Summary CIE A-Level Sociology: Religion, Education and Media

Durkheim

Réponse: Socialisation function: Since children spend more time at school than at home, it\'s a good plae to inculcate essential norms and values of society. This allows society to achieve value consensus, wherein all members of a society share the same values and live in harmony. Supported by Parsons: Pattern maintenance (latency).

Parsons

Réponse: Supports Durkheim\'s theory on socialisation. Believes that it creates pattern maintenance (latency), meaning that the next generations are assured to have the same values as the previous ones.

Durkheim II

Réponse: Social solidarity: Through the official curriculum, schools make individuals feel as though they belong to one single community AO2: House systems, inter-school competitions, teaching national history and literature... This makes individuals feel less like isolated individuals and more as part of something bigger.

Durkheim III

Réponse: Economic function: Education is both beneficial forte individual, as it allows him to find a job, and for wider society, because employers benefit from skilled workforce. Therefore, economic changes in society are always accompanied by educational reforms. AO2: This was the case when compulsory education was introduced at the time of the British Empire to fulfil administrative jobs. Supported by Avis.

Avis

Réponse: Work based learning wherein students acquire practical skills to use in the workplace. AO3: No parity of esteem. Programmes such as BTEC or GNVQ are not equally regarded as conventional curriculums, and are therefore looked down upon. Finn: Apprenticeships are a form of cheap labour and exploitation. If students who take apprenticeships didn\'t do so, they would appear in unemployment statistics. Hence, they were put in the Youth Training Scheme, which aimed to give them practical jobs. Therefore, it can be considered a strength for Functionalism because it shows a link between the education and the economy and for Marxism, as it\'s evidence of exploitation.

Miliband

Réponse: The mass media is a form of social control in society: The ruling class are able to maintain their control and power by socialising the working class into accepting the legitimacy of the capitalist hegemony (Gramsci). Certain ideas and beliefs are portrayed in a good light to benefit this capitalist system, creating a sense of false consciousness (Althusser)

Winn

Réponse: The media is like a plug-in drug This means that it wields an addictive influence, especially on the young as they are much more susceptible. Nevertheless, anyone who watched TV is instantly subjected to a form of mind control.

Bagdikan

Réponse: In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all the media in the USA. However, in 1992, 22 companies owned and operated 90% of media. Media concentration is happening and it\'s highly detrimental to the public because it gives increased control of the minds of the people to the bourgeoisie — it allows them to implement a narrow set of ideas that benefit their interests.

Gramsci

Réponse: Cultural hegemony: A situation in which the bourgeoisie\'s dominant ideas are spread to the masses through social institutions, such as the Mass Media. IN this way the ideas of the ruling class come to be seen as the norm, and power is achieved mainly by ideological means rather than force. He calls this \'to manufacture consent\'. Marxists believe that it is the means by which the workers are indoctrinated into false consciousness (Althusser) — They are unable to see what is their \'true position\'.

Althusser

Réponse: Ideological State Apparatus: In the case of the media, it is one of the strongest ISAs as it involuntarily indoctrinates a set of ideas into the working class.

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Durkheim

Réponse: Defines religion through the functions it carries out

Aldridge

Réponse: Social constructionist theory of religion: Interpretivist theory which focuses on how members of a society define religion. They believe that it is therefore impossible to produce a single universal definition of religion as there are more than thousands of religions in the world and everybody has an individual definition for it.

Durkheim II

Réponse: Collective consciousness: Religion makes people feel as though they belong to something greater than themselves. It acts as a social glue that binds people together, allowing society to thrive. AO2: All Christians feel Christian.

Durkheim III

Réponse: Explanation of the inexplicable: Religion provides a plausible answer for the ultimate questions that humans can\'t figure out by themselves. AO2: The meaning of life, what comes after death, etc.