Attending Church at the Turn of the (20th) Century
One of the things about teaching the sociology of religion is that, at various points – from its function and role in society to secularisation theory – you’ll find yourself referring to “religion in the past”. And if you want to anchor your observations in something slightly more-solid than an airy wave of the hand […]
Defining and Measuring Crime: The Cyber Dimension
One of the most interesting developments in criminology over the past 25 years is the extent to which crime has moved online, something that has important ramifications for the sociology of crime and deviance, both in terms of how it’s theorised and how it’s taught. When thinking about the different ways crime can be defined […]
Sociology in Focus for A2: Free Textbook
Sociology in Focus for A2 is, as you may have guessed, the companion volume to the previously-posted AS text and it’s no great surprise that its design and layout perfectly complements its AS counterpart. This includes the by-now standard colour-coded sections, lots of pictures, activities and questions that, at the time, were considered a quite […]
Crime and Deviance Theories
A little while back (maybe 5 or 6 years ago – I lose track) I created 3 Crime and Deviance Presentations that were, I like to think, quite ground-breaking at the time for their combination of text, graphics, audio and video – and while they may be looking a little dated now they still have […]
The Crime and Deviance Channel
The Crime and Deviance Channel now offers a wide range of free Text, PowerPoint, Audio and Video resources organised into 5 categories: 1. Theories 2. Social Distribution 3. Power and Control 4. Globalisation 5. Research Methods Each category contains a mix of content: • Text materials range from complete pdf chapters to a variety of […]
NotAFactsheet: Crime and Deviance
I thought it would make a change from research methods to put together a few NotAFactsheets on crime and deviance, so here are the first products of what no-one’s calling a “radical new departure in NotAFactsheet production”. These three efforts focus on and around Functionalist-type approaches to crime: D1. Functionalist Approaches | D1. Functionalist Approaches […]
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 […]
Modernity and Sociological Theory
This is the first part of a two-part series looking at the relationship between modernity, postmodernity and the development of sociological theory. In Part 1 (Modernity) the focus is on: Part 2 (Postmodernity) is available here. Sociology and Modernity “Sociology”, according to Taylor (2000), “is a product of modernity”; its origins as an academic discipline […]
The Functions of Crime
This PowerPoint file combines text, graphics, audio and video to outline four types of Functionalist theory on crime and deviance: Durkheimian, Strain (Merton), General Strain Subcultural. A self-selected, unrepresentative of anyone-but-themselves, sample of reviewers have described this resource as: “Brilliant”; “Utterly amazing” and “Too complicated to follow”. Is this, as Meatloaf so perceptively once asserted, […]