Updating Functionalism: Systems Theory

It’s a fair bet that most teachers introduce “the Functionalist perspective” at the start of a course by using an organismic / organic analogy and as a way of introducing the perspective there’s nothing particularly wrong with this; on the contrary, it can be a useful way to help students understand the basic principles underpinning […]

Visualising Strain Theory

Although examples of Merton’s “Responses to Strain” are fairly straightforward I always think it helps students if they can visualise the basic idea involved – something this simple image I came across on Twitter (apologies, but I don’t know who created it) does very well, I think. So, on the basis you can take a […]

Left Realism

A relatively easy way for students to get a handle on Left Realism is through three simple visualisations that can then be used to build-up a picture of this general approach to both explaining crime and deviance and suggesting solutions to the problem of crime. These visualisations involve: A three-cornered approach to deviance The criminogenic […]

Commitments to Cohabitation

When thinking about differences and similarities between marriage and cohabitation one thing that tends to get overlooked is that, in terms of people’s reasons for making these commitments, neither is homogeneous; just as there are many and varied reasons for deciding to get married, the same is largely true of decisions about whether to cohabit. […]

Interpretivism: Emergent (Exploratory) Research

Although the Hypothetico-deductive model describes an important way of doing research, by way of contrast (since not all sociologists believe the same things or do things in exactly the same way) we can look at an alternative “emergent (exploratory) research” model that can be closely associated with Interpretivist methodology. In general, this type of model […]

The ACT of Post-Feminism

This is a feminist perspective that covers a wide range of different viewpoints, but at its core it refers to two broad ideas: Firstly, a belief that gender equality – in contemporary Western societies such as Britain and America at least – has been broadly achieved. Secondly, the claim that the 2nd wave feminism that […]

Neo-Functionalism: More Millennial Family Functions

Another dimension to Neo-Functionalist thinking about contemporary families that complements Swenson’s (2004) ideas about adults as providers of a stable family environment for primary socialisation is to look more-closely at what happens within family groups and to use these insights to explain how and why families play such pivotal structural roles. Horwitz (2005), for example, […]

Updating Crime & Deviance

Day Workshop with renowned sociologist and film-maker, Dr Steve Taylor Strain, Labelling, Realism etc. are still important because they underpin a lot of research in the contemporary study of Crime and Deviance. But supposing your students could demonstrate this with new concepts & 21st. Century research examples? This Workshop consolidates the key theories and concepts […]

Seven Functions of Culture

As you may have noticed I’m quite attached to the idea of lists, so this second “list post” (did you see what I did there?) should come as no surprise. Nor should it be surprising that the list focuses on functions. Again. I can’t really explain why there are so many Functionalist lists. Perhaps they […]