New Religious Movements: 6 Characteristics
Basic PowerPoint Presentation, designed for whole-class use, that identifies Barker’s 6 characteristics of New Religious Movements. The concept of New Religious Movements was initially developed, by writers such as Eileen Barker (1999), to reflect a general unease and dissatisfaction with the contemporary usefulness of the “sect – cult” distinction. More-specifically, the argument in favour of […]
Paranormal Activity: Another Dimension to the Secularisation Debate?
Although the secularisation debate in sociology has a number of different dimensions, involving arguments over issues like sacralisation, desacralisation, resacralisation, post-secularisation, religious fundamentalism and the like, one key assumption in the debate is rarely, if ever, questioned: the idea that “secularisation” is effectively a zero-sum game that consists of two, fundamentally-opposed, sides: 1. The Religious, […]
Sociology and You. Too
A later (circa 2008) version of this American High School textbook that has a clean, attractive, design and some interesting content. Might well be worth considering as supplementary material to your existing resources, particularly because it is free… I’ve previously posted an earlier version of this American High School textbook that seems to have gone […]
Sociology and You: A Free Textbook
This American High School textbook just scrapes into the “published in the 21st century” criterion I set myself for finding free, out-of-print sociology texts, but I’ve included it because although it’s obviously a little dated – at least in terms of content if not necessarily design – Sociology and You (2001) was probably one of […]
More Free Sociology Texts
This post continues the Great Sociology Textbook Giveaway by stretching the definition of “textbook” to breaking-point with a dictionary, encyclopaedia and, in an SCTV first, an actual text published by a real UK publisher. Following hard on the heals of the first set of textbooks comes another batch of free Sociology texts I’d like you […]
An Open-Source Sociology Textbook
A free (open-source) Sociology textbook (plus resources) that could be used to supplement your existing textbooks and classroom resources. While the idea of “open-source software” – programs created, modified and freely distributed to users who also contribute in various ways to their subsequent development – has long-been a feature of digital technology, it seems a […]
A-Level Revision Booklets: 1. Beliefs in Society
On the basis that you can’t have too many revision booklets (although, thinking about it, you probably can) I thought I’d post a few more I’ve somehow managed to collect, starting with three really-quite-comprehensive booklets covering Beliefs in Society (AQA), although they also cover useful stuff on Religion (OCR, Eduqas, CIE etc.). • Beliefs in […]
SociologySaviour Blog
I was looking for pictures of Arron Cicoural for a new film we’re editing on Labelling Theory when I stumbled across the rather interesting SociologySaviour Blog, that unfortunately now looks as though it hasn’t been updated since mid-2016. This is something of a shame because the material it contains seems well-written and useful – although […]
Spaced Study: What It Is (and How To Do It)
Spaced Study or Spaced Practice is a theory of learning that argues, in a nutshell, that students study more effectively and retain more of the information they learn if the study period is “spaced” – or spread out over a number of hours / days – than if studying is “crammed” into short intensive blocks. […]
19 | Religion: Part 4
The “secularisation debate” is one of the perennial themes in the sociology of religion and this chapter examining the strength of religion in society is mainly given-over to an outline and evaluation of the two main sides to the argument: 1. Evidence indicating the secularisation of society examines concepts of institutional, practical and ideological religious […]
18 | Religion: Part 3
The third chapter in our trawl through the murky waters of organised (and disorganised, come to that) religion looks at the relationship between religion and social position in two broad ways: Firstly terms of the so-called (by me at least) “CAGE” variables: class, age, gender and ethnicity. This section both outlines the relationship between each […]
17 | Religion: Part 2
No sociological analysis of religion would be complete without looking at the role it plays in society and, as luck would have it, this particular chapter examines the role of religion from a number of different perspectives – both inclusive and exclusive – whose main ideas are outlined and briefly evaluated: • Functionalist • Neo-Functionalist […]
16 | Religion: Part 1
The opening chapter in this series on religion looks at “Key Concepts and the Changing Nature of Religious Movements in Society” – something that lends itself neatly to two broad sections: 1. Key Concepts – an “introduction to the sociology of religion” that covers two important areas: • how we define religion, considered in terms […]
BBC “Analysis” Podcasts
Over the past 10 years BBC Radio 4’s Analysis series has created a range of podcasts “examining the ideas and forces which shape public policy in Britain and abroad, presented by distinguished writers, journalists and academics”. There are over 200 podcasts to trawl through, many of which won’t be of any interest or use to sociology […]
Lesson Plans: Family | Class | Religion
Whatever your teaching situation or level of experience, Other People’s Lesson Plans can sometimes be a bit of a god-send – particularly when they come from the pen of practising teachers: whether you’re looking for a different way to teach a familiar topic, a set of basic ideas you can adapt to your own working […]