Theory and Methods Scholars

Question 1

Weber - class, status and party

Answer 1

Weber was concerned with the unequal distribution of power in society, and he saw conflicts in society arising between social classes pursuing economic interests; between status groups pursuing social honour, prestige and respect; and between parties, which are groups specifically concerned with exercising power, making decisions and influencing policies in the interests of their membership. Society was therefore fundamentally unstable as individuals and groups struggled with one another as they pursued their competed interests.

Question 2

Parsons - functional prerequisites

Answer 2

Functionalists argue that, just like the human body, any society has what Parsons (1951) called functional prerequisites - basic needs or requirements that must be met if society is to survive. These include the production of food, the care of the young and the socialisation of new generations into the culture of society.

Question 3

Durkheim - value consensus and social integration

Answer 3

Durkheim suggested that people are basically selfish, and that society would soon fall into chaos and disorder unless they learned to share some common values and show commitment to cooperation in society. He therefore placed great importance on the role of social institutions, such as the family and the education system, in socialising people into what he called a value consensus or collective conscience. This is a widespread agreement on values, norms and moral beliefs, which binds people together, builds social solidarity or social cohesion, and regulates individual behaviour.

Question 4

Merton - concept of dysfunction

Answer 4

Merton criticised Parsons for his assumption that all social institutions performed beneficial, positive functions for society and individuals. Merton recognised that, in a highly complex interdependent social system, there is plenty of scope for things to go wrong, and there may be unforseen consequences when some apparently beneficial functions are performed. Merton introduced the idea of dysfunction to describe the situation whereby some parts of the social structure don’t work as intended, and there can sometimes be negative consequences, with harmful effects for society, or for some individuals.

For example, the growth of new technology may have been functional in so far it made possible huge leaps in scientific progress and the production of cheaper and better-quality products, but at the same time it had the dysfunctions of generating environmental pollution, climate change, and industrial diseases among workforces. To this extent, Merton recognises that were conflicts within the functionalist view of all parts of society working for the benefit of all.

Question 5

Merton - manifest and latent functions

Answer 5

Merton suggested there were manifest functions of an institution, with intended and recognised consequences, but there were also latent functions alongside them, with unintended or unrecognised consequences. For example, a hospital has the manifest function of dispensing healthcare, but a latent function is that it provides a means for those who work there to meet partners with whom they can form married or cohabiting relationships.

Question 6

Murray - dependency culture

Answer 6

Murray argued that the welfare state has undermined parental responsibility and self-help, and devalued the importance of support from families, and the traditional functions families have carried out. He sees the decline of the traditional family, and growing numbers of female-headed lone-parent families as threats to the adequate socialisation and disciplining of children, particularly because of the lack of father/male role models. He views the interference of the welfare ‘nanny’ state and the decline of traditional family life as contributing to the emergence of a dependency culture and a culture of laziness, with the emergence of a deviant, workshy underclass which wants to avoid work by living off welfare benefits, and which is associated with high levels of illegitimacy, lone-parenthood and family instability.

Question 7

Harvey - weakness of classical Marxism

Answer 7

Harvey (1990) points out that, with globalisation, national governments have less power, and more power lies with transnational corporations which exist outside national boundaries. Such corporations, like Apple and Nike, reap huge profits producing goods cheaply in countries where wages are low and selling them in Western markets where prices are high. Capitalism and Western capitalist culture is now spread throughout the world, possibly making capitalism stronger than ever before.

Question 8

Gramsci - concept of hegemony

Answer 8

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony placed more emphasis than Marx did on the role of ideology rather than just the economy in maintaining ruling-class power and in influencing people’s behaviour. Gramsci (1971) emphasised that people’s ideas underpin the actions they choose to make. He stressed the importance of people’s ideas, choices and action in bringing about change, and not just economic conditions like poverty, homelessness and unemployment. By hegemony, Gramsci was referring to the dominance in society of the ruling class’s set of ideas over others, and acceptance of and consent to them by the rest of society. He saw this control of people’s minds by the dominant ideology, rather than simply control by the police, prisons and other repressive agencies of the state, as one of the main reasons why the working class had rarely rebelled against the ruling class, as they had failed to develop their own alternative vision of how society might be. He suggested that the proletariat would construct a ‘counter hegemony’ to provide people with an alternative way of life to the capitalist state.

Question 9

Althusser - economic, political and ideological levels

Answer 9

Althusser argued that the structure of capitalist society consists of three levels:

1) The economic level - consisting of the economy and the production of material goods.

2) The political level - consisting of the government and organisations involved in the political organisation and control of society, including what he called the repressive state apparatus (RSA). The RSA refers to parts of the state which are concerned with mainly repressive, physical means of keeping a population in line, such as the army, police, courts and prisons.

3) The ideological level - concerned with ideas, beliefs and values. This consists of the ideological state apparatuses (ISA), which are a series of institutions which spread the dominant ideology and justify the power of the dominant class. These include the media, the education system and religion.

Question 10

Blumer - interactionism’s three basic features

Answer 10

Blumer suggests interactionism has three basic features:

1) People act in terms of symbols, which are things, like objects, words, expressions or gestures, that stand for something else and to which individuals have attached meanings, and they act towards people and things in accordance with these meanings.

2) These meanings develop out of the interaction of an individual with others, and can change during the course of interaction.

3) Meanings arise from an interpretative process, as people try to interpret the meanings others give to their actions by imagining themselves in their position and taking on their roles. Individuals can only develop a conception of themselves by understanding how others see them, and they will be unable to interact successfully with others unless they can do this. Successful interaction involves correctly interpreting what sort of person you’re dealing with, how they see you, what they expect from you and what you expect from them. This contrasts with structuralist approaches which see people simply acting out roles handed down by the social structure, as people are in a constant process of forming and negotiating roles and how they interact with others, and making choices about how they do this. For example, teachers may have a role as educators handed down by the social structure (government, education system, economic system), but there is huge diversity in how teachers choose to perform this role.

Question 11

Cooley - the ‘looking-glass self’

Answer 11

Cooley, writing in 1902, developed the concept of the ‘looking-glass self’ to describe this process of negotiated interaction. The ‘looking-glass self’ is the idea that our image of ourselves is reflected back to us (like a mirror) in the views of others. As we consider the image of ourselves reflected in the reactions of other people to us, we may modify and change our view of ourselves and our behaviour.

An individual, for example, might see themselves as outgoing, friendly and sociable, but if others see them as introverted, unfriendly and stand-offish, then they might adopt a new self-identity in accordance with how others see them, or modify their behaviour and try to change people’s views of them. Our self-concept and social role are not therefore simply handed down by the social structure, but socially constructed and subject to constant change through the process of interaction.

Question 12

Goffman - impression management

Answer 12

Goffman studied the ways people construct meanings and interpretations in the process of interaction, using what has been described as a dramaturgical model, based on the idea of life being like a stage, with people acting out performances like actors do in a play or TV drama. Like actors on a stage, people in society are constantly engaged in managing the impressions they give to other people by putting on a ‘show’ to try to convince others of the identities they wish to assert. Goffman calls this impression management. This is often achieved by the use of symbols of various kinds, like styles of clothing or choices in music, to demonstrate the kind of person they want to be seen as. Goffman says everyone is engaged in this process of manipulating others and being manipulated by them to give the best possible impression of themselves.

Question 13

Garfinkel - ethnomethodology

Answer 13

Ethnomethodology is associated with the work of Garfinkel, and refers to the description of the methods or interpretive procedures which people use to make sense of and construct order in their everyday social world.

Garfinkel was interested in discovering how individuals make sense of the social world, and impose some sense of order in their daily lives. He sought to expose people’s taken-for-granted assumptions and the rules they imposed on the world by experimental techniques known as ‘breaching experiments’. These aimed to examine people’s reactions to the breaching or disruption of their taken-for-granted everyday assumptions embodied in commonly accepted social rules or norms. For example, one of Garfinkel’s experiments involved asking students to behave as visitors or lodgers in their own homes, and to record how their parents reacted to the sudden change in the taken-for-granted relationship they had with their children. Their reactions of concern, bewilderment, anger and confusion revealed not only how people create social order through assumptions and meanings shared with others, but also how fragile the social order they create around these shared assumptions really is.

Question 14

Giddens - structuration theory

Answer 14

Giddens’ structuration theory suggests that the existence of the social structure, including social institutions, beliefs, values and traditions, provides people with a framework of rules and established ways of doing things that enable them to live in society, and by doing so they are at the same time reproducing that structure. At the same time, individuals can change this structure by ignoring, modifying or replacing rules or conventional ways of doing things. So people are shaped by society, but at the same time can act to shape society. This can be illustrated in the legal system.

The legal system is part of the social structure, and the law has an existence separate from and above the individuals living in society at any one time. People are constrained by the law to behave in particular ways, and this allows people to go about their daily lives - to act - in some orderly fashion, as most people generally abide by the same rules, and the action of people in conforming to the law enables it to continue to exist from one generation to the next. However, the law can continue only as long as people continue to support or conform to it. Giddens suggests people are constantly reflecting on their everyday behaviour and they may, for example. decide some laws are outdated and no longer relevant to the way they live their lives, and so choose to break them.

Question 15

Walby - patriarchy

Answer 15

Walby defines patriarchy as ‘a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women’. She sees patriarchy as embedded in six structures, which combine to keep women in a position of subordination:

1) The household - women have primary responsibility for housework and childcare, limiting access to and promotion in paid work.

2) Paid work - women have lower-paid, lower-status and more part-time and temporary jobs.

3) The state - policies are primarily in men’s interests.

4) Sexuality - different standards of behaviour are expected of men and women.

5) Male violence - male violence against women, like domestic violence and rape, either condoned, ignored or inadequately tackled by the state.

6) Cultural institutions - religion, media, education and other institutions all reinforce patriarchy.

Question 16

Ortner - women’s subordination

Answer 16

Radical feminists like Ortner (1974) link women’s subordination to women’s biology (pregnancy and childbirth), which makes them dependent and vulnerable, and enables men to develop physical and psychological control over them.

Question 17

Barrett and McIntosh - ‘cereal packet’ family

Answer 17

Barrett and McIntosh (1982) argue that the ideology of the idealised ‘cereal packet’ family is patriarchal and harmful to the interests of all women, but it is working-class women who suffer the greatest degree of subordination.

Question 18

Rich - compulsory heterosexuality

Answer 18

Rich argues that men push women into ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ which she believes is narrow and unsatisfying to women but beneficial to men as it fulfils only their desires.

Question 19

Bauman - chaos, uncertainty and the collapse of social structures

Answer 19

Bauman (1982) stresses that society is now in such a state of constant change that it is unpredictable, and is marked by chaos and uncertainty - a state he referred to as ‘liquid modernity’ - in which social structures like the nation-state, the family and social class are breaking down.

Question 20

Lyotard - metanarratives and the ‘myth of truth’

Answer 20

Lyotard (1984) described postmodernism as ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives’ and argued people no longer believed in the ‘myth of truth’. Because society is now changing so constantly and so rapidly, societies can no longer be understood through the application of general theories or metanarratives. Metanarratives are ‘big’ theories like Marxism or functionalism, which seek to explain society as a whole, but these no longer apply according to postmodernists because society has become so fragmented into so many different groups, interests and lifestyles that are constantly changing that society is essentially chaotic. All knowledge of any kind is now equally valid.

There has been a loss of faith in the superiority of rational thought and science as a means of progress and improvement of the world. Science and technology often cause rather than solve problems, such as climate change, pollution and anti-biotic resistant superbugs.

Question 21

Lyotard - choice, identity and consumption

Answer 21

Lyotard suggests postmodern societies are characterised by growing individualism; there is now only a mass of individuals, with few social bonds connecting them, forming their identities through individual choices in education, health, their personal relationships, lifestyle and the consumer goods they buy.

Question 22

Baudrillard - a media-saturated society

Answer 22

Baudrillard (2001) sees life in the postmodern era so dominated by media imagery that it has become what he calls ‘media-saturated’. The mass media used more or less to reflect some basic reality, but media images now dominate and distort the way we see the world. Baudrillard suggests the media present what he calls simulacra, images which appear to reflect events in the real world but have no basis of reality, and which are viewed simultaneously across the globe. Even images of real events are so distorted and distanced from reality that they actually replace reality. For example, the reality of a missile hitting its target is not shown to a viewer, but a simulacrum of the real event. Laser technology and video reportage have eliminated the blood, suffering and corpses from war, and the TV news presents a sanitised version of conflicts. Wars become media-saturated spectacles, which have such an air of unreality about them that we are unable to distinguish them from Hollywood movies or video games.

Baudrillard calls this distorted view of the world which is actually created and defined by the media ‘hyperreality’, with the media image of an event becoming more real than the reality it is meant to be depicting, as it tries to make viewers feel they are experiencing an ‘event’. For example, in Coronation Street in 1998, the character Deirdre Barlow was sent to prison in the show for a crime she did not commit. A media-fuelled grassroots campaign began, pleading with Granada Television to ‘free the Weatherfield One’. The real-world home secretary even involved the prime minister, who, with only a touch of irony, attempted to intervene in this unreal world on Deirdre’s behalf.

Question 23

Baudrillard - pick ‘n’ mix identities

Answer 23

Baudrillard (2001) sees life in postmodernity involving the search for satisfaction of media-created desires, and pressures to consume, with individual identity and behaviour no longer formed predominantly by factors such as class, ethnicity or gender, but by information, images and signs like designer labels gained from the media. In a globalised popular culture, the media presents to us a massive choice of lifestyles, images and identities drawn from across the world.

Question 24

Bradley - identities created by globalisation

Answer 24

Bradley (1996) argues that new identities are created by globalisation, bringing different cultural groups into contact. People now adopt different identities based on consumer lifestyles to meet the diversity in their lives - they no longer identify with class alone, but with ethnicity, gender, disability, race, religion, nationality, music, fashion designer labels, dress, sport and other leisure activities - they can pick ‘n’ mix to create whatever identities they wish.

Question 25

Bauman - you are what you buy

Answer 25

Bauman (1996) argues that life in postmodern society resembles a shopping mall, where people can stroll around consuming whatever they like - trying out, constructing and changing whatever identities they choose. People buy goods not for their usefulness, but as identity symbols for the image and the impression of themselves they wish to project to others. In this postmodern pick ‘n’ mix consumer society, people can become whatever they want to be, adopting lifestyles and identities built around the almost unlimited choice of leisure activities and consumer goods available in what has become a globalised consumer market.

Question 26

Giddens - late modernity

Answer 26

Giddens sees late modernity as characterised by what he calls social reflexivity. This means the knowledge we gain from society can affect the way we act in it. In late modernity, reflexivity grows in importance, as individuals and social institutions face greater uncertainty in a world in which traditional established customs and values have weakened, and no longer provide clear guidance on behaviour and life choices. Everything is unstable and changing rapidly, and life becomes full of risks, like nuclear accidents, economic crisis, climate change and environmental pollution. People are constantly having to reflect on the circumstances in which they live their lives, and weigh up the risks they face when they make their choices.

In late modernity, reflexivity for individuals focuses on personal freedom and fulfilment as people establish goals for what Giddens calls their ‘life projects’. This social reflexivity gives people and institutions a greater capacity to act and plan rationally to change and improve the world, which is an element of modernity.

Question 27

Beck - ‘risk society’ and reflexive modernity

Answer 27

Beck (1992) suggests there is a new phase of modernity - ‘the second modernity’ - which he calls ‘reflexive modernity’, in which there are high levels of uncertainty and risk in what he calls ‘risk society’. These risks occur in rapidly changing everyday life in social institutions like the family, as seen in things like rising divorce rates and the growing diversity of personal relationships; they can also be seen in the failings or abuse of so-called ‘scientific and technological progress’ in modernity, such as environmental pollution, climate change, nuclear accidents, genetically modified crops and foods, avian flu, E. coli and other antibiotic-resistant superbugs. These risks from science are different from the natural disasters and plagues of the past which were beyond human control, as many are generated by progress itself. In late modernity these risks have higher chances of spinning out of control, for example, climate change; the unsustainability of the wasteful throwaway society; the safe disposal of hazardous waste; nuclear accidents and risks of nuclear warfare; nuclear, chemical and biological weapons used by terrorist groups; and global crime networks. Such risks are often beyond the control of individual nation-states. While Beck recognises science still carries risks of making things worse, it also has the capacity to make things better and control or reduce these new risks - and that is a feature of modernity.

Beck shares with Giddens the idea of reflexivity, and suggests we are living in a period of reflexive modernity, as people, institutions and governments need to think and reflect more about risks today, work out how to resolve problems, and therefore change society. People have lost trust in the capacity of governments and scientists to manage risks, and they consequently make more individualised choices and take decisions about the identities and lifestyles they wish to adopt formed around awareness of the risks their choices involve. This reflexivity carries within it the modernist hope of improving society and the lives of individuals, albeit with greater risks than ever before.

Question 28

Harvey - Marxist critique of postmodernism

Answer 28

Harvey (1990) suggests many of the changes claimed by postmodernists to be evidence of postmodernity can be explained by modernist theories like Marxism. Harvey claims, for example, that changes like globalisation, rapid cultural change, the growth of consumerism and the individualisation of identity reflect capitalism opening up new markets and new sources of profits in a global economy.

Question 29

Popper - the scientific method

Answer 29

Popper suggests that science involves the hypothetico-deductive model. This involves drawing up a specific question, idea or possible explanation (a hypothesis), which is based on previous research, observation and hunches, to test through research. For example, a researcher looking at official crime statistics might deduce that that young people have a greater involvement in crime, leading to the formation of a hypothesis for investigation and testing that this might be due to status frustration. Popper’s features of the scientific method include:

> Hypothesis formation: forming ideas or informed guesses about the possible causes of some phenomena.

> Falsification: the aim of testing hypotheses against the evidence is to try to prove them wrong, as just one exception can prove a hypothesis false.

> Replication: testing against empirical evidence is capable of being checked by other researchers who can repeat (or replicate) the research to verify the accuracy of the findings.

> Scrutiny: a scientific theory will be scrutinised by other scientists, and will stand only until some new evidence comes along to show the existing theory is false.

Question 30

Popper - principle of falsification

Answer 30

Popper suggests no hypothesis can ever finally be proven true, as there is always the possibility of some future exception. However, a hypothesis can easily be proven false, as just one observation to the contrary can disprove it. Popper used the famous case of the ‘white swan’ to make his point. He argues that the hypothesis that ‘all swans are white’ can never be finally proven wrong or falsified by finding just one example of a non-white swan. So Popper argues that researchers should aim, not to prove their hypotheses true, for example by counting all the white swans, but to falsify them by looking for the non-white swan. The more a hypothesis stands up to such attempts, the more likely it is to be a ‘scientific truth’ - though it will remain only a probability and not a proven fact, as an exception may always come along. Popper suggests that much of sociological theory is not scientific as it can’t actually be falsified by empirical research, and will only become scientific when it produces testable and falsifiable hypotheses.

Question 31

Comte - positivism

Answer 31

Comte argued that the application of natural science methodology to the study of society, based on empirical evidence and objectivity, would produce a ‘positive science of society’, showing that behaviour in the social world is governed by laws of cause and effect in the same way as the behaviour of objects in the natural world.

Question 32

Bhaskar - realist view of science

Answer 32

Bhaskar (1998) adopts a realist view of science. Realism suggests that not all phenomena are material objects or social facts capable of observation and measurement, but there can be underlying, unobservable structures that cause events. Part of ‘doing science’ is the discovery and explanation of what these structures are. Bhaskar argues that these underlying structures are a feature of both the natural and social worlds, and the positivist view is based on an incorrect assumption that natural scientific method, as Popper suggests, is based only on that which can be observed. For example, many of the greatest scientific discoveries have not been directly observed, but inferred or worked out from their effects. These include things like sub-atomic particles, viruses, germs, energy and solar fusion, The view that the Earth is round has been an accepted view of science for hundreds of years, yet it was only physically observed in the 1960s, with the start of space exploration. Sociology operates in much the same way. We can’t see or observe structures like social classes or belief systems, but we can discover them by their effects, such as by large numbers of people sharing similar incomes, education and housing, or by full or empty churches, mosques and temples.

Question 33

Sayer - open and closed systems

Answer 33

Realists such as Sayer point out that prediction is often not as precise a process in natural sciences as Popper claims. Natural science has an advantage over social science in predictive powers when it can study events in what Sayer calls closed systems, when all the potential causal factors are under the control of the researcher and precise measurements are possible, as in the closed environment of the laboratory experiment. However, much natural scientific research, like most sociological research, takes place in much more open systems where these factors can’t be controlled, and prediction is much more difficult and imprecise. Examples might be weather forecasting and seismology. Although natural science might be able to predict general weather trends or identify areas at risk of earthquakes, it still often fails, despite a huge range of sophisticated technology and scientific knowledge, to give accurate predictions of whether or not it will rain tomorrow, or if and when our house may collapse around us through an earthquake.

In short, the claim that sociology is unscientific because it is unable to predict human behaviour, and shouldn’t aim to copy natural scientific methods as all the factors necessary to explain human behaviour are not observable, as the interpretivists suggest, is based on a mistaken view of what real natural scientific research is like. Researching the social world and the natural world therefore may have more in common than might first appear, as they both study unobservable phenomena, and they both operate in open systems where they are unable to control all potential causes.

Question 34

Kuhn - paradigms

Answer 34

Kuhn questions whether scientists really in practice set out to collect evidence with the specific aim of trying to falsify their hypotheses, as Popper suggests they should. Kuhn argues that, on the contrary, scientists work within paradigms - frameworks or scientific laws, concepts, theories, methods and assumptions - with which they approach the various puzzles they seek to understand and investigate, which are not called into question until the evidence against them is overwhelming.

Kuhn argues that most scientists in their experimental work rarely question the paradigm, and the paradigm acts like blinkers which encourage scientists to try fit observations into the paradigm, rather than actually attempting to falsify their hypotheses as Popper suggests. The more an idea challenges the dominant paradigm, the more experimental work is scrutinised for error; and the more findings do not fit into the existing paradigm, the more likely they are to be dismissed and the blame laid on experimental errors or freak conditions: the adequacy of the paradigm itself is largely unquestioned. Only when there are many anomalies, or things that the existing paradigm can’t explain, will the established paradigm change, as scientists begin to question their basic assumptions and produce a new paradigm - a revised set of theories - that explains research findings that cannot be fitted into the old paradigm.

Question 35

Kaplan - reconstructed logic and logic-in-use

Answer 35

Kaplan (1973) suggested that scientists write up research using what he called reconstructed logic - the formal scientific method they are meant to use as scientists, and which is essential for the scientific community to accept their results as good science. However, in practice, scientists depart from these procedures, and the research process is much more haphazard, unsystematic and ad-hoc (made up as they go along) than the ideal suggests. Kaplan calls this logic-in-use. There is, then, no guarantee that scientists will actually follow the rules of good scientific practice they might publicly claim to support. This is, in effect, a form of scientific cheating. Surveys show that only about one in four scientists is prepared to provide original data for checking by others, and this suggests there may be something to hide and that cheating is common in natural science.

Question 36

Mies - male bias

Answer 36

Mies (1983) argues much positivist research has a masculine bias, and produces a male view of social life that ignores the experience of women. For example, the examination of ‘work’ all too often refers to paid employment, and ignores the unpaid work that women do in the home.

Question 37

Oakley - feminism and interpretivism

Answer 37

Oakley (1981), in her studies of first-time motherhood and the experience of becoming a mother in British society, used informal, unstructured conversational interviews, involving two-way interaction, with a close and equal relationship with the mothers concerned. Oakley shared her own experiences of motherhood and offered advice to first-time mothers to help them overcome anxieties. By sharing her own experiences and feelings, Oakley was able to establish more equal relations with the mothers, and draw out their feelings, opinions and confidences, and produce valid and detailed information about the lives of women, which could be shared to improve their lives.

Question 38

Gouldner - value freedom

Answer 38

Gouldner argues that it is not possible to be free from value judgements in sociology. He suggests that value-freedom is itself a value-laden concept. It is, he argues, little more than a convenient ideology that serves the career interests of sociologists who will take funding from anyone and sell their research to the highest bidders, and avoid taking any moral responsibility for the uses or consequences of their research. Those clinging to the ideology of value-freedom have sold out to the establishment to protect their careers by refusing to take a stand and criticise society as it is and those with power within it. For example, if you were observing a fight between a large bully and a small victim, would you really be neutral and value-free if you stood aside and let the victim get beaten up? Or would your supposed neutrality really be supporting the bully and more concerned with self-preservation than neutrality?

Gouldner argues that pretending to be value-free and not taking sides supports the powerful in an unequal society. Gouldner’s argument is that sociologists should not even try to be value-free, but that there should be a clear value-commitment in sociology, with a public responsibility for - and value-commitment to - improving the lives of the downtrodden, the exploited and the oppressed in an unequal society, and taking their sides against the powerful groups in society who are the sources of their oppression.

Question 39

Worsley - social problem

Answer 39

Worsley (1978) defines a social problem as anything that causes ‘public friction and/or private misery, that needs some collective action to solve it’.

Question 40

Townsend - poverty and health

Answer 40

Sociologists, like Townsend (1979) and those supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, have studied issues like poverty and health with a view to making recommendations to government for social policies to reduce poverty and improve health in the community.

Question 41

Economic and Social Research Council - funding

Answer 41

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is an independent government-funded body for the promotion of social science research, with research spending of around £139 million in 2012-13, providing substantial grants to social science researchers, often linked to social policy issues. Other funding bodies are charitable trusts like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is specifically concerned with applied research on poverty and related issues, and provides over £5 million a year for these purposes, much of it to university researchers. These research funds are so substantial that those who choose not to get involved in applied social research are likely to find themselves short of funds for any research.

Question 42

Marsland - social policy

Answer 42

Marsland (1994), generally identified with the New Right, argues for a ‘fully engaged’ sociology that is committed to social policy, and that ‘systematic empirical sociological research has a necessary, important, and constructive role to play in relation to policy formulation, implementation and evaluation’. He suggests that much policy work doesn’t take proper account of sociological research, but that most sociologists themselves lack commitment to applied policy research, and would rather ‘shout or hiss from the sidelines’ than risk getting their hands dirty by becoming involved in policy-making. Marsland argues that sociologists should be fully and actively involved in the policy process, and this would produce positive benefits for the community through evidence-based policy-making, and assessments of policy objectives and achievements. He argues that, if sociologists don’t involve themselves in applied research, this won’t stop the research being carried out, but sociology will become marginalised, and policy areas will be less well informed. He also suggests that either ‘social policies will take account of relevant sociological knowledge or they are bound to fail’.

Question 43

Bauman and May - postmodernist view of social policy

Answer 43

Bauman and May (2001) suggest all sociology does is to provide a commentary on social life, but it does not possess a monopoly of wisdom in understanding society, nor is its interpretation the only one. All sociologists do is provide their own interpretations, which are no better than any others. Bauman and May argue any successful use of sociological evidence in influencing social policy would simply be imposing their view of reality on others, displacing alternative views and values, contributing to the management of society, and enhancing the control of those who are already in control of society by providing questionable evidence to bolster their positions. They suggest that sociology’s role is to contribute, not to the formation of social policy, but to social understanding and tolerance by enabling people to understand more about themselves and others and the social context of their personal lives and those of others.