization impart roles, values and norms and the
sanctions they set/impose.
Family
 Adults may have to learn roles ranging from husband/wife, parent, step-
family etc. Child development begins from a range of roles: infant, child,
teenager, an adult.
 These relationships are governed by love, responsibility and duty.
 Mead refers to parents as significant others who shape basic values and
moral values and norms.
 They enforce informal sanctions surrounding facial expressions, verbal
approval, physical rewards/punishments as way to establish acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour.
 While children are socialized by being encouraged to copy behaviour, they
may also negotiate or resist socialization or receive different socialization
messages from different family members.
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Peers
 These are secondary agencies. Hughes call ‘the models we use for appraising
and shaping our attitudes, feelings and actions.’
 This includes youth subcultures e.g. hippies and punks.
 Behaviour may be influenced by things such as the fashions and general
behaviour of people our own age and status.
 We play a range of peer-related roles such as the role of a friend, colleague.
 Peer group sanctions are generally informal and include things such as
disapproving looks and negative comments, as a way of enforcing peer
pressure.
Agencies of secondary socialization include schools, religious
organizations, education and media.
Education
 Education involves 2 kinds of curriculum:
 Formal curriculum: acquired from taught courses and skills
 Hidden curriculum: acquired from experiences in school life
 School is that platform where children are separated from their parent which
poses both opportunities of demonstrating talents to a wider, non-family
audience and challenges of dealing with strangers and authority figures.
 Parsons asserts that school plays a particularly critical role in shaping
secondary socialization because it emancipates the familial attachment of a
child and allows children to internalize a level of society’s values and norms
that is a step higher than those learnt within families.
 Schools help children in adopting wider social values that promote social
solidarity and value consensus.
 Values taught within schools range from the idea of meritocracy,
competition and academic rewards, teamwork, conformity to authority.
 Conflict theorists Bowles and Gintis (2002) argue that there is a
correspondence between school norms and workplace norms.
o School values give an insight to the adult world by socializing
students into compliant workers.
o These values are backed by positive sanctions in the form of good
grades, qualifications and prizes as well as praise and encouragement
from teachers (authority figures) and negative sanctions such as
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detentions, expulsions and suspensions or a reputation of being weak

or unintelligent.
o These correlate to sanctions at work i.e. bonuses, fringe benefits or
threat of being fired from the job.
Mass media
 Impersonal relationship with media.
 Has a long-term, direct effect on behaviour e.g advertising.
 Potter (2003) suggests that short term effects of media include:
 Imitation
 Desensitization
 Learning
 Long term effects include the social construction and acceptance of values
such as:
o Consumerism: increasing pursuit of goods and services that determine
capitalist lifestyles and identities
o Fear: cognitive overestimation of crimes and terrorism and disasters
o Agenda setting: Philo et al argued that media determines the nature
and scope of a topic to be debated upon, therefore enforcing certain
approaches and values regarding certain topics e.g English newspapers
taking an anti-European Union stance, which will then be incorporated
into people’s individual value systems.
 Durkheim calls this a ‘boundary-marking’ function that
promotes acceptable and unacceptable forms of behaviour to
strengthen perceptions of expected behaviours.
 Positive sanctions include positively connotated texts and images and
negative sanctions include critical articles and public bashing.
Religion
 Religion holds its value in terms of ceremonial functions such as marriages
and funerals but also shapes important moral values.
o Ten Commandments in Christianity are reflected in global
legislatures. Unacceptability of crimes such as theft and murder
reflected in major world religions.
 Religion serves as a design for living approved by God but also serves as a
source of conflict
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o e.g. conflict between Muslims and Christians in the 11th century and a
century old Catholic-Protestant, Shia-Sunni conflicts.
 Religious values are expressed through lifestyles and appearances such as
Islamic hijab or Sikh turban.
 Many major religions promote patriarchy through their general hierarchal
structures, gender roles and values.
 However, they also promote concepts of love and care and a sense of shelter
to women in a threatening world.
 Swatos (1998) debated that religions are growing less patriarchal and more
women-friendly by showing God as loving and merciful than authoritarian
and judgmental whereas clergy now takes a facilitative than a dictatorial
role.
 Religion applies positive sanctions in the form of Hinduism’s belief in
reincarnation wherein observance of religious laws lands one in a better
reincarnated life and negative sanctions through ideas of sin and penalties in
Abrahamic religions.

2. Social control, conformity and resistance

2.1. Therole of structure and agency in shaping the relationship
between the individual and society, including an awareness
of the differences between structuralist and interactionist
views.

 Structural theories or macro-sociological perspectives such as functionalist

and Marxist perspectives argue how societies are organized on an
institutional level, wherein social institutions such as family, government,
economy determine how individuals view and behave in the world
(structural determinism).
o Society shapes how people think and behave.
o From a structuralist perspective, social action is the product of deep,
underlying forces in society that reach beyond the level of individual
consciousness and control.
 Marxists argue that capitalist relations of productions are the
main structural force in contemporary industrial societies.
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 In contrast to this, functionalist perspective argues that social

institutions perform different but interlinked functions that
create an order and structure in the society.
o However, for all structuralists, the established social order represents
a powerful force that cannot be easily opposed by individuals.
o Sociologists should adopt a macro-sociological view while studying
society.
 Interactionist or micro-sociological theories assert how individuals perceive
and shape the social world.
o People have agency and have individual consciousness and control.
o These theories refer to phenomenology, ethnomethodology and
symbolic interactionism.
Functionalism
 This perspective involves the idea that social institutions such as family,
education, religion and so on work in harmony to create an inter-dependent
society, similarly to the functions a body achieves by a synchronized
functioning of all its organs.
 Parsons argued that every social system consists of four functional sub-
systems- political, economic, culture and family which perform functional
prerequisites that address societal problems.
o Economic system: solves basic physical survival problems on the basis
of work-based relationships that produce food and shelter.
o Political system: solves problem of order, governs and controls people
and manages conflicts.
o Family system: solves the problem of socialization.
o Cultural system: solves the problem of social integration and
communion.
 They do this by developing ways such as:
o Goal maintenance: providing people with goals to achieve
o Adaptation: providing a conducive environment to achieve goals
o Integration: motivational elements to encourage a sense of belonging
in the social system
o Latency: conflict management in a social system, positive and
negative sanctions.
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 All of these result in creation of a community with predictable behaviours

and maintenance of social order based on value consensus.
 Criticism
o Do not highlight conflict at all in socialization, according to Gouldner.
Children do not accept everything that they are being taught by
parents and teachers.
o Children will not exclusively identify with adults in the formation of
their personality.
o Over socialized view of man, according to Dennis Wrong.
Functionalists emphasize socialization to an extreme extent so that
little space is left for human agency. Humans construct their own
identities as well.
Conflict structuralism
 When functionalism determines a harmonious, beneficial flow of society
due to social institutions, conflict structuralists argue that institutions divide
society by maintaining domination of powerful groups on marginalizes
groups.
 Conflicts of interest between groups run the society.
 Marxists focus on class conflict; feminists emphasize on gender conflicts.
Marxism
 Work is the essential approach of surviving in society.
 A relationship between the base (economic foundation governed by
relations of production such as owner, manager, laborer and forces of
production) and the superstructure (religious, governmental, political,
educational and media ideologies that promote oppressive capitalist
regimes) forms the basis for social order and control.
 In capitalist society, means of economic production such as the tools,
factories and machines that are used to create commodities and wealth are
owned by the minority ruling class (bourgeoisie).
 The majority is forced to sell their labour since they own little to nothing
(working class).
 This forms the forces of production (the ways through which technology
and labour can be transformed into commodities).
 The bourgeoisie reap the profits and focus on profit maximization whereas
the working class remain poor.
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 The ruling class economically and politically dominate the societal

hierarchy, as Althusser (1972) mentions their means to control ‘repressive
state apparatuses’ or ways of enforcing conformity among the working
class through police and law enforcement.
 The ruling class also uses ‘ideological state apparatuses’ such as
educational institutions teaching values of competition, individualism and
respect for authority that are needed in a capitalist workplace or religion
supporting the nobles and bureaucracy (clergy in medieval times) as well
as creating separate gods for working class individuals (Hinduism god
hanuman).
 Most people are stuck in a capitalist regime to fulfill the need to provide for
themselves and their families.
 Socialization is a form of ideological control that seeks to convince people
that the interests of the ruling class are generalizable to everyone’s interests
and need no opposition.
 Critique
o Again, Marxists too exaggerate the success of socialization.
o Children might challenge the authority of parents and school.
Neo-Marxist Conception of Socialization
 Paul Willis’ study of the lads:
 Lads challenged the school’s culture by forming a youth subculture.
 Although they resisted the school and authority of teachers, they were still
socialized according to the demands of the capitalist system.
 Gramsci’s views on dual consciousness: people are indoctrinated through
state institutions.
 However, their day-to-day experiences shape their identity as well. They
are able to see through the capitalist exploitation.

Critique:
1. Class remains important in neo-Marxist analysis of socialization. However,
there are other sources of inequality as well such as gender, race and ethnicity.
Postmodernist and feminists take them to account for ignoring these.
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Feminism
 While there are branches of feminism, they all believe that modern societies
are patriarchal and serve the interests of men rather than providing equality
for all genders.
 Interpersonal power in the forms of physical violence and exploitation of
women in families, and, cultural power in the form of male-dominated
societies is structured in a way that oppresses women in economic, political
and cultural institutions to establish patriarchal order and control in a
society.
 Liberal feminism: seeks to bring equal opportunities for men and women
without changing the system.
 Marxist feminism: argues that women are exploited by capitalism and
patriarchy.
 Radical feminism: focuses on patriarchy as the source of female oppression
on public and private levels.
 Ann Oakley:
o Distinct gender roles for men and women, which are derived from
culture rather than biology.
o Parents manipulate the self-image of children and orient the boys and
girls towards different activities. They give them different toys (dolls
for girls and Lego blocks for boys). They also make them do different
activities according to gender e.g. the boy will help the father in
plumbing while the girl offers help in dishwashing.
o In schools, too, this segregation continues to happen. Many activities
reinforce the differences between boys and girls and the patriarchal
nature of society. Reading schemes play a role in this too, according to
Lobban and Best. Different gender biases are enforced by the reading
schemes; e.g. the princess is always in a need of being saved by the
prince.
o Even media enforces gender differences. Creates stereotypical images
for boys and girls.

 Critique:
o Socialization might not involve patriarchal domination of men over
women only. Children might grow up with an egalitarian view of both
the genders in some families.
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o Audience sometimes rejects the stereotypical images of males and

females on T.V.
o Gender socialization is a complex phenomenon. There are sometimes
many contradictions and conflicts at play.
1ST CASE STUDY
Barrie Thorne
(How Gender Roles Are Developed in Schools)
1. Children aged between 5 – 11
2. Two schools

ANALYSIS:
- Gender socialization is a complex process.
- There is not a single set of roles that boys and girls learn.
- Socialization is an active and fluid process which does not solely depend upon one’s culture (great
variation in male and female behavior).
- Teachers sometimes reinforced gender differences; separated sex groups according to boys and
girls. (Contest between boys and girls during lunch time, different lines).
- Boys had most of the ground for themselves. Girls were given small spaces.

REASONS FOR SEGRATION OF SEXES

1. Segregation is more pronounced in schools rather than neighbourhoods. There is less likelihood
of teasing here.
2. Public choosing has gender as one criterion for e.g. in football, boys will choose boys to be a part
of their team.
3. When adults were not there, there was more segregation Adults usually intervened to allow
the possibility of mixed sex games.
4. BORDER work was there; girls and boys had neatly drawn borders to divide themselves in the
playground. Invasion of one gender group into another one also occurred.

Interactionism
 Based on the idea that people create and re-create society on a daily basis,
by producing and reproducing social order through their individual and
combined behaviours.
 Society exists mentally, only physically.
 Social life involves a series of encounters that give the appearance of order
and stability.
 People must develop shared definitions of a situation in order to interact.
Students defining a class lecture as a way of having fun will result in
disorder.
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 Meanings of reality can be negotiated e.g gender identities evolved over the
years.
 Schutz (1962) argued that subjective meanings give rise to an apparently
objective social world. We live in a complex, symbolic world in which the
meaning of our actions, our choice of clothes or the language we use is
always open to interpretation. Meaning of behaviour can also change as per
social context.
 Wong rejects the idea that human behaviour is governed entirely by the
effects of socialization and asserts that people exercise their freedom and
resistance from social norms therefore structuralists have an over-socialized
conception of man.
 Labelling theory in interactionist perspective argues that when we name
something such as categorizing people by their genders, we associate the
name with a set of characteristics that guide behaviour and attitude to the
people.
 For instance, women were categorized with motherhood and
marriage earlier but are now labelled with greater definitions of
career and singlehood as well.
 3 Ingredients of Socialization
o What we develop through socialization -Handel
 Empathy: putting oneself in the shoes of others.
 Communicating effectively: acquisition of language, vocabulary,
grammar.
 A sense of the self: children must be able to distinguish
themselves from others (the looking-glass self.)
 Realizing that others are impacted by one’s actions.
 Play and game stages are very important for socialization (Mead).
 Socialization agents and Peer Groups
o Children are not empty vessels to be filled as Marx or functionalists
would have liked us to believe.
 Socialization agents:
o Parents teachers
 They are made accountable for their actions towards children.
 They do have considerable choice in how to socialize children.
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 Peer groups:
o Children themselves; here the peer group acts as the reference group.
(A group whose opinion is important to the child and with which the
child compares him or herself).

 How peer groups socialize:

[Link] interactions are developed (making their own rules)
[Link] gratification (satisfaction of wants and desires).
[Link] may directly contradict with adult socialization agents friends
teach different things.

 Conflict:
o Handel’s perspective on socialization is unique because it allows for
the possibility of conflict between agents and children and amongst
agents themselves.
o Agents of socialization: family, schools, peer groups.
 Critique:
[Link] are not backed up by empirical research; it just provides a
general outline.
[Link] does not adequately explain the role of social institutions in the
process of socialization e.g. impact of the family, religion, education
system.
Structuration
 Giddens developed a perspective called structuration which outlined the
importance of both structure and action in determining the relationship
between society and individual.
 It states that as people develop relationships, the rules they use to guide
behaviour are formalized into routine ways of behaving towards each other.
 Our actions create behavioural rules and these rules are externalized. In
actuality, we make the rules but these reflect back (reflexivity) on us in a
way that demands social conformity.
 Some of these rules, when externalized, become non-negotiable such as
laws governing punishments for crimes like murder.
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2.2. Factors explaining why individuals conform to social

expectations, including sanctions, social pressure,
selfinterest and social exchange.
Conformity
 Some specialized agencies of social control, such as law enforcement
agencies apply pressure to make people abide by the law through positive
and negative sanctions.
 Social controls take 2 basic forms:
1. Formal control involves written laws and policies that apply equally to
everyone in a society. They also include non-legal rules such as the ones
in schools and factories. Deviance from these rules result in formal
sanctions such as fine, imprisonment, or being sacked from a company or
expulsion from school.
2. Informal controls reward or punish acceptable/unacceptable behaviour in
everyday settings. These controls do not normally involve written
procedures. These operate through attitudes and behaviours such as
sarcasm, disapproving looks and personal violence in the regulation of
primary relationships and group.
 Other factors that provoke conformity are the need to belong in a group and
fear of ostracism/exclusion from a group as well as self-interest.
 In order to get our needs and interests met, it is essential to
conform to social norms, pressures and get along with other
people in society.

2.3. The mechanisms through which order is

maintained, including power, ideology, force and
consensus.
Mechanisms of maintaining order
Ideology
 Sets of belief that explain the meaning of life, nature of family organization,
superiority/inferiority of certain social groups, how societies should be
organized and governed.
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 Ideologies approve or disapprove cultures and social structures and the

most widely accepted set of ideas is established as the dominant ideology.
 Marxists argue that ideologies control and manipulate audiences by
constructing realities that serve the interests of the bourgeoisie (ideological
state apparatuses).
 Adorno and Horkheimer believe that a culture industry is formed through
media which is consumed uncritically by a gullible working class, creating
‘false class consciousness’.
 If this culture industry is critically viewed by working class, then repressive
state apparatus in the form of police exerts control over them.
 Ideologies are powerful structuring agencies because they make sense of
various strands of our individual and cultural existence, externalizing them
on the social world to give meaning and stability to it.
Power
 Dugan (2003) defines power to be the active agent that has the capacity to
bring about change.
 Weber (1922) distinguishes between
o Coercive power, where people are forced to obey under threat of
punishment
o Consensual power (authority) where people are made to believe that it
is right to obey.
 Consensual power or authority can be categorized into
 Charismatic authority: for instance, religious leaders
 Traditional power: historical customs and practices
 Rational/legal power: enforcement agencies that demand control
 Power has multiple dimensions, mainly being the ability to make decisions,
preventing others making decisions and removing decision-making from
the agenda.
 Foucault (1983) argued that power in modern societies is different from
past societies because it is difficult to observe.
 People are unaware of the power that governments and certain ruling groups
have over them whereas in the past, coercive power existed in monarchy
and prison systems.
 Now, power is based on subtle ways such as surveillance and belief
systems.
 Page 22

Consensus
 Those in authority have the power to punish those who are deviant and
commit crimes in order to reinforce the boundaries of the value system.
 Consensus is also reinforced through collective rituals and ceremonies or
use of symbols such as flags or patriotic ceremonies.
 Consensus changes over time, leading to changes in laws and policies.

2.4. How sociologists explain deviance and non-

conformity, including subcultures, under-
socialisation, marginalisation, cultural deprivation and
social resistance.
Deviance and non-conformity
Subcultures
 Groups exist within social groups that are different from the wider culture.
 Miller (192) notes that working-class subcultures have been revolving
around troublesome, tough, smart, excitement, fate and autonomy.
 These features bring young working-class men into conflict with
wider, capitalist society, leading to their involvement in deviant
gangs and conflict with police since they’re perceived as being
non-conforming.
Undersocialisation
 Partial or unsuccessful socialization especially during primary socialization
results in rejection of family and societal norms and values.
 A family’s inability to devote time to socializing a child results in inability
of a child to internalize moral values or judging appropriate and
inappropriate behaviours.
Marginalization
 Some social groups are pushed to the fringes of society, both economically
and politically, thus being “marginalized” e.g. working-class youth.
 Page 23

 They are not given proper resources and facilities or economic

opportunities, their voices are not heard and constant unemployment results
in less opportunities to create a desirable future.
 The frustration behind these stressors weakens the hold of the dominant
ideology over them, resulting in resistance and deviance.
Cultural deprivation
 An argument suggests that some groups lack the attitudes and values which
spearhead their success for example the motivation to obtain qualifications
or being upwardly socially mobile lacking in the working class.
 This places them at a disadvantage since they’re socialized into preferring
immediate gratification instead of long-term, ambitious planning, leading
to underachievement at school and limitation of their prospects.
Resistance
 This involves the ways in which people combat and confront dominant
power in a society.
 Neo-Marxists have suggested that where relatively powerless groups lack
an understanding of the capitalist system but are aware and resentful of their
oppressed state, they can respond with deviant behaviour which implies
their anger.
 Young people show resistance to the dominant ideology and can
temporarily solve their problems in doing so.
 Neo-Marxists have studied youth subcultures such as mods and skinheads
and attempted to correlate their deviant style and behave with resistance.

3. Social identity and change

3.1. Social class, gender, ethnicity and age as
elements in the construction of social identity.
Class identities
 Crompton (2003) suggests that occupation is a good measure to define
simple class groupings, such as working, middle and upper class.
 Page 24

Working class
 Traditional working-class identities are centered around manual work and
the manufacturing industry.
 The working class ‘self’ contrasts with middle and upper class ‘other’.
 Crompton has suggested changes to this identity due to a decline in
traditional manufacturing industries and a rise of service industries such as
banking, computing leading to the emergence of a new working class.
 Goldthorpe (1968) suggested that working class developed a privatized and
instrumental identity however Devine (1992) argued that in spite of any
changes in the identity, the working class still retained a strong sense of
‘being working class.’
Middle class
 These identities center around occupations such as professionals including
doctors, managers, intellectuals including academic lecturers and writers,
consultants and routine service workers.
Upper class
 These identities are based on two groupings:
o Aristocracy is a relatively small group whose traditional source of
power is historic ownership of land and political connections with the
monarchy. Despite a decline in their power, they still remain in the
elite section of the society.
o Business-elite represent a major section of the upper class in society,
characterized by great income and wealth based on ownership of
significant local, national and multinational corporate firms.
 Davies et al (2008) note that the world’s richest 1% owns 40% of the total
global wealth. Of this 1%, 60% live in just two countries: USA and Japan.
Gender identities
 Connell (1987) argued that we are not born a ‘man’ or ‘woman’, these
gender identities are social constructs.
 Biological sex refers to the physical characteristics that label one to be
‘male’ or ‘female’. Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics
given to each sex.
 Lips (1993) argued that gender identities differ historically and cross-
culturally.
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 Connell suggested that there are 2 forms of dominant gender identities:

 Hegemonic masculinity: traditional forms of masculinity based on
physical and mental traits. Exuding physical strength, leadership, provider
ideology, emotionless, rational, calm and composed.
 Emphasized femininity: traditional forms of ‘complicit femininity’ that
cater to men’s needs and interest, according to Kitten (2006). Exuding
passivity, emotional states, servicing others.
Male identities
 Schauer (2004) suggested these forms of masculinity:
 Subordinate masculinity: those with physical limitations or disabilities
 Subversive masculinity: a hardworking, obedient student instead of
being a part of a gang.
 Complicit masculinity: feminized identity of a ‘new man’, taking on
unpaid housework and childcare.
 Marginalized masculinity: unemployment leading to men no longer
serving as the providers of the household due to disappearance of
traditional working class occupations.
Female identities
 Ann Oakley (1972) suggested that female identities were shaped in
childhood and there were 4 main ways of socializing children into gender
roles:
 Manipulation
 Canalization
 Verbal appellation
 Different activities
 This results in the generation of 3 main forms of feminine identities:
1. Contingent femininities shaped by male beliefs and demands.
a. Normal identities in which women play a secondary role i.e mothers,
girlfriends/wives
b. Sexualized identities through male eyes and sexual fantasies.
2. Assertive identities revolving around women breaking free from
traditional ideas of femininity and resisting male power. (Froyum, 2005)
a. Girl power identities: Hollows (2000) suggest that these emphasis
‘sex as fun’ and importance of female friendships as a way to cope
with masculinity, however older women are excluded from this.
 Page 26

b. Modernized femininities: relate to slightly older age group.

McRobbie termed ‘individualism, liberty and entitlement to sexual
self-expression’ for this identity.
c. Ageing femininities: assert the right of elderly women to be equally
fashionable and active.
3. Autonomous femininities: competition with men and breaking free from
traditional constraints. Likely to be highly educated, successful,
professional middle class, career-oriented. May get married but less likely
to involve children and tendency to form non-committal heterosexual
attachments.
Ethnic identities
 Ossorio (2003) argues that the simple biological notion of race is wrong.
 The Center for Social Welfare Research (1999) stated that we have diverse
origins.
 Therefore, ethnicity refers to a combination of cultural differences, in areas
such as religion, kinship, languages, territory, beliefs, values, norms.
 Winston (2005) suggests that ethnic identities develop when people see
themselves as being distinctive in some way from others because of a
shared cultural background and history.
 Unlike racial identities, ethnic identities can be negotiated and open to
subjectivity. Therefore, they require constant maintenance through
collective activities such as customs, rituals and festivals through material
and symbolic cultural artefacts.
 Defined in terms of their “otherness” and how other ethnic groups are
different from “us”.
 Minority ethnicities can be portrayed as a threat either through:
 Cultural ways, where minority cultures are a challenge for a typical way
of life.
 Physical: terming Muslims to be terrorists as an aftermath of 9/11.
Age identities:
 According to sociologists, age is a social construction which determines
what it means to be young, old, or any age, depending on the societal
context.
 Page 27

 In traditional societies, chronological age held little to no meaning e.g.

traditional African societies had three passages in men’s lives- children,
warriors and elders.
 In industrial societies, certain rights and responsibilities are only given to
individuals after they cross an age mark. Children unable to work and
dependent on family, elderly stopped from working.
 Age cohort: Members of an age group who share a common experience of
growing up at the same point in history.
Older people
 Respected and appreciated for their experience and guidance. ‘The Elders’
founded by Mandela in 2007 gives collective wisdom to solve the world’s
problems and inspire younger generations.
 An important role is that of grandparents or great grandparents in modern
industrial societies. Better health at a later life has led many older people to
take on this role.
 Grandparents contribute financially if they’re still working or on pension,
look after young grandchildren, play a part in primary socialization,
providing nurture and emotional support, keeping cultural traditions alive.
Children
 Philippe Aries (1962) has gone so far as to argue that modern definition of
childhood did not exist in Middle Ages. Children behaved, wore, spoke just
like any adult would.
 The invention of printing press and growth of formal education created a
new separate world of childhood.
 A child’s identity is defined in relation to adults. Adults have authority over
children and children are majorly dependent upon their elders.
 Hood-Williams (1990) argue that there are 3 types of adult control over
children:
 Space: children required to stay within restricted spaces due to concern of
safety and security
 Time: parents control children’s schedules
 Bodies: appearance, recreational activities etc. are regulated by adults
 Children often resist such forms of control, by acting up as if they’re adults
or acting down/regression into their earlier childhood states. Though both
forms can be seen as children’s avoidance of being seen as children.
 Page 28

 Postman (1994) argued that childhood has evolved with the growth of
television, computers and videos. This holds relevance to the implications
that children are prematurely exposed to the adult world of sex, violence
and so on.
o Postman cites increase in crime rates by children and their tendency to
dress and behave like adults.
Teenagers
 It was in 1950s that teenage was considered an entirely different age
bracket, when teenagers had money to spend on music and fashion that was
gearing their products towards the new target market.
 This growing affluence also created a generation gap between teenagers and
their parents’ generation since they had little to nothing in common
anymore.
 Functionalists like Eisenstadt view teenage to be a difficult passage because
it involves status anxiety.
o Since industrial societies focus on achieved status and not ascribed
status, it adds to the pressure of achieving qualifications and
milestones.
 Teenagers responded to these pressures by relying on peer groups and youth
cultures that were a vital way of transitioning into adult life, Eisenstadt
noted.
 Neo-Marxists developed a similar idea of working class youth subcultures
as resistance to capitalism with provocative music and fashion that landed
them in trouble with authority figures e.g. punk style in 1970s.

3.2. How social class, gender, ethnicity and age

identities may be changing due to globalisation,
increased choice and the creation of new/hybrid
identities
Changing identities
 Until recently, social, class, gender, ethnic and age identities were fixed and
unopposed.
 Page 29

 Globalization has served as a key social change in the development of

global economic and cultural influences. People eat American, Thai and
Indian cuisines, wear clothes imported from China and listen to Korean
music. This has resulted in fragmented cultural identities due to the fusion
of cultures worldwide.
 A society based on consumerism has an increasing choice of lifestyles and
commodities, which leads to greater standards of living and following
trends rather than simply satisfying basic needs.
o What we buy, how we wear or eat or spend leisure time reveals
something about our identity.
 Thus, it is no longer possible to sustain and control simple, centered social
identities due to the increasing freedom of people to develop and adapt
identities that suit their personal tastes and styles.
o De-centering of culture and identity.
 For instance, hybrid of British and Asian identities i.e. Brasian.
 People are still socialized into a variety of roles and norms but the social
identities no longer remain fixated on set standards of belief and behaviour.
o Individual development may be influenced by others but it is no longer
reliant or determined by others.
 Rampton (2002) suggests that identity construction in post-modernist
society involves assembling, or piecing together a sense of identity from
many changing options.
Changing class identities
 Peele (2004) argued that recent global economic changes have resulted in a
‘blurring of traditional class identities.
 Amalgamation of working class and middle-class tastes made it
increasingly difficult to define class identity.
 Savage (2007) argues that although people still use class categories as a
source of identity, the nature and meaning of these categories have become
more fluid, emphasizing greatly on individual than collective experiences.
Changing gender identities
 Benyon (2002) argues that contemporary global societies are facing a
masculine identity crisis caused by factors such as:
 Long term unemployment
 Loss of traditional male employment in manufacturing sector
 Page 30

 Lower educational achievement in contrast to girls

 Rise of female-friendly service industries
 Men feel marginalized as they no longer contribute to provider status in
their households.
o This has led them to revert back to traditional, rigidly patriarchal,
aggressive personalities that rely on heavy drinking, fighting and
violence against women.
 Feminine identities are evolving as women are moving away from
conventional domesticated roles and taking on work-based identities.
o Globalization has led to many women from developing countries
migrating to work as domestic servants, nannies which allows them to
send remittances to their families.
 However, this has also led to a rise in sex trade, often due to
trafficking.
Changing ethnic identities
 Immigration and cultural globalization has led to greater multiculturalism
in societies.
 White English Youth identities have included aspects of other cultures
relating to music (rock, pop), food (Asian cuisine), language (slang
language from subcultures), clothing.
Changing age identities
 Age identities are also changing due to globalization and increasing choice.
Older people
 The creation of greater opportunities in later life has led to greater access
for elderly people to pensions, better health care. This has granted them
better financial autonomy and ability to look after their health.
 They have also adopted new technology which allows them to remain in
touch with distant family members, therefore contributing to family and
community life.
 Extensions for retirement age have also been granted which allow older
people to actively contribute to the economy.
 Page 31

Young people and children

 As a result of falling birth and fertility rates, there are fewer children being
born in most developed countries. Consequently, the remaining children are
highly valued and modern societies have become ‘children-centered’.
 In developing countries, the case is opposite, with more children and young
people dominating the age profile of population.
o They already have or will have greater access to social media which
will grant autonomy and awareness over their lifestyles and choices.
 Society has evolved over the ages for this age demographic.
o In 20th century developed countries, it was common for people to work
during teenage years and marry in early twenties.
o However, the period of compulsory education has been extended
which also encourages the pursuit of higher education. This and the
rising cost of housing and mortgages has pushed them to continue
living at their parents’ home, leading to greater dependency on elderly.
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ho a r 2
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Research methodology
1. Types of data, methods and research design
1.1. The differences between primary and secondary
sources of data and between quantitative and qualitative
data.
Types of data
 Primary data involves information collected personally by a
researcher such as questionnaires, interviews and observational
studies.
o The researcher has greater control over the reliability and
validity of the data as well as the representativeness of it.
o However, it can be time-consuming and expensive to design and
conduct if it involves a large sample.
o There may be difficulty gaining access to the target group.
 Secondary data is data that already exists in some form such as
documents or previous research completed by other sociologists.
o The researcher is able to save time, money and effort by using
existing data such as official government statistics about crime,
marriage or divorce.
o There may be situations where secondary data is the only
available resource, such as suicide rates.
o Official statistics may be highly reliable and representative.
o Nevertheless, it is not always produced with the needs of
sociologists in mind and official definitions about social
institutions and behaviour may be unreliable and varied.
 Personal diaries may not be the most reliable or
representative source.
 Page 36

Quantitative and Qualitative data

 Quantitative data exists in the form of a raw number (total
population), a percentage (70% South Asians in Alberta, Canada) or
a rate (birth rate, crime rate).
o This type of data allows sociologists to make statistical
comparisons and correlations to test their hypothesis as well as
detect changes in a longitudinal study.
o The standardization of questions in quantitative research makes
this data more reliable since it is easier to replicate the study
while ensuring objectivity.
o But it is to be noted that quantitative research is based usually
on artificial social setting to control the data collection such as
observing behaviour in a laboratory via behaviour checklist.
 Thus, it is not possible to collect in-depth, ecologically
valid data through this approach.
 Qualitative data aims to capture the quality and cause of people’s
behaviour.
o Ventakesh (2009) studied a young gang from the lens of its
members in USA, Goffman (1961) assessed the experiences of
patients in a mental institution and how they felt or behaved
there.
o The aim of this research approach is to allow participants to talk
and act freely to capture their complex reasons for behaviour via
methods such as participant observation, which increases the
validity of the data.
o This allows researchers to have greater freedom to study people
in natural, realistic settings.
o Qualitative research’s emphasis towards intensive study on
smaller groups limits its representativeness and makes the
research difficult to replicate, leading to a lower reliability.

 Inductive methodology: Gathering statistics for evidence and giving a theory

on the basis of these.
 Page 37

 Deductive Methodology: Give a theoretical hypothesis first and then testing it

against the evidence.

1.2. The strengths and limitations of different

secondary sources of data, including official statistics,
personal documents, digital content and media sources.
Historical Sources
 Any relevant pieces of information from the past. Can be newspaper
clippings, journals, articles of previous years, and census of
previous years.
 Advantages:
o Very useful for comparisons.
o Analyze phenomenon in different time periods.
o E.g. Laslett’s work on preindustrial parish records. In his work
on family, he researched on how common nuclear family and
extended family were in pre-industrial times
o E.g. Anderson using census data while researching on family.
o Anderson advocates combining quantitative studies with
descriptive analysis.
 Disadvantages:
o Open to interpretation of researchers. Thus, affected by their
assumptions. Have to be used with extreme care. Many are not
readily available.
o Many are not preserved properly.

Official statistics
 An example can be Durkheim’s study (1897) which identified distinct
patterns to suicidal behaviour based on a comparative analysis of
official suicide statistics in different societies.
 Page 38

 Statistics on suicide, crime, unemployment, birth, divorces etc are

recorded by law and are considered to be ‘hard evidence’ since there
is clear record available.
 These statistics can be considered ‘soft’ evidences when the
definition of such social incidences is not precisely defined or their
validity is under scrutiny when governments change the definitions
or statistics to suit their mandate. Systematically distorted by
society’s power structure.
o Irwin and Miles →stats are not completely distorted but are
manipulated.
 e.g. Right wing Margaret Thatcher – official stats distorted
in 80’s → unemployment figures, welfare work etc.
o Moreover, crimes that are not reported or recorded never make
it to the official records.
Personal documents
 Personal documents such as letters, diaries, oral histories,
autobiographies, photographs, newspapers, books help the researcher
save time, money and effort during data collection.
 Historical documents help contrast how people once lived, with
contemporary ways of living in order to track and understand social
change.
 Samuel Pepys’s documentation of life in England during the 1660s,
Anne frank’s diary during the 2nd world war provided extensive
insight about people and their daily lives.
 Such documents are analyzed on their literal meaning and hidden
meanings i.e. implicit hopes, fears, beliefs of whoever produced them.
 They are not always accessible and can be fabricated, incomplete,
inaccurate or unrepresentative.
o Digital sources can be subject to change; old websites
becoming inaccessible or data being lost during technological
updates (floppy disks are no longer used).
 Page 39

Stuart Stein-Internet as a Secondary Source

 Authorship: We should be aware of who the author of the web page
is or who the compiler is.
 Authority of the Author: Author must be reliable. Academics, think
tanks, government agencies have authority. Research experience,
publications.
 Authority of the material: Does the material represent the sources
cited. The material put forward should be reliable. Think tanks,
universities have information which can be trusted. But we should be
careful about disclaimers.
o → Citation
 Authority of the Site/Organization: The perspective of the research.
The info being provided. Are we using a non-official website?
 Currency: It should not be outdated. Should hold affinity with current
times.
 Pressure groups: No pressure groups, political parties should have
had impacted the research.
Evaluation →Assessing Secondary Sources
o Scott: 4 Pointer Paradigm
 Authenticity: Completeness → Translation should be
reliable. No missing pages. Soundness and reliability.
Authorship: Whoever claims to be the author of the work
should be the real author of it. No problem with the
authors.
 Credibility: How accurate the documents are. How
distortion free are the sources? They should not be
deceiving the readers. In a sincere document, the author
genuinely believes what he wants to write. Sometimes,
faulty memory impacts the accuracy.
 Representativeness: It should be typical, so that
generalizations can be made. Sample of the doc must be
representative.
 Page 40

 Meaning: Implies the capacity of the researcher to

understand the document. Many a times, the document is
literally not clear. This might make interpretation tricky.

1.3. The strengths and limitations of different quantitative

research methods, including questionnaires, structured
interviews, experiments and content analysis.
Questionnaires
 Questionnaires consist of written questions that are either
administered through postal method in which the respondents fill it
privately, in the absence of the researcher or via structured interviews
where the researcher asks questions to respondents in person.
 Questionnaires involve close-ended or pre-coded questions whereby
the researcher limits the responses that can be given (“do you own a
sociology textbook? Yes, no or unsure?”).
 The open-ended questions probe deeper and generate a limited form
of qualitative data (“what do you like about studying sociology?”).
 Pre-coded questions make it easier to quantify data because the
options are already limited and easier to count.
o These are useful when the researcher needs to contact a large
sample quickly and efficiently.
o These are highly reliable since standardized questions are easier
to replicate and involves less risks of biased responses.
 A limitation exists in the form of a low response rate which can result
in a carefully designed sample turning unrepresentative.
 The questionnaire format also makes it difficult to examine complex
issues and opinions.
 The researcher has no way of knowing whether a respondent
interpreted a question properly or can do less to nothing if questions
are ignored or poorly responded.
 Leading questions can distort the honest opinions of respondents.
 Page 41

 These limitations can be avoided through conducting pilot studies.

 Designing a Questionnaire
o Agreeing upon a workable definition.
o Agree upon the definition of the phenomenon being researched
upon e.g. class consciousness
o Operational definition created
o Establish indicators of the phenomenon that I intend to measure.
 The income being earned
 Prestige attached to a job
 Housing locality
 Design questions based on the indicators of the phenomenon.
o The problem with open ended questionnaires is that it's difficult
to quantify them. Therefore we use coding; → you prepare the
prospective responses of the respondents first and then after the
questionnaires are completed, categorize them in different
categories → helps to enhance reliability.
 Coding: Involves identifying a number of categories into
which answers can be placed.
Structured Interviews
 Structured interviews avoid reliability problems such as respondents
misunderstanding questions or not answering questions since the
interviewer is there to document the responses and explain any
questions.
o However, these involve lack of anonymity which results in
interview effect whereby the respondent provides desirable
answers to please the researcher or the researcher effect when the
relationship between researcher and respondent create biased
responses (aggressive or gender/class/ethnicity biased
researchers).
o Expensive in terms of money and time.
 Page 42

Experiments
 Experiments involve testing the relationship between different
variables.
 The researcher manipulates independent variables to see whether they
produce a change in dependent variables that are not changed by the
researcher
 Correlations occur when two or more things happen at roughly the
same time (suggest a relationship).
 Causation involves the idea that when one action occurs, another
always follows. These generate predictability of behaviour.
 Two ways to separate correlation from causality:
o Test and retest a relationship. The more times a test is replicated
with the same result, the greater the chances that the relationship
is causal.
o Use different groups (experimental group, control group)
 Laboratory experiments take place in a closed environment where
conditions can be precisely monitored and controlled.
o This ensures that no uncontrolled variables affect the
relationship between dependent and independent variables.
o Therefore, these involve an artificially created situation thus
lacking ecological validity.
o Laboratory experiments are easier to replicate than field
experiments due to their standardized conditions.
o Laboratory experiments have a high risk of the Hawthorne
Effect wherein people’s behaviour changes to a more socially
desirable one after they get the awareness that they’re being
observed.
 Mayo (1993) studied workers in Hawthorne factory at
Chicago and noticed that the work rate of the workers
increased because they knew they were being studied
despite adverse working conditions.
 Page 43

o If subjects are not informed about the nature of experiment

before it’s carried out, it raises ethical issues.
o Difficult to isolate effects of one variable. In laboratory
experiments, similar samples of things can be collected and
experimented. But in society, similar humans cannot be
collected.
o Not possible to fit a society into a laboratory. Not possible to
study social change in a lab.
 Field experiments are more appropriate for sociological research
since they are not conducted in an artificial setting.
o Since it is not possible to control all variables in a real
environment, this kind of experiment establishes correlations
rather than causation.
o Field experiments generate greater in-depth validity about
everyday behaviour.
 Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) conducted a study of low educational
achievement in children.
o The IV: expectations teachers had about the ability of their
students.
o DV: students’ level of achievement.
o Rosenthal and Jacobson pretended to be psychologists who
could identify students who display dramatic intellectual
growth, via sophisticated IQ test (manipulating IV).
o In fact, they randomly classified some students as ‘late
developers’ and informed the teachers of their ‘findings’.
o They retested the students later and discovered that the IQ score
of the students whose teachers believed were ‘late-developing
high flyers’ significantly improved.
 One area of study which has used experiments is the media and
violence. STUDY BY BANDURA
o Three groups of children were all shown the same film of a man
beating up a bobo doll.
 Page 44

o In the first group, a man criticized the man for his actions.
o In the second group, an adult praised the man.
o In the third group, no body entered the room.
o The children were all placed individually in a room full of toys
which also included the bobo doll.
o It was found that the group in which the adult criticized the man
for his actions, the children were less likely to be aggressive
toward the doll.
Content analysis
 Content analysis has both quantitative and qualitative forms.
 Quantitative analysis of media texts uses statistical techniques to
categories and count the frequency of people’s behaviour using a
content analysis table or grid
 e.g. Meehan (1983) studied stereotypical roles played by female
characters in soap operas.
 Content analysis can identify underlying themes and patterns of
behaviour that may not be immediately apparent.
 ‘Concept mapping’: Page (2005) tracked how media professionals
portrayed global warming in terms of ‘natural’ or ‘social’ causes.
 Reliability may be limited in content analysis because researchers
must make subjective judgements about what they are counting and
what categories they’re analyzing.
 Content analysis does not tell us very much about how or why
audiences receive, understand, accept or ignore themes and
patterns discovered by the research.
 Types:
o Formal analysis
 Emphasis is on objectivity and reliability.
 Classification system is made of the features and these
features are then counted e.g. Lobban studied reading
schemes of school children to identify gender stereotypes
in them.
 Page 45

 –VE: simply counting the number of items tells you

nothing about their importance. Also, no attempt is made
to understand how the audience interprets the messages.
o Thematic analysis
 Meant to understand the intentions behind mass media
documents
 You pick a specific theme of the reportage and then
analyze it in detail e.g Wolby and Soothill studied how
rape was reported by newspapers. There was a tendency
to identify rape with public places. Rape by partners and
friends was ignored.
 –VE: do not use scientific samples.
 –VE: examples that fit the preferred interpretation of the
researcher are used
 –VE: does the audience interpret the messages in the same
way?
o Textual analysis
 How different words are put together so that the reader
interprets them e.g Glasgow Media Group’s study of
reports of strikes, strikers were presented as unreasonable
whereas the management was presented favorably.
 Involves semiology: how signs relate to different cultures
 –VE: relies on researcher’s interpretation
o Audience analysis
 Focus on the responses of the audience and tells the
interpretation of the researcher and the audience e.g
Morley studied how in “Nationwide”, the shopkeepers
thought that the news coverage was biased while the
bankers praised the same coverage.
 –VE: people will not be open about their responses to
mass media content with the researcher.
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o This raises questions whether all observed behaviour can be

neatly categorized.

1.4. The strengths and limitations of different qualitative

research methods, including overt and covert participant and
non-participant observation, unstructured interviews, semi-
structured interviews and group interviews.
Observational studies
 Observational methods are based on the idea that data is more valid
if they are gathered by seeing how people behave, rather than trusting
that people do what they say they do.
 Participant observation is when the researcher takes part in the
behaviour being studied. Weber called this ‘Verstehen’; to understand
by experiencing.
o Mead (1934) described it as the researcher’s ability to take the part
of the other and see things from their viewpoint (empathy).
 Research cannot be replicated. Simply trust the researcher’s claims.
 Overt participant observation involves participating with people who
know they are being studied.
o The researcher joins the group openly, consensually and has the
cooperation of group members being studied.
o It is impossible to replicate and can be difficult for researchers to
accurately record behaviour while they are in the middle of it.
o Recording data is relatively easy because the group understands
the role of the researcher.
o The researcher can gain access to all levels of hierarchal structures
by asking questions, taking notes openly, capturing a highly
detailed picture of their lives, thus increasing validity of the data.
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o The researcher may use sponsorship to get access to a group e.g.

Ventakesh (2009) was sponsored by a group leader ‘JT’ while he
observed the black American gang and gained further access into
it.
o Less risk of involvement in unethical, criminal, dangerous
behaviours.
o Time-consuming, Ventakesh (2009) spent 8 years studying a
single gang in USA.
o Risk of Hawthorne effect.
o Without full participation, researcher involvement might be too
superficial to allow a true understanding of the behaviour.
 Covert participant observation involves the researcher’s secret/covert
entry into the group so the subjects are unaware that they are being
studied.
o The researcher must balance the roles of researcher and
participant without revealing their true role to other group
members.
o May be the only way to study people who would not normally
allow themselves to be researched.
o Avoids the observer effect.
o Through personal experience, the researcher gains insight into the
meanings, motivations, dynamics within a group.
 Criminal or deviant groups: Ward (2008) was a member
of the rave dance drugs culture when she began her 5-year
study in London nightclubs, dance parties, bars, pubs. Her
knowledge of the dance scene gave her access to that
culture.
 Closed groups: Lofland and Stark (1965) secretly studied
the behaviour of a religious sect because this was the only
way to gain access.
 Page 48

 Defensive groups: Ray (1987) studied Australian

environmental groups who would have been suspicious of
his motives if he had opted for overt observation.
o Goffman’s study of a US mental institution identified 3 major
problems for covert participant observers:
 Getting in: Entry to some groups is by invitation only.
Some groups have entry requirements, to study
accountants or doctors, one needs to have that educational
qualification. Characteristics of the observer must match
those of the observed. A man cannot participate covertly
in a group of female nuns.
 Staying in: once inside, the researcher may not have
access to all areas so the researcher has to quickly learn
the culture and dynamics of a group if they have to
participate fully. If a researcher lacks the insider
knowledge, their true identity may be revealed. One
downside to this is that the researcher might get so
engrossed in being a native, that they stop documenting
and being an objective observer, which can raise doubts
about the validity of the research.
 Getting out: it can be difficult to stop participating. A
criminal gang member cannot simply leave.
 Non-participant observation: Observing the subjects from a distance
so that they are unaware of being observed.
o The ethical issue of consent may not be a problem here e.g. taking
consent from everyone to observe behaviour in a mall or a public
event would not be possible.
o Researcher does not become personally involved in the behaviour
being studied.
o Access is one practical advantage of this observation. It allows
research on people who may not want to be studied because their
behaviour is illegal, secret or embarrassing.
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o Subjects can be objectively studied in a natural setting.

o Cannot be easily replicated because the structure of a group may
change over time.
o Data fails to capture the depth, richness and personal details of
their behaviour.
Interviews
 Unstructured interviews enable researchers to acquire an accurate and
detailed understanding of how people think and feel.
o The researcher must establish strong rapport with respondents,
this way, sensitive issues can be explored in depth.
o However, this requires strong skill and investment in terms of time
to conduct and analyze the generated data.
o The little interference of the researcher during the interview can
lead the conversation into irrelevant areas.
o Reliability is low since there are no standardized questions that
can be replicated.
o The interview effect can also take place.
 Semi-structured interviews allow a respondent to talk at length and in
depth about a particular subject.
o The interview has a structure of the areas the interviewer wants to
focus on, but no predetermined list of questions.
o Open ended questions are frequently used in this style of
interviews, usually arising naturally from whatever the respondent
wants to talk about.
o New knowledge and ideas can be picked up from the respondents
during such interviews which unveil what someone really means,
thinks or believes.
 Insightful information can increase the validity of data.
o Carrying out such detailed interviews and analyzing in-depth data
can be time consuming.
 Page 50

o A researcher has no way of knowing whether someone is telling

the truth or if there are unintentional errors in the information
provided.
o Finally, these interviews lack standardization, the same questions
cannot be applied to all respondents which makes generalization
difficult.
 Group interviews involve respondents gathering to discuss a topic
decided in advance by the researcher.
o The success of group interviews depends on an interview structure
with clear guidelines for the participants, to avoid arguments
within the group, and predetermined questions through which the
experiences of participants can be explored.
o Gibbs (1997) argues that interaction within the group is pivotal to
give unique insights into people’s shared understandings of
everyday life.
o The skill of the researcher who must try to ensure that the
discussion is not dominated by one or two individuals.
o The researcher can control the pace and extent of the discussion,
plan a schedule that allows them to focus and refocus the
discussion, ask questions and change the direction of discussion,
create a situation that reflects how people naturally share and
discuss ideas.
 All of this is imperative, but requires considerable skill as
well.
o The sample can quickly become unrepresentative if people do not
show up.
o Group interviews also run the risk of simply reflecting a group
consensus rather than revealing what individuals really believe.

1.5. Stages of research design, including deciding on

research strategy, formulating research questions and
hypotheses, sampling frames, sampling techniques, pilot
 Page 51

studies, operationalisation, conducting research and

interpreting results.
Research design
 Oberg (1999) suggests 4 linked stages of research design:
o Planning the strategy: what to research and how to research it
(research hypotheses or questions).
o Information gathering involves identifying a sample to study,
conducting a pilot study and applying research methods to collect
data.
o Information processing relates to the idea that gathered data has to
be analyzed and interpreted.
o Evaluation involves both an internal analysis that probes how the
research was conducted and external analysis by which
conclusions are reported to a wider public audience for their
assessment and criticism.
 Research topic is based on factors such as:
o The personal interests of the researcher
o Current interest in the topic among scientific community or society
in general
o Whether funding can be obtained
o Practical factors such as access to respondents
 If a hypothesis is used in a study, for example Ginn and Arber’s
(2002) analysis of how motherhood affects the lives of graduate
women was based on the hypothesis ‘The effect of motherhood on
full-time employment is minimal for graduate women’- it must be
tested using suitable and often quantitative research methods.
 If a research question is used, it must be capable of generating
high levels of descriptive data- Conway’s (1997) examination of
parental choice in secondary education was based on the question
‘Does parental choice help to strengthen the advantage of middle
classes over the working class?’
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 The researcher needs to identify the people who will be the

subjects of the research through any sampling technique.
o A sample is a relatively small number of people who belong to the
target population e.g. studying 1000 doctors across India and
generalizing the conclusions on all doctors in India if the sample is
representative enough.
o Constructing a representative sample requires a sampling frame
which is a list of everyone in a target population, such as electoral
or school register. It may be denied to a researcher due to legality,
confidentiality and privacy concerns.
Sampling techniques
 Random sampling is based on the random selection of names
from a sampling frame so everyone has an equal chance of being
chosen.
o Similar to a lottery.
 Systematic sampling is a variation on simple random sampling that
is often used when the target population is very large.
o For a 25% sample of a target population containing 100
names, every fourth name will be chosen.
 Stratified random sampling avoids problems of a biased or under-
represented sample by stratifying the target population into groups
whose characteristics are known to the researcher, such as different
age groups. Each group is then treated as a separate random sample.
 Stratified quota sampling is on an opportunity basis with regard to
the characteristics of the respondents in order to construct a sample
o e.g. if 20 men are needed for the sample then a quota for 20
men is established, upon completion no further men can be
selected.
 Non-representative sampling is done when the researcher is
interested in the behaviour of the group itself than what it represents
o e.g. Ventakesh’s study of the black American gang.
 Page 53

 Opportunity sampling is used when no sampling frame is available

and the researcher knows little or nothing about the characteristics
of their target population.
o Goldthorpe et al (1968) wanted to test the claim that the
working class in the UK was hard to distinguish from the
middle class. The best opportunity sample consisted of highly
paid car-assembly workers in Luton because of their affluent
lifestyle.
 Snowball samples work on the principle of rolling up more and more
people to constitute a sample over time, like rolling a snowball.
o Researcher identifies someone in target population who then
suggests more people willing to participate in the study and this
goes on.
o Unrepresentative.
 Pilot study is a mini version of a full-scale study.
o It tests the feasibility of carrying out such a study and if it is
going to be worth large amounts of time, money and effort. It is
helpful in working out the resources such as staffing and
finance.
o The results of a pilot study can be used to demonstrate to
funding bodies.
o It is also used to pre-test a research method such as a
questionnaire to identify problems of bias, unreliability,
ambiguity.
 Operationalization is a key element of research in which sociologists
need to operationalize definitions of terms and phenomenon in order
to measure the responses of their subjects.
o For example, social class can have various interpretations so a
researcher needs to have an operationalized concept to measure
the respondent’s social class background.
 Page 54

 The researcher looks for common themes and trends in the data and
will reflect on the data to check whether data supports the hypothesis
or not.
 Once the data has been analyzed and interpreted, the data can be
presented in terms of:
o Findings
o Conclusions
o Limitations
o Suggestions for further research
o Improvements to the research design
2. Approaches to sociological research
2.1. The use of approaches drawing on different research
methods, including case studies, social surveys,
ethnography and longitudinal studies.
Case studies
 Case study is a technique comprising of an in-depth, qualitative study
of a particular group or ‘case’.
 The focus on a single group studied over time provides great depth
and detail of information that has greater validity in contrast to simple
quantitative studies.
 Helps to uncover the meanings that people give to everyday
behaviour, often via participant observation.
 Large-scale, in-depth case studies can take a lot of time, effort and
money.
 Intensive and detailed nature of case studies demands highly skilled
researchers who may spend months or years living and working with
their subjects.
 Difficult to generalize from small groups or few cases.
Surveys
 Social survey produces a snapshot of behaviour at any given time.
 Page 55

 Qualitative forms of cross-sectional surveys are generally descriptive,

looking at a certain population characteristic such as suicide, income,
poverty, applied to a single region.
 Quantitative forms are commonly used and analyze both correlations
and causations between different phenomena.
o Durkheim’s study of suicide used cross sectional surveys taken
from different societies to build up a comparative analysis of
variable suicide rates.
 Both types of surveys require representative samples in order to make
generalizations about behaviours.
 These surveys focus on identifying groups that share broad
similarities such as income, education and gender.
 They measure differences using a single variable such as death or
suicide rates.
o For example, whether people with higher level of education
have higher rates of suicide than those with a lower level of
education.
Ethnography
 Ethnography achieves a detailed, in-depth understanding of a group
of people or of a social situation.
 Ethnography can use different qualitative research methods.
Unstructured interviews, participant observation and qualitative
documents.
 May involve collecting some quantitative data, but it mostly involves
qualitative data since the research is based on the individual's
subjective state of mind.
 E.g. Paul Willis's study of lads. Martin Mac and Ghail studied
masculinity in a working-class school. His study focused on how
males see their sexuality and it tried to improve the self-image of
homosexual men.
 Page 56

Longitudinal studies
 Longitudinal studies include tracking changes among a representative
sample over time, from a few months to many years.
 Carried out at intervals over a significant period of time.
 Examples of this research are:
o Health and Education survey studied every child born in and
between 3rd -9th March 1958
o West and Farrington’s study of 411 British school boys tried to
determine factors causing delinquency,
 Researcher remains removed from the study group and contacts
during set intervals only.
 Longitudinal studies allow the researcher to identify and track
personal and social changes over long periods, revealing hidden
trends.
 Based on large, representative sample.
 Sample attrition (number of people who drop out from the original
sample over time) may occur since subjects may lose interest, may
die or move away without leaving contact details. This happened in
British Household Survey as the researchers lost half of their
respondents in 10 years.
 Give a quick look at behaviour at any given moment during intervals,
so doubts on validity and depth may be raised.

2.2. The mixed methods approach to research, including

triangulation and methodological pluralism.
Mixed methods approach to research
 Methodological pluralism includes combining methods that produce
quantitative and qualitative data to improve research reliability and
validity.
o Each methodology complements the other.
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o Qualitative research might be used to generate hypothesis in

quantitative research. Operationalize concepts.
o Sometimes research gives unexpected results which are hard to
explain. Methodological pluralism works best in this case. E.g.
Sutton and Rafaeli conducted a study in USA of how often shop
assistants smiled during work. They got different results than
their expectations and in order to explore the quantitative data
further, participant observation and unstructured interviews
were done.
 Triangulation is the means through which methodological pluralism
is put into practice.
o E.g. Using two methods or more such as a quantitative interview
that can be balanced by qualitative participant observation.
o Denzin (1970) suggests that this allows the researcher to offset
the weaknesses of one method with the strengths of another.
o Methodological triangulation can involve any combination of:
two or more researchers using the same research technique, one
researcher using two or more research techniques, two or more
researchers using two or more research techniques.
 If different researchers using the same research method arrive at the
same results, this confirms the reliability of the data. Increases
confidence in research findings.
 Alternatively, using researchers from different ethnic, gender, class,
age groups can help check for factors such as observer and
interviewer bias that may reduce reliability and validity.
 Data triangulation involves gathering information through different
sampling strategies- such as collecting data at different times, in
different contexts from different people.
o Ventakesh gained data about drug dealing and other gang
behaviours from both those involved and his own experience of
living in their world.
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o Barker (1984) used overt participant observation questionnaires

and semi-structured interviews in her research on the
Unification Church (‘Moonies’).
o Hey (1997) studied girls’ friendships in two London schools
using a combination of participant observation and personal
documents. Some of the girls allowed her to read their dairies
and she was also given access to the notes passed by the girls in
the classroom.
 It must be kept in mind that triangulation adds another dimension of
time, effort (more researchers required) and expense to research.

2.3. The positivist approach, with reference to

scientific method, objectivity, reliability and value-
freedom.
 Positivist approach asserts that it is both possible and desirable to
study social behaviour using similar methods employed by natural
sciences.
 Sociology is like science. Institutions represent behaviour at macro
level of society where social action is decided by structural forces.
 Involves systematic observation, accurate testing, quantitative
measurements that create reliable knowledge.
 Scientists must be personally objective i.e. they do not participate in
the behaviour being studied and remain value free (do not let their
personal beliefs and biases influence their research).
 Questionnaires, structured interviews, experiments offer greater
reliability than qualitative methods.
 Primary research goal is to explain, not describe, social phenomena
and discover the general rules that decide individual behaviour.
 Emphasis on establishing causality.
 Page 59

2.4. The interpretivist approach, with reference to

verstehen, meaning, subjectivity and validity.
 Interpretivists believe that social reality is formed through the
interaction of people who have consciousness.
 People are able to exercise free will over the choices they make about
how to behave in different situations, rather than simply react to
structural stimulation.
 Behavioural rules are context bound; they change in subtle ways
depending on the situation.
 Society does not exist in an objective form, it is something ‘in here’
to be understood and experienced.
 Seeing the social world through the eyes of others involves empathy
(Max weber referred to this as verstehen).
 The aim of interpretivist research is to help respondents ‘tell their
story’ wherein the researcher understands and explains their
behavioural choices.
 Greater emphasis on achieving validity.
 Positivists’ objective detachment is rejected by interpretivists.
 Lynch’s (interpretivist) rat brains experiment
o Whenever a slight abnormality was discovered in the
photographs/slides of brains, it was dismissed as being caused
by the research process itself. It was not taken to be a part of the
brains.
o Hence in deciding the findings, the scientists were influenced
by the existing theories and their own expectations. Therefore,
they were not objective in their analysis.
 GOULDNER (interpretivist)
o All sociologists commit themselves to some domain
assumptions.
o For e.g. functionalists think that social problems can correct
themselves.
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o Values will affect your research process as well as the

conclusion that is adopted.
o
has religion gone out of the public place? Depends again on
your values. Evidence has been used to either supplement or
contradict the theory of secularization.
o Gouldner said you should be open about the values you are
coming from.
o Let our values influence research. Some good will come out of
it.
o Facts and values cannot be separated in sociological research.
o You act out irrationally if you deny the effect of values in your
research. The readers will judge you.

2.5. The debates about whether sociology can/should be

based on the methods and procedures of the natural
sciences and the role of values in sociological research.
Defining science
 Science is inclined towards factual and objective knowledge than
opinions, assumptions or faith.
 It involves identifying a problem to study, collecting information
about it and offering an explanation for it.
 Reliable and valid.
 Karl Popper (Positivist)
o Scientists should keep on searching for evidence which
disproves their theories rather than attempting to find evidences
to prove them. If a theory is not disproved for a considerable
amount of time, only then should it be classified as ‘reasonably
truthful’.
o Sociology should use a deductive rather than inductive method.
In deductive reasoning, a conclusion is reached reductively by
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applying general rules which hold over the entire discourse; in

inductive reasoning, the conclusion is reached by generalizing
from specific cases to general rules.
o Science cannot deliver a final truth because of the possibility of
falsification.
 Roger Gomm (interpretivist):
o Criticizes Darwin’s theory of evolution.
o Evolution is a gradual process, according to Darwin. It was
through natural selection which determined which animal was
fit for survival and this is how species evolved.
o Gomm says that theories are not influenced by the pursuit of
objective knowledge; rather they are based on social factors.
  Not all the evidence points out that there was a
natural selection or gradual evolution e.g. fossil records.
  British Empire used Darwin’s theory to justify its
colonization. Justified the colonization of non-western
people on the grounds that the British Empire would
civilize them.
o Hitler used the concept in his portrayal of the Aryan race as the
Super race.
o The survival of the fittest theory neatly fitted into the Victorian
capitalist ideology of free market capitalist economics.
o Roger Gomm suggests most scientists and social scientists try
to prove rather than falsify theories and that their ideas should
be viewed in the social context from which they emerged.
o Gomm cited the example of Darwin and his theory of evolution
to explain his position. Gomm says that Darwin’s theory of
natural selection and the competitive struggle for the survival of
the fittest were not supported by all of the evidence. Darwin
missed the opportunity to falsify aspects of his theory.

SOCIOLOGY AND SCIENCE

Positivists Interpretivists
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1. Natural science uses Objective study of society is

objective methods and not possible.
these methods can be
applied to social sciences.
2. They believe that social  Even statistics are a product
facts can be objectified, of human mind which are quite
quantified and subjective.
measured.
3. Laws of human behavior  Unchanging and universal
can be discovered. laws of behaviour that are
applicable to humans cannot be
discovered.
4. Sociology will only be  Direct observation is the only
scientific if precise way of producing valid
predictions have been knowledge about social reality.
made.
 Realist view
- It combines similarities between natural and social sciences.
- There are many areas where precise predictions cannot be made
about the world e.g.
- meteorology, earth quakes, the behaviour of atoms.
 Variables cannot be controlled and measurement systems
are not there.
- There are many variables which cannot be controlled even in
natural sciences.
- Thus, sociologists cannot be expected to make precise predictions
in their academic world, as advocated by Popper.
 Human consciousness
 Being observable is not a criterion for something to be scientific.
- Movement of sub-atomic particles.
- Continental drift
- Evolution – DARWIN
 Thus interpretivists shouldn’t be blamed for studying the
unobservable motives, feelings and intentions of humans.
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X = Y + Z + W + R + 
 Correlation: X is correlated to all of these variables. All of them
determine X (interpretivists believe in correlation)
 Causality
- X=Y
- X is solely determined by Y (positivists believe in causality)
 Realists believe in both. Realists tend to combine both interpretivist
and positivist analysis. Thus, they do not rule out the existence of
causality, in addition to seeking interpretivist unobservables.

CONCEPT BOX 1.8

X = y + z + f + P
Inequality The Wealth Wage
in Tanday landlord Differential
Wala farm owning the
land
 Realists take into account all factors (variables) but then choose the
most imp one. To realists, much of sociology is scientific.
Procedural rules
 Scientific knowledge is created by following a set of procedures,
agreed by the scientific community regarding data collection and
analysis e.g. hypothetico-deductive method.
 Based on tested facts rather than untested opinions.
 Knowledge has the ability to make predictive statements.
Scientific ethos
 Merton (1942) argued that a scientific ethos is required, governing the
general conditions that research must satisfy in order to attain and
maintain scientific status.
o Universal: Knowledge is evaluated using objective, universally
agreed criteria. Personal values play no part in this process and
criticism of a scientist’s work should focus on trying to prove that
 Page 64

their conclusions are wrong or identifying weaknesses in their

study.
o Communal: Scientific knowledge must be easily accessible within
the scientific community, so that scientific understanding can
advance on a cumulative basis. Other scientists must be free to
replicate researches.
o Disinterested: Scientists should not have a personal interest,
financial or otherwise, in the outcome of their research.
Minimize the risk of researcher bias.
o Skeptical: The scientific community must continually evaluate
knowledge. Science is ‘true’ only because it has not yet been
disproved. This is contrast to other forms of knowledge, such as
religious faith which is considered by believers to be self-
evidently true.
 The earliest sociology (during the age of Enlightenment) was
positivist and asserted that sociology should be based on the same
principles as natural sciences.
 Later it was recognized that because people have an agency over their
thought, decision-making processes, it is not always appropriate to
employ the same positivist methods. Interpretivists argued that the
purpose of sociology is to understand why people behave as they do
and see the world through their eyes.
 Feminism
o The whole field of science is dominated by patriarchal
assumptions.
o Roy: There is not a “masculine” way to run scientific
experiments. However, methodological and epistemological
viewpoints are influenced by gender.
o An example of this can be biological studies featuring research
for the perfect fetus and ignoring the ones with disabilities.
Purpose of scientific inquiry tends to reflect male desire of
controlling nature.
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o However, Feminists insist that the purpose of inquiry should be

to liberate oppressed groups.
o Male-dominated research also influences our understanding of
scientific phenomena, e.g biological reductionism which just
focuses on physical characteristics while not taking social,
cultural factors into account. On the other hand, feminists will
take all factors into account.

3. Research issues
3.1. The theoretical, practical and ethical
considerations influencing the choice of topic, choice of
method(s) and conduct of research.
Theoretical research considerations
 Ackroyd and Hughes (1992) argued that we should not see these
methods as ‘tools’ that are somehow appropriate or inappropriate for
particular tasks.
 Research methods do not have a clear, single and straightforward
purpose.
 However, initial decisions about factors such as what counts as data?
o Should data be statistical or descriptive?
o Should the research test a hypothesis or simply report what
respondents say?

Practical considerations
Topic choice
 Jessop’s (2003) ‘Governance and Meta-governance: On Reflexivity,
Requisite Variety, Requisite Irony’ is perfectly acceptable for an
academic audience. It would make no sense to a non-academic
audience.
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 If the goal is to test a hypothesis, the topic is likely to be narrower in

scope than if the goal is a descriptive account.
 Topic choice is influenced by the following factors:
o Personal values: the extent to which the researcher is interested
in the topic, they may find studying crime more interesting than
education.
o Institutional: Universities and governments are important
sources of research funding.
 In UK, the Economic and Social Research Council mainly
funds university research.
 The government may want to know more about a social
issue, so as to develop better policies.
 Those who commission and pay for a study may have an
important say in the choice of topic.
o Access to research subjects and their cooperation in the
research.
 If these are denied, the researcher opts for covert
participant observation.
 Goffman (1961) pretended to be a member of the
cleaning staff in a mental institution.

Choice of method
 Interactionists tend to avoid statistical methods, mainly because they
are not trying to establish causality. Positivists go for the opposite
methodology which emphasizes on value-free data.
 Dunican (2005) argued that researchers must assess which research
methodology fits the purpose of testing a hypothesis or answering a
research question in the context of their study.
 Quantitative methods are useful when the researcher wants to
establish statistical relationships.
o Kessler’s (2000) study of the relationship between sponsorship
and small business performance.
 Page 67

 Time is another practical consideration (Ventakesh’s 8 year long

study of black American gang members).
 The amount of funding directly influences a researcher’s choice of
method.
o Questionnaires are cheaper to administer than in-depth
interviews.
o Funding levels also influence the size of research team.
o Projects with a clear practical outcome are more likely to be
funded.
 The size and structure of the group being studied is also an important
factor; questionnaires are suitable for researching large, widely
dispersed groups.
 Participant observation is suitable for small, geographically localized
groups.

Ethical research considerations

 Ethical considerations guide choices about how people are persuaded
to participate in research, and how they are physically and
psychologically protected during and after the study.
 Milgram’s (1974) study of authority featured respondents who
were convinced that they were giving electric shocks to
‘learners’ (stooges) whenever the learners gave an incorrect
answer to a question. While no shocks were given in reality,
some respondents broke down in the face of the pain they
believed they were causing.
 Unethical behaviour also involves deliberate fabrication of data or
falsification of results.
 Factors such as ethical ownership and plagiarism are also critical here.
 There are certain people who do not want to be studied
 e.g. Wallis (1977) wanted to research Scientology but the
church leaders refused him access to current members so he had
to contact former members for their opinions and experiences.
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 Tricking people into cooperating is morally ambiguous as well.

 Rosenhan (1973) suspected that doctors could not accurately
diagnose schizophrenia and sent students displaying false
symptoms into hospitals to test his hypothesis.

Legal considerations
 These are critical when the research involves observing or
participating in illegal behaviour e.g. Ditton’s (1977) study of
workplace theft.
 The researcher must decide whether it is ethical to research sensitive
criminal behaviour in the first place.
 To avoid an ethical dilemma, a researcher may choose to avoid
immersive methods such as participant observation when studying
illegal behaviours.
 Participants should also be made aware of the possible consequences
of their cooperation, such as negative media publicity.
 Relationships in such studies need to be based on trust and personal
honesty.
 If the researcher promises anonymity, revealing identities to the
authorities or media would be unethical.

Safety
 A researcher must take care not to cause distress to potentially weak
(vulnerable) people at the end of the study
o e.g. if the research involves regular interaction with elderly
people, it would be unethical to simply break contact with them
after the completion of the research, because they may have
viewed the researcher as a friend.

3.2. How research findings may be biased by the

actions and values of the sociologist and by choices
made in funding, designing and conducting the research.
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 To establish sociological knowledge, data is collected and analyzed in

an objective, value-neutral approach.
 Researchers must choose a topic influenced by their personal values
and what they deem important e.g. Pearce (1998) studied corporate
criminality in the chemical industry. Choices of studying the powerful or
the powerless bring their levels of security, danger and instability for the
researcher. For example, it is not easy to probe into the lives and social
network of people in power.
 Gatekeepers: Funding bodies may intervene in topic choice and
research methodology being employed.
 Decisions about the method of research used are also influenced by
researcher’s notions on attaining reliability and validity of the data.
o Positivists may use closed questions which would limit
respondents of a questionnaire to certain predefined response
choices.
o Interpretivists may encourage a respondent to answer in their
own words through open-ended questions.
 Values also influence data analysis and which findings to exclude or
include in the research.

3.3. Validity, reliability, objectivity,

representativeness and ethics as important concepts in
assessing the value of different research methods.

 Validity: Validity is the idea that methods and data are only
useful if they actually measure or describe what they claim to
measure or describe.
o Ecological validity: the extent to which research
methods mimic the world being studied- studying people in
realistic setting generates more ecological validity of the data.
 Laboratory experiments have very low ecological validity
due to their artificial setup.
 Covert participation has higher ecological validity
because participants are observed in ‘real life’.
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 Participant observation and unstructured interviews have

higher validity than quantitative research methods since
they get closer to the experience and perceptions of the
phenomenon being studied.
o Measure Validity: Do the tools measure the degree of the
phenomenon?
 For example: do IQ tests really measure intelligence?
o Internal Validity: Whether conclusions that present causal
relationship between two or more variables are acceptable.
o External Validity: The same results are achieved,
irrespective of origin of research. Generalizability of research.
 Reliability: How effectively a research method collects
consistent and accurate data that can be verified by repeating
or replicating the research.
o If different answers are obtained, the research is unreliable
since limited conclusions can be drawn from it.
o A way to avoid unreliability is to standardize the research
approach.
o Quantitative methods are considered reliable for this
reason. However, errors in design of the research can make
replication difficult despite the employment of quantitative
methods.
o Qualitative methods such as participant observation are
difficult or impossible to repeat, thus low on reliability.
 Objectivity: The researcher should not have any personal
stake in the truth or falsity of the behaviour being tested and
should avoid unfair influences on the phenomenon/behaviour
(maintain an objective detachment from the research).
o Both positivists and interpretivists try to achieve
objectivity however the degree of objectivity varies in both
approaches.
 Page 71

o Positivists argue that we can study objective features of

the social world because they are permanent and real.
 Therefore, the researcher has to place themselves outside
the behaviour they’re studying without letting their
personal values and biases influence the research.
o Interpretivists argue that there are many realities through
which people see and understand the surrounding world which
require subjective understanding.
 A researcher has to maintain an objective channel through
which individuals tell their story to uncover perception
about the social world. Sociologists should be open about
their values.
o Many of the founders of socio believed that socio can be and
should be value-free.
 FUNCTIONALISTS = politically conservative view.
Pro-status quo; everything is going in the right direction.
 MARX = has let his moral and political belief influence
his research.
 WEBER = focused on bureaucracy alone and was not
objective in his topic of research
o There is no prospect for a completely value-free sociology.
 The topic of research is determined by our values.
 Just by choosing the topic of research, you throw value
freedom out of the window e.g. feminists’ research on
women oppression, Marx’s study of the inequality of
wealth. Because you have chosen to focus on a particular
area of society.
 Representativeness: the ability to generalize observations
made about one relatively small group to the much larger
target population it represents.
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o Postal questionnaires or survey-based researches based on

unrepresentative samples may therefore lack external validity
since the findings cannot be generalized to a greater population.
 For some sociologists, conducting experiments on people
without consent can be ethically justifiable because this may
produce valuable findings. For others, this is scientifically and
ethically flawed because it does not measure subjective
experiences of people.
 Ch
ap
Fa t
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m er
ily 3
Page 74
 Page 75

Family
1. Perspectives on the role of the family
1.1. Functionalist accounts of how the family benefits
its members and society and how the functions of
families have changed over time, including the ‘loss of
functions’ debate.
 Murdock (1949) developed a definition of a family based on analyzing data
from 250 different societies.
 Variations in family structure:
o Horizontal family extension:
o Extension of family with members from the same generation
o Vertical family extension:
o Extension of family unit with members of a different generation
 He concluded that the family was universal whereby no society had a proper
substitute to the family
 Family had 4 characteristics:
o Common residence
o Economic co-operation and reproduction
o Adults of both sexes having a socially approved sexual relationship
o One or more children, own or adopted.
 Murdock further argued that the nuclear family is the universal social unit.
o Nuclear families consist of parents and their children (2 generations).
o He argues that nuclear family is at the heart of extended families.
o In modern industrial society, wider kin such as grandparents keep in
touch over the phone rather than regularly being there in person.
o The nuclear family is a self-contained, economic unit.
 1st exception:
o Matrifocal families headed by women excluding adult males
 Found in Central America, Mexico, Caribbean families (West
Indies)
 These families do not exhibit the features that Murdock held to
be universal
 2nd exception:
 Page 76

o Nayar community in South India-Kerala. This tribe had taali rites

whereby a woman could have as many as 12 husbands at a time. Also,
it was the mother’s brother and father who were responsible for taking
care of the children. Lastly, the husbands engaged in hunting
expeditions and only spent the night with their wives if there was no
weapon hanging outside the home
 3rd exception:
o Gay/lesbian families
 Homosexuals rearing children on their own
 These also defy Murdock’s narrow definition of a family
 Are allowed the right to marry in the UK and many states of the
USA
 Support for Murdock
o All of the above usually make up a minority of families and these are
not regarded as a norm
o These can then be seen as nuclear families breaking down
o However, Gonzales argues that a matrifocal household is the basic
building block of a family structure
 Conclusion
o The family is not universal if we go by Murdock’s narrow definition.
However, we have to remember that Murdock’s definition is outdated
and it is not true that if any family does not have Murdock’s features,
it cannot be identified as a family.
o This functionalist definition is exclusive. It is based on the idea that
families have characteristics that make them different from other
social groups e.g. educational institutes.
o Flexible enough to accommodate polygamous families.
o However, it excludes single-parent and homosexual living
arrangements.
 Later, Giddens (2006) suggested an inclusive definition that focuses on
kinship, where adult members take responsibility for childcare.
 Murdock identified 4 functional prerequisites of the family:
o Adult married or cohabiting couples remain sexually exclusive and
therefore, stable.
o Reproducing society by creating new members to replace those who
die.
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o Economic provision to ensure the survival of the family group and its
individual members. Developing a division of labour involving paid
employment and unpaid domestic work.
o Socialization involves children being taught values and norms of the
society.
 Parsons and Bales (1956) argued that in the past, family was multifunctional
however it is becoming increasingly specialized in modern societies.
o New social institutions such as education is looking over some of the
functions a family initially performed.
o This leaves family with the responsibility of primary socialization
regarding social order and system stability alongside stabilization of adult
personalities which involves adult family members providing physical and
emotional support to each other.
 Fletcher (1973) argued that contemporary families performed two types of
functions:
o Families are needed for both, childbearing and childrearing.
 This includes ensuring a child’s physical, psychological survival and
social development into adulthood (primary socialization).
 The family provides a physical and emotional home.
o Peripheral functions are still performed by families, but have been largely
taken over by other social institutions e.g. health care and recreation,
education.
 When people are ill, they are initially looked after by their family
before approaching healthcare services.
 Neo-functionalists such as Horwitz (2005) argue that the family functions
as a bridge connecting the micro world of the individual with the macro
world of wider economic society.
o Family is the best learning site because rules passed on and enforced
by people who share a deep, emotional commitment are more likely
to be effectively learnt.
o Rule-learning can be taught via social learning i.e children
observing and copying adult behaviour.
 Extended families are said to be common in traditional societies where
they carry out a wide range of functions whereas in modern industrial
societies, there has been a loss of functions.
 Between the late 18th and late 19th centuries, economic production changed
from the land-based, rural, family centric organization of pre-industrial
 Page 78

society to a capital-intensive, factory-centered organization of industrial

society.
o Leading to extended families being replaced by nuclear families that
fitted 2 crucial economic requirements:
 geographic mobility and labour flexibility
 As industrialization and urbanization became common,
people had to be mobile and move away from rural areas,
there was also a decline in favouring friends and relatives
over others (nepotism).
 The new industries demanded specific skills and knowledge,
meritocracy prevailed and status was achieved, not ascribed
anymore.
 The ‘fit’ thesis was put forward by functionalist sociologists such as
Parsons and Goode.
 Extended families were initially multi-functional, kinship based and
economically productive.
o These were economically productive due to labour-intensive
subsistence agriculture which required as many people as possible,
therefore a family collectively worked on the farm.
o The ability to move away from the extended family was limited by
the lack of railways, cars or basic road systems.
o Elderly, infirm and sick family members relied on their kin in the
absence of a well-developed, universal welfare system.
 Finch (1989) found little evidence to support the ‘fit’ thesis.
 Historical studies have also shown that the pre-industrial societies were not
dominated by extended families, but a wide range of household types.
 One alternative suggestion is that the industrialization and urbanization
first occurred in parts of Western Europe because pre-industrial family
structures were already mainly nuclear rather than extended.
 Extended families were also not common because the average life
expectancy was low (35-40 years) so the majority of adults did not live
long enough to become grandparents thus reducing the number of
vertically extended families.
 Industrialisation in UK may have been assisted by the main inheritance
system of primogeniture; whereby the first son inherited all the family
 Page 79

wealth, including the home, and younger siblings have to move to the cities
to work in factories.
 Anderson (1995) argued that no single family or household structure was
dominant during the industrialization process.
o Both reconstituted and lone-parent families existed in the pre-
industrial society.
o In fact, as towns and industries developed, extended families
satisfied numerous requirements.
 The lack of governmental assistance for sick and unemployed
led to a reliance on a strong kinship network.
 Kinship networks helped secure jobs for family members, since
many people could not read or write.
 Relatives played a role in childcare in the absence of working
parents.
 Children worked from a young age, thus they added to family
income.
 Some functions such as education, health and social care, recreation and
leisure have been claimed to be taken over by social institutions however,
it can be argued that these functions are simply modified rather than lost
completely.
o Many middle-class parents are actively involved in their children’s
education.
o Families play an important care role- non critical illnesses and
elderly people are largely tended to, within the family without
seeking professional services.
o Many families with young children share leisure and recreational
time.
 Functionalist approach was developed in the mid-20th century in USA and
can be seen as being both out of date and not applicable to all other
societies, because it is based on the experience of white middle class
Americans.
 Functionalist approach also ignores how nuclear family can block
women’s aspirations and careers by steering them into the housewife role
and limit men’s involvement in childcare due to their breadwinner role.
 It overlooks men’s dominance over decision making and abuse in a nuclear
family and the lack of support for family members from the wider kin.
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 Functionalists also tend to see socialization as a one-way process instead

of acknowledging that children can also influence parents with their
individual personalities rather than simply being “empty vessels” for
society’s norms and values.

[Link] accounts of how the family benefits

capitalism, including ideological control, reproduction
of labour and consumption.
Marxist perspective on family
 Marxists provide a corrective to the functionalist view of the family.
 Engels argued that family in the modern sense came into being after private
property was institutionalized in the aftermath of the industrialization
period.
o Private property was also passed onto heirs which is why it was
important for the parents to know who their biological children
were.
o However, marriage does seem to have a group characteristic in
pre-modern times.
 Marxists emphasis on conflict while relating family to the economy,
arguing that a family’s role is to support a capitalist system in 3 ways:
o Ideological control: Althusser (1970) argued that the family is an
ideological state apparatus through which children learn norms and
value broadly supportive of the economic and political situation.
 Zaretsky (1976) argued that socialization involves the passing
on of a ruling-class ideology with unquestioning acceptance of
the capitalist system.
o Economically families perform a productive role by producing
future workers as well as having a consumption role, according to
Althusser.
 Zaretsky also argued that families are important targets for
advertisers. Family also consumes the capitalist products and
allows the bourgeoisie to continue their production.
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o Politically the family acts as a steady force that helps maintain the
political order need for companies to function profitably.
 Zaretsky argued that the growth of privatized nuclear family
encourages family members to focus on private problems
rather than wider social stratification.
 Most men are relatively powerless at workplaces but they exert the
frustration on family members. The family is a refuge from the world of
work in a capitalist environment.
o Zaretsky argued that family acts as a mechanism for venting
people’s frustration and anger at the system. The exploitative work
environment is assuaged by the domestic setup.
 However, Marxists may be exaggerating the negative aspects of a family.
o Many households may have greater awareness and parents may
prepare their children to resist the oppressive nature of capitalism.
Neo-Marxist views on family
 Neo-Marxists focus on different types of familial capital that give
advantages and disadvantages to children of different classes.
o Cultural capital: Bourdieu (1986) uses the concept of cultural
capital: non-economic resources that can be spent to give some
families advantage over others.
 Silva and Edwards (2005) argue that middle and upper class
parents are better able to equip their children with the
knowledge and skills needed to succeed educationally and
occupationally than working-class parents.
o Social capital refers to family’s connections with a social network
and what people do for each other in these networks, or as Putnam
(2000) calls ‘norms of reciprocity’.
 Cohen and Prusal (2000) argue, high levels of social capital
involves ‘the trust, mutual understanding, shared values and
behaviour’ that tie wealthy families into networks
strengthened by mutual advantage, self-interest and
cooperation.
 Middle and upper class children similarly have greater access
to significant social networks in schools or the workplace.
o Symbolic capital relates to the characteristics that upper-class
children develop, in particular: authority and charisma.
 Page 82

1.3. Feminist responses to functionalist and Marxist

accounts of the role of the family.
Keywords
Patriarchal: Male dominance in society
Patrilineal: Descent is traced through males

 Feminists challenge both the functionalist and Marxist perspective by

emphasizing on the conflict in gender roles within families.
 They assert that the links between family and the economy are generally
indirect.
o Female family roles and responsibilities allow men to exercise
economic power through free family services paid for, by women’s
domestic labour.
 Liberal feminists argue that the situation of women can be improved by
news laws or individuals and families changing the way they live (e.g. men
doing more of the housework).
o They succeeded in getting the Equal Pay Act and the Sex
Discrimination Act passed in UK.
o Liberal feminism has been criticized by other feminists for not
recognizing that patriarchy is deeply embedded in society and that
equality cannot be achieved by passing laws but by changing
individuals.
 Liberal feminist-Jennifer Somerville
o Women have made progress with the success of feminist movement
→with lots of economic opportunities, there is equality within
marriage.
o Highlight the positive aspects of marriages and families for women.
If ¾ file for divorces, but then these remarry as well →living without
men might not be the solution. Element of desire is always there.
o She offers solutions such as introduction of new policies to help
working parents, with areas such as working hours and culture of
jobs to be improved. A change in the institutional framework e.g. by
 Page 83

increased flexibility in paid employment, it would help overcome

the inequality within marriages and parenting.
o Evaluation of Somerville’s perspective:
 Detailed empirical evidence is not present but she offers very
realistic prospects for further women empowerment within the
family
 Radical feminists assert that patriarchy ensures nuclear family
accommodating men at the exploitation of women.
o Women would be better off without it.
o Emphasis on widespread radical change.
o Men are held accountable for wars and environmental concerns and
some radical feminists declare that living separately from men in
matriarchal communities is needed.
 Marxist feminists point out how men have always been able to work long
hours because women have been doing the domestic work.
o Men cannot easily go on strike or stop working because of their
breadwinner role- this suits the bourgeoisie.
o “Dual burden (double shift)” wherein women are doubly exploited
in the workplace (public sphere) and in the home (private sphere).
o Duncombe and Marsden (1993) argued that women now perform a
“triple shift” where they invest their time and effort in the
psychological well-being of their spouse and children.
o Bruegel (1979) argued that women are a ‘reserve army of labour’-
women are called into the workforce when there is a shortage of
male labour and forced back into the family when there is a surplus.
 Margaret Benston (Marxist feminist)
o Family provides free, unlimited supply of labour at no cost to the
employer.
o Provides emotional/sexual upkeep of the labour force,
o The services of two people are bought on the wages of one. Because
the wife and the man’s whole family are indirectly involved in his
work too.
o He cannot withdraw his labour from the workforce because of his
commitment to provide for his family →this commitment acts as a
tax on the wage earners’ income.
o The family also produces a workforce with docile traits.
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o They don’t rebel →the ideological conditioning device → think

socialization of children.
o Evaluation of Benston’s perspective:
 Too deterministic in its outlook. They think that everything is
happening according to the plan they have presented.
 They fail to highlight the diversity within family life which is
based on ethnic groups, religious background, sexuality of
people etc.
 They ignore how women have improved their position by
fighting back against unequal marriage bonds.
 Black feminists mainly comprised of African American women who had
little in common with white American feminists.
o They did not see all men as ‘the enemy’ like radical feminists.
o They argued that white feminists are not sufficiently aware of the
issues stemming from racism that directly impact black women,
such as employment and discrimination.
 Difference feminists emphasise the differences between men and women,
and within different groups of women. They disagree that men and women
can be equal. There is not one pre-set experience of family life for women.
For e.g. Masai women’s family life is different from western societies. The
context matters – which implies that there is increased pluralism within
family.
o Difference Feminists
 Barry and McIntosh
 Nicholson
 Calhoun
o Barrett And Mcintosh-The Anti-Social Family
 Various forms of family life exist.
 The family is not only exploitive for women but also ruthlessly
destroys life outside family.
 Makes you alienated from the society around you.
 Considerable violence takes place within the confines of
family life [25% of violent crimes].
o Nicholson
 Traditional family is a unit which comprises parents living
with children. This is a very narrow definition. The decline in
the family within modern times is a decline in this family setup
 Page 85

 Alternative family: Matrifocal life for women within

alternative families is better as compared to traditional
families
 How so? More economic powers, More decision making
power, More control over children, However, there's always
danger of poverty lurking around.
 Disadvantages of traditional families.
 Parents have less time for children.
 Less love and companionship amongst the partners.
 Children, when abused, have little opportunity to turn
to others.
 Not inclusive of gay and lesbian relationships.
 Advantages:
 Economically viable
 Their small size encourages intimacy.
o Calhoun-Lesbian Families
 Women are exploited within families due to heterosexual
relationships which are primarily patriarchal
 Can lesbians and gays develop ‘proper families’? Excellent
egalitarian families
 Is their sexuality permissible? Yes, it is, within the western
culture
 Are they a threat to the ‘family life’ → for the conservatives,
yes it is a threat but Calhoun disagrees and says that they
contribute to diversity within family life.
 Modern family life is characterized by choice.
o Difference Feminism - Conclusion
 Very comprehensive in their presentation of different family
experiences
 Sometimes do not provide a true account of the exploitation of
women
 Feminism’s impact later provided a strong and much needed challenge to
functionalism.
o Feminists insisted on including women in research and analysis,
leading to a new focus on some previously neglected areas of family
life, such as domestic violence and the role of the housewife.
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 Radical feminist approaches overlook the fact that many women do find
motherhood fulfilling, and many men and women form strong bonds based
on mutual love and respect; not all heterosexual relationships are based on
male domination.
 Delphy and Leonard (radical feminists)
o Family acts as an economic unit → how women are marginalized
and discriminated on an economic basis within the family
o The family maintains patriarchy
o Features of the family as an economic system:
 Head of the household will always be a male.
 He has loads of power and respect. That is why he is different
from other members
 Provides economic incentives but members have to do unpaid
work for him
 Sexual, reproductive, domestic chores
 Payment in kind
 Payment to family members on status rather than work done.
(Shopping, taking them on a holiday trip etc.)
 Males control everything from resources to property
 According to Delphy and Leonard, there's cruel male domination in the
family
o Four Studies
 Three of these families are British working class families
 One is a French farming family
 According to the data collected from these studies, women
provide 57 types of unpaid services to men.
 Evaluation of Delphy and Leonard’s work:
o Data is unrepresentative, a sample size of 4 families. Only working
class families are featured.
o Are they theoretically correct? How do men really enjoy more
power than women? Do all families have a male head?
o The French farming families can hardly be representative for all
families. The women traditionally work on farms in these families
and have no independent source of income which reduces their
marital power.
 Germaine Greer (radical feminist)
o Women as daughters:
 Page 87

 Inheritance – women are not allocated resources on the same

level as men
 Educational compromise
 Sexual exploitation
o Women as wives:
 Serve under exploitative relationships
 They are primarily made responsible for housework and
childcare
 They are made to sacrifice their careers for the sake of children
 Married men are psychologically healthier than single men,
whereas single women tend to be healthier than married
women
 3/4th of divorces are initiated by women, though it is positive
because it indicates that women are no longer tolerating
unsatisfactory relationships
o Women as mothers:
 Women are made responsible to maintain a girly figure even
after pregnancy
 Women are left behind in old age homes by their own children
 Women are taken to be primarily responsible for childcare
o Evaluation
 Very sound arguments, but generalizations are sweeping.
Underrates the success of the women’s rights movement. -
Somerville
 Segregation and Matrifocal households are suggested by
Greer, however, these suggestions are not practical policy
proposals. –Somerville

[Link] and social change

2.1. The causes and consequences of changing
patterns of marriage, cohabitation, divorce and
separation.
 The cereal packet image of the family is the image of a nuclear family
with happily married parents and one or two dependent children.
 Page 88

 This is the image of the family which is shown in advertisements and

various dramas/movies in the media. A nuclear family exhibiting
immense happiness and understanding amongst the spouses. This image
of the family demonstrates middle class familial ties. Also, it was very
common in 1960’s.
 Barrie Thorne:
o This is a monolithic image. It does not hold out in reality, since
there is much diversity within family types.
o Monolithic image: The elevated nuclear family with the husband
as the breadwinner and a full-time wife as the only legitimate
family form.
 Rapoports attacked this image of the monolithic family. They said that in
1978, only 20% of the families had married couples with children and a
sole male breadwinner.
 In 1989, Rapoports argued that family diversity was a global trend.
o Diversity arises from:
 Cohabiting couples.
 Increase in divorce rates.
 Alternative couples
 Lone parent households: 2% in 1961  7% in 2010
 Single person households: 12% in 1961  29% in 2010
Marriage
 In contemporary societies, the number of marriage and the marriage rate
have been failing.
o Partly because people tend to marry at a later age or more because
people choose not to marry at all.
o Remarriages peaked in the 1980s, but as a percentage of all
marriages, remarriage has doubled in the past 50 years.
o There has been an increase in serial monogamy, when a person has
several marriage partners over their lifetime, but only one at a time.
 Demographic changes can explain the decline in marriages.
o Marriage became popular just after the Second World War in the
UK and during the 1970s. The second world war had prevented
many couples starting a family. Then there was a baby boom when
a greater than average number of babies were born over a relatively
short time, producing population growth.
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o Another explanation is that some age cohorts are more likely than
others to marry; there are peak periods for marriage.
 The UK, in common with many other industrial societies, has
an ageing population which affects marriage statistics.
 There are less stigmas attached to having children out of wedlock and there
is less social pressure to get married.
 Women have more career opportunities; therefore, they have greater
financial autonomy and less economic pressure to marry.
 Marriage is now a lifestyle choice; women are less likely to enter a
relationship that limits their ability to work and develop a career.
 Cohabitation has increased in recent years and some cohabiting couples
eventually marry, whereas some don’t.
 Self and Zealey suggest that falling marriage and rising cohabitation are
the result of more people choosing to delay marriage until later in life.
 Secularisation has led to a decline in the religious importance attached to
the institution of marriage.
 Beck (1992) argued that people in postmodern societies assess the likely
risks and consequences of their actions. The likelihood of divorce, with its
emotional and economic consequences lead to their avoidance of marriage.
 British Social Attitudes Survey: 1989 70% of the respondents said that
people who want children must marry. But in 2000, this number reduced
to 27%.
Cohabitation
 Gillis (1985) argued that cohabitation was extensively practiced in the past,
but was not legally recorded in the UK thus statistics are not very reliable.
o Over the years, surveys have identified a broad increase in
cohabitation, from 10% in 1986 to 25% in 2006.
 The causes of the increase in cohabitation include:
o Reduced social pressures to marry
o Lower levels of stigma attached to living with someone without
being married
o The wider availability of birth control and abortion.
 Smart and Stevens (2000) suggest 4 main reasons for upward trends in
cohabitation:
o Changing attitudes to marriage
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o Before marriage, some men and women move in and out of serial
cohabiting relationships to test their partners’ ability to settle down.
o Many cohabiting parents are either unwilling to enter into a legal
relationship or they believe it’s easier to leave a failing relationship
without the paperwork involved.
o Philosophical resistance to marriage; feminist and secularized ideas.
Divorce and separation
 A couple may continue to live together after the marriage is effectively
over, especially if they cannot afford to live separately. This is termed as
an empty shell marriage. Other couples may file for divorce.
 Divorce has become more common, peaking in 1990s. Since 1981, there
has been a doubling of re-divorces; multiple marriages and divorces.
However, these numbers are sensitive to demographic changes.
 Reasons for marital breakdown:
o Easier and affordable access to divorce and housing increases the
number of divorces.
 The 1969 Divorce Reform Act in UK introduced “irretrievable
breakdown of marriage” as the only requirement for divorce.
Previously, one partner had to find fault such as an affair with
the other partner, to be considered a viable reason for divorce.
o The value of marriage: Fletcher and Parsons argue that people
demand more from marriages today and thus, these higher standards
lead to a lot of expectations from marriages. Hence, paradoxically,
these expectations, if they are not met, can lead to marital
breakdown. Marriages are now influenced by romantic identity,
either through romantic love or confluent love where love is
conditional (e.g. one partner may marry to enhance their social
status).
o Conflict between spouses: Functionalists say that adapting the
family to the economic system leads to greater emotional strain on
the spouses.
o Allan and Crow suggest that marriage is no longer embedded in the
economic system. Spouses can work independently and are not
financially dependent on each other.
o Modernity and choice: Gibson says that the development of
modernity has led to chances of increased conflict between spouses.
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 Modernity is based upon individual achievement. This is when

people live in an individualized setting where choice
dominates. A higher divorce rate is indicative of higher
standards of marriage, and individualistic modernity along
with the ideology of the market, emphasize on “consumer
choice”. Thus, unfulfilled marriages are likely to lead to
divorces. Since women are independently earning today,
through paid employment, they are no longer taking marriages
to be a lifelong contract.
o Divorce no longer a social taboo: According to Hart, individuals
today have an opportunity to escape from unhappy marriages. In the
British and European Social Attitudes Survey of 1997, 82% of the
sample disagreed that people should live in unhappy marriages.
o The norms and behaviours associated with divorce have changed
too. Gibson states that secularization has a lot to do with it. Religion
no longer provides a binding influence in people’s lives and divorce
is no longer seen as a sin.
o Marriage has become a source of personal happiness and choice
rather than moral or sacrilegious commitment.

2.2. Different family and household forms, including nuclear,

extended, lone-parent, reconstituted, same-sex families,
families of choice and single-person households.
 Single person households are when an adult lives alone, either because of
the death of a partner, breakdown of a relationship or through personal
choice.
 Couple households consist of two people without children. These include
couples who have not yet started a family or chose to remain childless, and
couples whose children have left home (empty nest syndrome).
o Roseneil (2006) suggests that an additional category in couple
households is one where couples live apart, possibly due to work
demands or different routines. It is referred to as a “Living Apart
Together (LAT)”.
 Shared households involve a group of unrelated people living together.
Students’ dormitories, communes.
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 There are some variations, including reconstituted families, same sex

couples, single-parent households.
 Extended families take two forms:
o Vertically extended families which involve 3 or more generations
(grandparents, parents and children) living in, or close to the same
household.
o Horizontally extended families are those with branches within
generations, such as aunts and uncles, living with or close to each
other.
 Matrifocal families are a female-focused variation on the vertically
extended family- a female parent, grandparent or child. Patrifocal families
are focused on men.
 Gordon (1972) suggested that the most common type is that of the
modified extended family.
o Wider family members keep in touch both physically, through visits
or exchanges of help and services, and emotionally, via telephone
and email.
 Families of choice refers to close relationships that are chosen rather than
being given by blood relationships or marriage. This term was used first
by Weston (1991) to describe homosexual arrangements.
 Lone-Parent households
o In 1961, 2% of the population lived in households with single
parents. This had increased to 12% by 2005. Britain has the second
highest number of lone parent households.
o However, these stats provide one side of the picture.
o Increased remarriage rates and number of cohabitating couples
imply that children don’t spend all their lives living in a single parent
household.
o The causes of single parent households:
 Demographic changes
 Divorce/separation (think of your own society)
 Death of a spouse
o Changing Attitudes
 Mark Brown: Shot-gun marriages where legitimacy was
required for children born outside marriage are no longer
there. These marriages were consummated at the spur of the
moment to provide legitimacy to bastard children.
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 Discuss: Does the taboo still hold around these in our

societies?
 Today, the partner can find recourse to cohabitation, even lone
parenthood, reducing the number of shotgun marriages.
 No negative connotations attached to lone parent households.

respondents said that people who want children must marry.
But in 2000, this number reduced to 27%.
 David Morgan states that terms such as “illegitimate children”
and “unmarried mothers” are not used. This could be due to
the weakened religious/community controls over women.
 The creation of the welfare state and the benefits it provides to the people
o Lone parents can rely on the welfare state to provide for the basic
needs of the child as well as the parent.
o The economic incentives to marry do not hold much stronger ground
today.
o Some social commentators suggest that lone parenthood is caused
by people seeking welfare benefits. Murray’s theory of underclass
was advocated by politicians like Bill Clinton. David Cameron, in
an article for Daily Telegraph also criticised “runaway fathers” who
didn’t take responsibility for their children. His conservative
government introduced many measures making lone-parents
employed rather than dependent on state.
o Although some sociologists might tend to make lone parents
absolutely reliant on the welfare benefits being provided, we have
to move with caution since the level of facilities being provided is
not up to the mark. For example, living in a shabby studio apartment
or studying in a mediocre educational institute chosen for your child
by the state is not really the ‘ideal’ life for children in lone parent
households
o According to Allan and Crow, the majority of lone parents do not
want to remain as lone parents and seek to re-establish themselves
in a two-parent model.
 The consequences of lone parent households
o What impact does lone parent households have on the children being
raised in them?
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o They may contribute to creating an ‘underclass’ of socially deprived

people in society. The underclass implies the ‘long-term
unemployed’ people
o There is a social stigma attached to these families whereby they are
considered to be an adverse influence on children’s development
and lone parent mothers are especially targeted for being ‘unfit’
parents; however, many charges against lone parent households are
unfounded
o Conservative politicians have branded the two parent family as the
ideal model e.g. John Major’s conservative government and Labour
Government 1998 Green Paper also focused on “marriage as the
surest foundation for raising children.”
o It might lead to psychological trauma for children being raised in
them. This might be related to the absence of the second parent, the
economically depressed situation of childhood, or the child being
exposed to a lot of frustration on part of the remaining lone parent
o David Morgan
 Children of lone parent households are less well educated than
two parent households. This trauma might affect the
educational achievement of children
o Sarah Mclahan
 Lone parent households depict progress in society and in some
ways, these households might have a qualitative edge over
two-parent households (Economic independence for women in
these families)
 Living Standards:
o Stat Check:
 CSA (Child Supporting Agency): 30% of non-resident parents
were providing support to the children (1990’s). This implies
that living standards do take a beating in lone parent
households.
 State income support matters too, and if non-resident parents
provide to a considerable degree, the state might withdraw its
support.
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2.3. Dimensions of family diversity, including

organisational, cultural and class diversity.
Organizational diversity
 This diversity comes from different patterns of work both within and
outside the home, and from changing patterns of marriage and divorce.
E.g.: Lone parents, nuclear family, extended family etc.
 Allan and Crow
o Decline in marriage rate
o Decline in heterosexual marriages
o Lone parent households
o Increasing number of cohabiting couples. In early 1960’s, 1 in 20
women lived with a future husband. In late 1980’s, 1 in 2 did so.
o Revolutionized birth rates
 Weeks
o Weeks says diversity arises from the decline of the heterosexual
norm:
o Decline of the heterosexual norm, whereby marriages only of the
heterosexual couple were considered the social norm and legitimate.
o There are increasing number of people who are breaking the social
taboo around homosexual marriages and thus adopting them as a
familial arrangement.
o Technology is providing its worth and couples can have their own
children.
o Homosexuals view their friendship networks as ‘chosen’ families.
o Choice dictates homosexual relationships.
 New reproductive Technologies:
o Test tube babies. I989 first test tube baby was born. Test tube
involves fertilising an egg with a sperm in a test tube before
implanting it in the woman’s womb.
o Sperm donation
o Invertio fertilization
o Surrogate motherhood involves one woman carry a foetus produced
from the egg of another woman.
o All of these are undermining the reproductive heterosexual couples
as the basic unit of the family. Such technologies are of use to both,
 Page 96

homosexual and heterosexual couples. The boundaries of the family

will become more fluid and contribute to more family diversity.
Social class diversity
 O’Neill (2002) makes several observations about single parents when
compared to two-parent families. Single parents are more likely to have
working class origins.
 While beanpole family structures are less common in middle-class
families, the average age of working-class mothers when they have their
first child is much lower.
 Adult relationships in middle-class families are more likely than in
working-class families to be symmetrical- an idea developed by Young
and Willmott (1973) to describe relationships characterized by conjugal
roles. Lower levels of gender inequality in roles.
 Working class families are more often characterized by segregated
conjugal roles, where woman focuses on home and children and the man
focuses on paid work. Such patriarchal relationships are expressed from
the threat or reality of violence or dominance in decision making.
 Pahl and Vogler (1994) found that men make the most important financial
decisions in middle-class families whereas women make decisions about
everyday domestic spending, such as food and clothing.
 Lareau (2003) suggests that parents of different classes interact with their
children in different ways.
o Middle class parents adopt a ‘deliberate’ parenting style that
‘actively fosters children’s individual talents, opinions and
abilities’.
o Working class parents are more likely to adopt a parenting style
based on natural growth. They “care for their children, love them
and set limits but within these boundaries, they allow the children to
grow spontaneously...children generally negotiate institutional life
and everyday experiences on their own.”
o While both approaches are child-centered, the middle- and upper-
class families can invest a wider range of family resources in their
child’s development.
 Reay et al (2004) argued that middle class women are more actively
involved in their children’s education through monitoring school progress
and questioning teachers about their children’s performance.
 Page 97

Cultural and ethnic diversity

 Average Household Size:
o Black Caribbean: 2.22
o White: 2.27
o Indian: 2.93
o Pakistani: 4.04
o Bangladeshi: 4.38
 Composition of lone parent households:
o Pakistani/Bangladeshi: 9%
o Indian: 5%
o Black Caribbean: 25%
o Black African: 26%
 Parents with dependent children:
o Pakistani/Bangladeshi: 57%
o Indian: 43%
o Whites: 29%
o Black Caribbean: 22%
 The decline in the influence of organized religion (secularization) accounts
for an increase in cohabitation, decline in the significance of marriage,
increase in divorce rates, availability of remarriage.
 Migration to the UK of Black Caribbean and South Asians has led to
greater diversity in the 20th century.
o Dale et al (2004) found that Black women were more likely to work
full time throughout the period of raising a family than other ethnic
groups.
 Indian women generally choose part-time paid employment
once they have a partner but Pakistani and Bangladeshi women
are more likely to quit work once they marry and have
children.
 Berthoud (2000) found that features of Afro-Caribbean families in UK
were low rates of marriage and high rates of single parenthood.
o Linked to the idea of ‘modern individualism’.
o Higher proportions of Caribbean children’s fathers had visiting
partner arrangements where they look over financial responsibilities
but do not live with them.
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o Whereas South Asian families had higher proportions of marriage,

lower divorce rates, lower cohabitation rates, more vertically
extended families living together.
 Ballard- Changes in South Asian Families
o More and more South Asian women are demanding economic
independence from their husbands in the UK. They are increasingly
participating in the labour force. Extended family patterns are less
common over here.
o There are differences of experience of British life for the migrant
generation and their children. The former are more cautious in their
adoption of British customs. The children grow up with exposure of
two cultures. In Ballard’s research, children behaved according to
their ethnic mores and conventions inside the homes but conformed
to British culture outside of it.
o Ties with extended kin network back home were continued. At
times, money was sent back home to support relatives.
o Ballard concluded that South Asians had suffered comparatively
little disruption in family life after settling in Britain.
 Ghazala Bhatti- British Asian Families
o Interviewed 50 families in total out of which 44 were Muslim, 4
were Hindu and 2 were Sikh.
o Loyalty to the family was very important. Ties with extended kin
were maintained. Went on vacations to native land.
o Marriage was performed according to traditional practices.
o Izzat (family honour) was taken very seriously with particular
emphasis on the behaviour of daughters. Asian fathers saw
themselves as heads of the families.
o However, conflict could arise between different generations of
South Asian families. In poor families, open clashes had developed
on the issue of marriage. In most of the cases the rebel, eldest brother
had decided to marry a native. However, these clashes were minor.
o She concluded that distinctiveness of Asian families largely
continued contributing to family diversity in Britain.
 Page 99

2.4. The debate about the extent of family diversity

and the dominance of the nuclear family.
 Greater diversity has come about for 3 main reasons:
o Social changes: easier access to divorce led to greater numbers of
reconstituted, single-parent and single-person households.
o Changing social attitudes led to greater social acceptance of single-
parent and same-sex family structures.
o Increased life expectancy, more active lifestyles and changes to the
welfare system have created changes within family structures.
 Brannen (2003) calls the beanpole family as one where strong vertical
extensions between grandparents, parents and children exist. Beanpole
families arise in developed societies that have low or declining birth rates
and increasing life expectancy.
 Beaumont (2011) notes that nearly one third (29%) of British households
contain only one person- the second most common household structure
after two-person households (35%).
o Some of the noted reasons are:
 death of a partner,
 middle-aged people living alone after a divorce,
 less social stigma around women staying single,
 university students moving out of the family home for higher
education.
 Conclusion
 These minority ethnic groups contribute to the diversity of family life in
Britain. Each ethnic group exhibits different family types, customs and
traditions. Evidence shows that families tend to have their countries of
origin impacting their life in the UK.
 However, the process is two-fold. Britain has also impacted these families
and ethnic groups.
o Benthal Green Revisited by Dench
 Nearly 800 residents from all ethnic groups and 1021
Bangladeshis were surveyed. The findings were:
 Early family patterns had disappeared.
 Individualism was on the rise. Now, only a few families
maintained strong kinship ties and these were largely centred
on businesses.
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 Apart from some exceptions, family life in Bethnal Green was

characterized by greater fluidity and variety. (21% = single-
parent households, 9% = cohabitation; however in most cases,
women were still the primary child carers)
 The reasons for emphasis on individualism were that the
welfare state increasingly emphasized individual rights.
 The Counter Argument
o However, despite all these changes, some conventional values
remained.
o There was not a widespread discouragement of the institution of
marriage in Bethnal Green: Although many women escaped
exploitative marriages, most of these still viewed marriage as the
ideal.
o What had really changed was that middle class families waited
longer to consummate marriage.
o Also, although greater fluidity in relationships was there, people
opted for stable relationships after becoming parents.
o Bangladeshi families in Bethnal Green (Dench)
 Single person families were less here, divorce and separation
were very rare, widows still lived with their children and the
elderly were provided by the young:
 61% = married couples
 25.7% = extended families
 The household size was large (around 6)
 Religious obligation to marry and be very much involved in
family life. Mothers occupied important positions within the
households.
 Dench challenged the view that Bangladeshi families are
patriarchal. Evidence showed that they were not. A man’s role
was to provide the bread but not dominate family life.
Bangladeshi wives/mothers were really powerful in making
decisions.
 Conclusion
o Rapoports: Family life is characterized by choice today. It has
become acceptable to choose alternatives.
o Somerville and Chester: People still aspire to conventional family
life.
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2.5. NewRight and postmodernist perspectives on family

diversity.
 The New Right perspective has its basis on the traditional nuclear family
consisting of two, heterosexual married adults, with clearly defined gender
roles as the best equipped institutional base for all other social
relationships.
o Encourages family uniformity.
 Diversity is equivalent to a family breakdown whereas stable nuclear
family provides psychological benefits.
 The idea that all family structural types are equal, is wrong. Such an idea
perpetuates moral chaos.
 The New Right endorses social policies that encourage beneficial family
structures and minimizes those such as single parenthood.
 Morgan (2000) argues against cohabitation on the grounds that cohabiting
relationships are more unstable and less long-lasting, cohabitants with
children are likely to turn into single parents and such relationships have a
tendency to be more abusive towards women and children.
 Horwitz (2005) argues that within the traditional family, children and
adults learn moral values that they take into wider social relationships.
o These moral values include caring for family members, taking
responsibility for both their own behaviour and that of children,
unconditional economic co-operation, development of stable,
successful, interpersonal relationships.
 Critics of this perspective argue that it is based on an idealized view of
white, middle-class families as the desirable norm.
o Advocates “one size fits all” family that is outdated.
o In the pursuit of tradition, it makes divorce more difficult by
trapping people in a loveless, abusive relationship.
Postmodern optimism
 Postmodernists reject the idea of “the family” and argues that people can
construct relationships in ways they deem appropriate, to suit their needs,
desires and circumstances irrespective of societal norms.
 Stacey (2002) claims, “Every family is an alternative family.”
 Page 102

 Elkins (1992) stated that the postmodern family was characterized by a

family that encompasses many different family forms and we should
celebrate these differences:
o Traditional
o Two parents working
o Single parent
o Reconstituted (blended)
o Adopted child
o Test-tube
o Surrogate mother
o Co-parent
 The constant exposure to new ideas through globalization brings about
greater freedom for individuals to make different choices, including ones
that were once not allowed e.g. divorce and same-sex families.
 At one extreme, there are ethnicities that remain rooted to ‘old-fashioned’
values such as a marriage as a way to reinforce their particular ethnic
identity. E.g. Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicities in UK. There is lesser
diversity noted in developing countries.
 On the other hand, Black Caribbean and White ethnicities embrace modern
individualism where single parenthood and divorce are openly accepted.
 The strength of postmodernism is that it is open to recognizing the many
ways people live their lives, breaks away from a narrow lens on the family
structures and focuses on nuances of relationships and personal lives.

2.6. The state and social policy as influences on the

family.
 Family life is surrounded by legal norms and moral values, or as one may
call it, family ideology.
 Functionalist approach stresses on the certain essential functions
performed by families for individuals and wider society.
o However, the relationship between family and political institutions
is ambivalent in their theory.
o The state has progressively removed functions from the family, such
as education and welfare.
 Page 103

 Eichner (2010) argues for a supportive state model by government which

supports families in performing their caretaking and human development
functions.
o Neale (2000) notes that this involves stable family relationships
created within married, heterosexual, dual-parent nuclear families.
 From the New Right perspective, single parenthood can only continue with
government support- something that encourages a dependency culture,
therefore single parenthood is considered wrong and unproductive in the
first place.
o Seen as producing poorly socialized, dysfunctional children who
grow up dependent on state benefits or crime.
 Marxists explain how the ruling class benefits from ‘free family services’
such as bearing the costs of raising children, because they are future
employees and how the family helps to maintain social inequalities by
normalizing them to children within the socialization process.
o The financial and moral responsibilities people take on when they
create family groups lock them into capitalist economic
relationships.
o However critics of Marxist approach pointed out that the
development of a welfare state, through free universal education and
healthcare has produced widespread and long-lasting benefits for
working class families.
 Feminist sociologists focused on the family group as patriarchal and
oppressive, imprisoning women in a narrow range of service roles and
responsibilities such as domestic labour and childcare.
o The legal system has been seen as both a way of protection for
women and as a way of ensuring gender equality.
o Liberal feminists asserted on policies including the development of
nursery schooling and childcare facilities that allow women to both
work and have family responsibilities conveniently.
 The relationship between family and state is complex in modern
democratic nations, the state may not get involved in the private life of
families unless there are cases of abuse or state may intervene e.g. China’s
one child policy till 2015.
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3. Gender equality and experiences of family life

3.1. Different feminist perspectives on equality and
power in the family, including liberal, radical and
Marxist feminist.
 Liberal feminists base their ideas on the equality of opportunity wherein
men and women can compete equally in private and public spheres.
o Recognizes that some women choose to focus on domestic
responsibilities whereas some women focus on a career or want to
combine the two in their lives.
 Marxist feminists argue that capitalism is the real cause of female
oppression because it involves relations of domination, subordination and
oppression.
 Radical feminist Firestone (1970) argued that biology is the essential
gender difference from which all cultural differences flow.
o Women become pregnant and are forced to depend on men creates
a culture of sex discrimination, which can be tackled through
technological advances to help women in childbirth.
o Friedan and Millett see the patriarchal structures and practices of the
family itself as the source of female oppression, which can be
tackled by abandoning these structures or developing matriarchal
family structures that exclude men, e.g. lesbian relationships.
3.2. Conjugal
roles and debates about gender equality in
the family, including housework, childcare, power
and emotion work.
 The wife/mother played the role of a homemaker whereas the
husband/father was the economic provider for the family.
o Thus, there were less opportunities to develop personal identities
that differed from the social norm.
o Any woman rejecting these roles was subjected to violence or social
criticism.
 Contemporary gender roles give more personal freedom to decide how
people want to interpret parental roles.
 Gershuny (2006) observe that women of all ages, ethnicities and classes
do more domestic labour than men.
 Page 105

o Women spend more time on routine domestic tasks, while men

spend more time on jobs such as repairs and gardening.
 Kan (2001) found that levels of housework that women did were slightly
reduced by paid employment.
o Retirement or unemployment increased female housework and
reduced that of her partner.
 Ramos (2003) notes that domestic labour is more likely to be equally
distributed when the male is unemployed and his partner works full time.
 Willmott (2000) argues there is less dependence on traditional roles when
dividing up tasks in the home.
o Changing family relationships mean that domestic labour is
‘negotiated by every couple depending on their individual
circumstances’.
 Pilcher (1988) found that older people unlike their younger peers
(counterparts) did not talk about equality but instead thought about gender
roles, responsibilities and relationships in traditional ways which reflected
their socialization and life experiences.
 Sullivan et al (2008) suggest that industrial societies have experienced a
‘quiet revolution’ in conjugal roles based on a general acceptance of
gender equality. Men now do a greater share of housework and spend more
time on childcare (emergence of the New Man).
 Willmott and Young (1973) term ‘stratified diffusion’ to the process
wherein changes in norms and values tend to start among the wealthier in
society and then others start to behave in the same way, this way equal
gender roles begin from the wealthier strata and then go on to middle class
and working class families.
 Morgan, a Marxist social commentator illustrates the conflicts and power
struggles in families through three family economies:
o Political economy: how money is received, controlled and managed.
The husband/father usually controls the most valued resources such
as family income.
 Other major decisions in two-income families relate to whose
work has the greatest priority e.g. the family moves due to a
change in one of the spouse’s employment.
o Moral economy: values and norms relating to the conjugal roles and
responsibilities of different family members.
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o Emotional economy: interpersonal relationships and “Affective

power” (Dallos, 1997). If someone ‘loves you’ this gives them
power. Pahl suggests that this family power is subtle.

3.3. Debates about whether the experience of family

life is positive or negative for family members.
 WHO estimates that 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male
partners and around 25% of all women globally experience sexual violence
by an intimate partner in their lifetime. According to the UK National
Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse (1996), the
most likely abuser of a child is a family member.
o Domestic violence involves extreme exercise of power, both
physical and emotional, aimed at aggressively controlling another
family member.
o Kirkwood (1993) notes that the victim’s low self-confidence,
economic or psychological dependence on the abuser and fear of
further violent consequences prevent victims of domestic violence
from reporting the attacks.
 Functionalists ignore these exertions of power and stress on how nuclear
family caters to needs of companionship, security and raising children.
o Parsons (1959) argues that nuclear family benefits both on an
individual and societal level whereas postmodernists focus on
individual psychological stability and identity.
 The old certainties of class, gender, age and ethnic social identities no
longer guide how to behave appropriately in any given role, so our sense
of identity can become increasingly unstable. The sense of social and
personal responsibility created within families has wider benefits for the
community because children are given clear behavioural and moral
guidelines.
 Becker (1991) calls ‘psychic income’- the psychological measures gained
from a relationship involving a sense of personal commitment, love and
affection.
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4. Age and family life

4.1. The social construction of childhood, and
changes in the role and social position of children in
the family.
 Archard (2004) argues that every human society has developed a concept
of childhood, but societies differ in their definitions of childhood and, by
extension adulthood.
 Philippe Aries argues that childhood as a distinctive phase in social
development only emerged around 3 centuries ago.
 The historical development of childhood:
o Philip Aries’ study:
 In the past, as soon as the child was independent of his
mother, he was seen as part of adult society.
 Little difference between adult and children forms of
entertainment.
 The children mostly dressed in adult clothes too.
 Portraits of children were not made.
 
 Childhood itself did not exist as a separate entity.


Concept box
The change
Children were seen as needing protection by men, who wanted to preserve their innocence.
Church:
 Schools started developing along age, thus, relative insulation from adulthood was achieved.
Education:
Families played a part and became a private sphere and children-centred.
Family:




o Aries’ conclusion that childhood did not exist as a separate entity

has been challenged overtime.
o He has let his values influence his research work heavily. Many
medieval experiences of childhood were not that adverse.
o Data is not valid since it only contains data from the French
aristocratic families.
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 In pre-industrial society, children lived and worked alongside their parents,

but the development of industrial society saw a gradual physical and
cultural separation between children and adults.
 In modern industrial societies, children are sometimes seen as subjects of
concern requiring adult protection yet being independent owners of rights
who are aware of their actions but still need guidance pertaining to moral
consciousness. Reflecting basic uncertainty about the status of children.
 Both historical and cross-cultural evidence points to the social construction
of childhood.
 Malinowski’s (1922) study of the Trobriand islanders of Papua New
Guinea found that pre-industrial tribal societies differed from their
industrial counterparts in 3 main ways:
o Children were given more responsibility and given more rights.
o Adult-child relationships were less strict and more supportive than
typical modern societies.
o Children were encouraged to explore their sexuality with less guilt
attached to sex play.
 Hecht’s (1998) ethnographic study of the ‘unconventional childhood’ of
Brazilian street children shows that, while many children find themselves
living and working on the streets from an early age, they still maintain links
with parents and wider family.
 Postman argues that the disappearance of childhood nowadays is due to
the development of ‘open admission technologies’ that expose children to
images of adulthood (sex, violence, news).
 Sue Palmer argues that childhood has become ‘toxic’ due to lack of
opportunities to learn through play, being restricted to the home because
of parents’ fears for their children’s safety, too much testing at school and
exposure to violent computer games, alcoholism and drug consumption.
 Robertson (2001) suggests that a further factor in the disappearance of
childhood is increasing consumerism. Advertisers target ‘children’s
markets’ for products initially available for adults (such as mobile phones).
Postmodernists assert that children also develop sophisticated cultures
instead of simply being passive recipients of adult and consumerist culture.
 Postmodernism and age:
o Dominant framework:
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 Childhood and adulthood are seen to be opposites. (If adults

are rational, then children are irrational).
 Children are seen in the process of becoming adults, they are
deemed incomplete beings.
 Children are seen as individuals, not part of a group (proto
individuals).
 Children are viewed in terms of the kind of adults they will
become. The dominant framework is dependent on research
using scientific methods.
 Developmentalism:
o Research on children in labs, looking for universal features of
childhood.
o Criticism:
 Childhood does not follow a predefined pattern of
development for e.g. children might be working at the age of
9. Across the world, there are 300,000 children who are
soldiers.
 Studies in developmental psychology are biased towards the
western model.
 Children’s experience of development will be different in
different societies.
 Children create their own social world; their experiences are
very important in themselves.
4.2. Therole and social position of grandparents in the
family, including cross-cultural comparisons and the
impact of changing life expectancy upon the family.
 Like childhood and adulthood, old age is also socially constructed.
Societies interpret this and attach significance or lack thereof, differently.
 Modern industrial societies have an ageing population due to the reduction
of birth rate and increment of life expectancy. One of the consequences of
this is an increased dependency ratio. There are more retired, economically
inactive older people relying on the economically active, taxpaying adults.
 Adults looking after their own children and their parents are referred to as
the pivot generation or sandwich generation.
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 However, many grandparents act as a valuable source of support for

childcare. In the UK, 30% families and 50% lone-parent families depend
on grandparents for childcare.
 Smallwood and Wilson (2007) argue that this has led to modifications in
family structures. More women working, parents working long and
unsociable hours, high cost of childcare have led to greater importance
attached to modified extended family networks.
 In some traditional societies, older people gain increased family status as
matriarchs or patriarchs, valued for their knowledge and experience.
 However, in contemporary western societies it is considered as a
diminished identity. Some people see ageing as an inevitable process of
decline, helplessness, withdrawal and loneliness.
 But greater life expectancy and wealthier lifestyles have reinvented elderly
identities based on patterns of consumption and leisure.
 Victor (1987) suggested that the status of older people depends upon the
nature of social organization. In nomadic societies, elderly are considered
a problem because of their lack of physical ability to follow the lifestyle.
o But in Kagan’s (1980) study of a Colombian village, the older
people remained socially and economically active, as far as
physically possible. Though they did not form a gerontocracy
(where older people are social leaders because of their age), they
were valued and respected members of their communities.
 In Native American cultures, older males are valued for their skills of
leadership and knowledge about folklore and tradition.
o In Europe and America, older people who have control over
economic resources also have higher status.
 Thus the key to social status is control over valued social and
economic resources.
 Cultural attitudes to afterlife play a role in determining elderly’s status in
few societies.
o Among the Sherbro of Sierra Leone, a person’s status increases if
they become hard to understand because they are believed to be
communicating directly with their ancestors.
 In modern industrial societies, older men may have greater social status
than older women. However, older people in general are associated with
negative labels of forgetfulness, mental and physical illness and
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unattractiveness. Retirement from work can be a significant rite of passage

marking a diminished identity.
 It can be argued that age boundaries have become less distinct in recent
times. Advancements in today’s era can still result in the older generation
having the same skills as the younger generation if they receive training
and companies invest in staff development.

4.3. Social class, gender and ethnicity as factors

affecting the experiences of children in the family.
Social class affecting the experiences of children in the family
 Hecht’s study of Brazilian street children (1988) highlighted the impact of
social class in a child’s life by distinguishing between the ‘nurtured’ and
‘nurturing’ child.
o The nurtured child belongs to a wealthy family background whereas
the nurturing child is an offspring of the poor.
o The nurtured child draws upon family capital and the nurturing child
contributes to family capital.
o One is looked after, by family and wider kin, whereas the latter has
added responsibility to look after the family and wider kin.
 Many upper class children attend private boarding schools, which give
them a very different experience of childhood from their working or
middle class peers.
 The wealthier children get access to unpaid internships which brings them
exposure, without compromising on their financial resources whereas the
middle-class and working class children are deprived of vital internships
if they offer no financial gain to compensate for the utilization of financial
resources needed in going to work (commute expenses etc.).
 Cultural capital helps middle class children focus better on their
educational performance and work performance. Working class childhood
is characterized by immediate gratification, such as leaving school at the
earliest opportunity to take paid employment.
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Gender’s impact on the experiences of children in the family

 Differential gender socialization results in different experiences of
childhood for boys, girls and nonbinary.
 Will et al. (1976) observed young mothers interacting with a baby called
Beth.
o They offered her a doll to play with and used words like ‘sweet’ to
describe her.
o When introduced to a similar baby called Adam, they offered him a
train and he received fewer smiles.
o Beth and Adam were the same child dressed in different colored
clothes. Toys are used to reinforce gender ideas.
o Dolls reflect a future caring role for girls, boys are associated with
active, mechanical activities.
 Martin and Ruble (2004) suggest that children are ‘gender detectives’ who
search for clues about gender-appropriate behaviour primarily from
parents, peers and secondarily, from media.
 Shared activities and pastimes have gender meanings and expectations.
o Common interests in cars, football or rap music for boys or fashion,
cosmetics and shopping for girls creates gender bonds and
reinforces identity barriers.
o Individuals breaking through gender identity barriers are negatively
sanctioned, e.g. transgender and nonbinary children being bullied or
excluded from valued peer and friendship groups.

Ethnicity’s role in childhood experiences

 Different ethnic groups define the duration and extent of childhood
differently, with their own ideas on childhood divisions and behaviours.
 Brannen and Oakley (1994) found that Asian parents in the UK placed
greater restrictions on their children’s freedom of movement and
association, particularly with their daughters, than their British
counterparts.
 Song (1999) noted the significance of the family as ‘workplace’ where
Chinese and Italian children contribute in their family business e.g.
running Chinese restaurants collectively.
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4.4. Changes
in the concepts of motherhood and
fatherhood
Motherhood
 A ‘mothering instinct’ is always assumedly associated with a woman
whereas motherhood is a social construct.
o It is society which decides what a mother should be like and
stigmatizes those who do not conform.
 In other societies, biological mother may not always raise the
children, grandparents or closer kin may adopt the children of
a young, unmarried mother.
 Changes in the concept of motherhood is influenced by the following
patterns:
o decline in birth rates
o Decline in family size
o Increase in the average age at which women have their first child
o Births outside marriage now account for nearly half of all births
 Society has become more child-centered and places more expectation on
mothers to be ‘good’ mothers.
 Working mothers have been stigmatized between the conflicting demands
of their two roles. The debate over whether mothers with pre-school age
children should work part-time or full-time still persists. Nevertheless,
many women work to fulfill the everyday expenses required in raising
children.
 Childcare nurseries or workplace nurseries are an effective way to ease the
dual load of working mothers and also ensure greater confidence and social
intelligence in children.
Fatherhood
 The traditional view of the father is that of a patriarch, based on the
provider ideology. Thus associated with fulfilling material needs and
disciplining children.
o Changing nappies, feeding a baby were seen as women’s work
which largely prevented men from having a stronger bond with their
children.
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 Such limitations were set by men but supported by many

women.
 Since the 1980s, the emergence of “new man” (supposedly sensitive,
gentle, anti-sexist, involved in childcare) was witnessed which was
influenced by the following factors:
o The decline of manufacturing industry, causing male unemployment
has affected the working class men.
o Abuse of women and children within families at the hands of men
has received greater coverage and condemnation.
o The importance of men within families is questioned since many
divorced women can now support families alone.
o Feminism has questioned traditional ideas about masculinity and
how it can be toxic for men themselves.
 Now, more fathers are actively playing a part in the emotional side of child-
rearing and spending quality time with their children as well as fulfill the
expectation of the main provider.