Key term
OCR A-Level Sociology H580
Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity
Topic overviewCulture, norms, values and cultural relativismSubculture, high culture and popular cultureGlobal and consumer culture, cultural diversity and hybridityPrimary and secondary socialisation, the family and peer groupMedia, religion, education and the workplace as agencies of socialisationLifelong socialisation and the nature/nurture debateSocial control, sanctions and formal agencies of controlInformal agencies and theories of social controlThe concept of identity, ethnicity and nationalityGender, class and sexual identityAge, disability, hybrid and intersecting identities
Families and RelationshipsComponent 01
Topic overviewFamily types and trends in marriage, divorce and cohabitationDemographic change, family diversity and newer family typesNuclear family ideology, functionalism and the New RightMarxist, feminist and postmodern views and the diversity debateConjugal roles and the domestic division of labourPower, the dark side of the family and theories of partner rolesThe child-centred family, views of childhood and its extensionParent-child power, grandparents in an ageing population and feminist views
Youth SubculturesComponent 01
Topic overviewFunctionalist and neo-Marxist views of youth cultureHebdige, feminist and postmodern views of youth subculturesClass, ethnic and hybrid subcultures and consensus versus conflictDelinquent, criminal, spectacular and anti-school subculturesGangs, newer deviant subcultures and patterns in youth offendingFunctionalist, New Right and Marxist explanations of youth devianceLabelling, identity, gender, ethnicity and moral panics in youth deviance
MediaComponent 01
Topic overviewRepresentations of ethnicity and nationality, symbolic annihilation and the male gazeRepresentations of gender, social class and young peopleRepresentations of older people and theories of media representationDirect and indirect media effects modelsActive audience models, deviance amplification and moral panics
Research Methods and Researching Social Inequalities
Topic overviewPositivism, quantitative data and interpretivismVerstehen, qualitative data and validityReliability, representativeness, generalisability and theoryResearch topics, aims, hypotheses and primary and secondary dataOperationalisation, pilot studies and respondent validationLongitudinal studies, interpreting data and social policySampling frames, sampling techniques and choosing a sampleAccess, gatekeepers and research ethicsQuestionnaires, structured interviews, statistics, content analysis and observationUnstructured interviews, ethnography and methodological pluralism
Understanding Social Inequalities
Globalisation and the Digital Social World
Crime and DevianceComponent 03
Topic overviewDefining crime and deviance, social control and relativitySocial construction of crime and police recorded crimeThe Crime Survey, victim surveys and self-report studiesCrime patterns by social class, gender and ageCrime patterns by ethnicity, crime trends and global organised crimeGlocal organised crime and green crimeFunctionalist, strain and subcultural theories of crimeMarxist, interactionist and left realist theories of crimeRight realism, New Right, feminism and explaining ethnic and age patternsLeft-wing crime reduction, social crime prevention and restorative justiceSituational crime prevention, zero tolerance and punitive justice
EducationComponent 03
Topic overviewFunctionalist, Marxist and liberal views of the role of educationSocial democratic, New Right and feminist views and vocational educationClass and ethnic patterns in educational attainmentGender patterns, global educational inequality and intersectionalityInside-school factors: labelling, setting, triage and institutional racismMaterial and cultural deprivation and cultural capitalExplaining gender and ethnic differences and theoretical views of achievementTypes of school and education policy since 1988Ideology, marketisation and equality of opportunity in education policy
Religion, Belief and FaithComponent 03
Topic overviewDefining religion, faith and belief, churches and denominationsSects, cults, new religious and new age movements and fundamentalismMeasuring religiosity and believing without belongingFunctionalist and Marxist views of the role of religionNeo-Marxist, Weberian, feminist, phenomenological and postmodern views of religionReligion, social change and whether religion is positive or negativeClass and gender patterns in religiosityWomen's changing religiosity and ethnic and age patternsAge cohorts, global religious trends and resurgenceDefining secularisation and evidence of religious declinePro- and anti-secularisation theoriesReligion and social policy, the golden age critique and global patterns
Education
Explaining gender and ethnic differences and theoretical views of achievement
- 1 thing to know
- Component 03
Overview
Recall questions on family-based explanations of Black Caribbean boys' attainment and Sewell, the outside-school changes behind girls' improved performance, and functionalist, Marxist, interactionist, social democratic, feminist and New Right explanations of differential educational achievement.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
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Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
Why are family-based explanations of Black Caribbean boys' attainment so contested?
Model answer
Writers such as Sewell have pointed to absent fathers and peer group pressure, but critics answer that this blames Black families for outcomes produced by school exclusion, low teacher expectations and material disadvantage, and that comparable White families attract no such explanation.
- 2
Which changes outside school are used to explain girls' improved performance?
Model answer
The impact of feminism and equal-opportunities law, the decline of manual work and the growth of service-sector jobs open to women, rising divorce rates making self-support necessary, and the shift Sharpe recorded in girls' priorities from marriage and family towards careers and independence.
- 3
How do functionalists explain differences in achievement between pupils?
Model answer
They treat the system as broadly meritocratic, so differences largely reflect differences in individual ability and effort, and where whole groups underachieve they look for inadequate socialisation or dysfunction outside the school rather than inside it.
- 4
How do Marxists explain differential achievement?
Model answer
They argue results track class origin because economic and cultural capital are unequally distributed and the school rewards what the middle class already possesses, so education reproduces the class structure while presenting the outcome as merit.
- 5
What do interactionists contribute to explaining differential achievement, and what is the standard criticism of them?
Model answer
They show the small-scale mechanisms — labels, expectations, self-fulfilling prophecies and subcultures — through which inequality is actually produced in classrooms; critics answer that they cannot explain why the labels fall so consistently along class and ethnic lines, which needs a structural account.
- 6
What is the social democratic explanation of underachievement, and what remedy follows from it?
Model answer
Social democrats blame unequal access, unequal resources and disadvantage carried in from outside, and prescribe state action to compensate for it, such as extra funding targeted at poorer pupils, early-years support and programmes to widen participation.
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