AQA Sociology - Crime & Deviance Thread

I have just started learning all of this. I felt horrifically let down by my teachers this year in Sociology. One of them is an RE teacher who the College pushed in as cover, and although she was really good for the Religion unit, by her own admission she knows nothing about Crime & Deviance and so has encouraged us to use the text book. My other teacher, well, I get the feeling he really knows his stuff and is an intelligent bloke but he just doesn't know how to teach it. He barely went into any depth on the issue at all, and when he did a revision quiz asking for names of people who had done all these studies, I panicked because I'd never heard of the authors and never heard of the studies!

So I am currently in the midest of teaching myself the unit from the AQA text book. It's a shame we never went into much depth in class because I think this might be the most interesting unit of the whole course.

Feel free to ask questions, hopefully we can get a debate going which should provide useful for the exam!

I will start off: Lea, Young and the whole 'New Left Realism' concept. I find it the most useful theory of the lot. Functionalism is too wishy washy and the criticism that Crime doesn't fit into their social consensus theory and is therefore nonsense is the view I hold. New Left Realism, on the otherhand, actually tackles directly the reality of crime: that it cannot be a true class struggle because the working classes are the main victims! There may be some frustration involves because of the repressive state which prevents them from achieving success goals (Merton), but I would say that the class struggle is a secondary issue when it comes to crime.

Reply 1

sahsum

Haven't got time for a detailed thread right now, this is my last exam so I'm leaving it right till the end. I don't know if you've seen this : www.sociologystuff.com (or perhaps co.uk :rolleyes:

) anyway a very kind man is letting people from TSR look at the resources for free. I've had a look and you'll def find it useful if you haven't had the best teaching for this unit. Make sure you register you college name as TSR to look for free!!

Reply 2

sahsum

Had a good look through my notes last night, and realised that there is no way Im ever gona be able to revise and learn all of it in 4 days. Any advice for quick learning anyone?Or any tips on what is unlikely to come up? I think I'm guna have to take a few risks!

Reply 3

Montrose

4 days? The exam is on the 29th?

Well our teacher had a hunch that Suicide is going to come up, can't remember his reaons though.

Reply 4

Peacey

Alex Mann

4 days? The exam is on the 29th?

Well our teacher had a hunch that Suicide is going to come up, can't remember his reaons though.

Suicide came up last year - so unlikely (but, of course, you can never be definite). Maybe ethnicity or gender?

Reply 5

Montrose

Often exam boards will put things on two years in a row though to try and throw people who avoid learning the whole syllabus by predicting questions.

I would love it if Theories came up as the essay question. For education, family and religion, the one thing I knew really well is the Theories (cause that's what I learn first) and it has yet to come up on any of my exam papers! Maybe this will be my lucky one...

Reply 6

mousey

I hate this unit. The teaching this year for this unit was appalling for me too, so we're having to teach ourselves.

These are the areas you need to cover:

-different explanations of crime, deviance, social order and social control
-the relationship between deviance, power and social control
-different explanations of the social distribution of crime and deviance by age, class, gender, ethnicity and locality
-the social construction of and societal reactions to crime and deviance, including the role of the mass media
-the sociological issues arising from the study of suicide.

We should probably all know this already, but i thought i'd post it anyway. I've got a week between the exam before this and this one, so i'm going to focus all my effort into it then. xx

Reply 7

sahsum

Alex Mann

4 days? The exam is on the 29th?

Well our teacher had a hunch that Suicide is going to come up, can't remember his reaons though.

yeh i know its the 29th but Im pretty loaded up with other exams until the 24th, so will only really have 4 days to revise majorly

Reply 8

sahsum

i really hope theres not going to be much on research methods, because these take ages to learn, too many names. Also is it just me or are left realism and new right aload of BLAAAAAH

Reply 9

dropdeadnormal

i am seriously tryin to revise everythin aswell at the moment, we have had crap teachers and therefore have been teaching it ourselves out of the text book - which isn't always the easiest thing to do! as for synoptic links i havn't got a clue! :confused:

we were told suicide might come up aswell as last year was the first time it was on the paper i think!

Reply 10

dropdeadnormal

Does anyone have the notes from sociologystuff.com for crime and deviance that they could send me? i could only have a free account and exceeded my viewing limit therefore couldn't download all of the revision files :frown: