AQA A2 SOCIOLOGY: Official Revision Thread for 2015 exams!

It has become 'common-sense'. Tthanks to sociologists, the idea that people's future could be determined by a teacher's expectations on the basis of a student's class, gender or ethnicity was groundbreaking a few decades ago.

Hi everyone!
I have a HUGE feeling that the 33 marker in the crime and deviance paper could be on:
•objectivity and values
•positivism/interpretivism debate or
•methods or
•social policy

Out of the above does any one know how to structure the objectivity and values essay and what paragraphs should include and what to evaluate with?


Posted from TSR Mobile

You could start by defining state crime and how it is so rarely included in official statistics since it's so hard to trace and prosecute all that are involved and how most of it tends to be white collar crime/corporate crime so they'd have the money to bail themselves out of trouble if needs be. Ward defines state crime as being acts of criminality committed by members of a state to further policies, these crimes can range from exploitation, to the killing of millions of people, he also believes that green crime can be classified as a form of state crime due to waste dumping/destruction of habitats/global warming etc.

You could then go on to say that state crime has been defined in four ways by Eugene Mclaughin. She says there is political, economic, security/welfare crimes, and social/cultural crimes. You could then go on to define examples of this, for example for economic you could discuss any case study related to fraud (Have a look at the Enron scandal), political you could discuss genocides, security/welfare could be health and safety violations in the workplace (Child Labour etc) and Social would be acts of racism (Institutional racism in America, killing of Blacks with little evidence etc). You could suggest how Marxists agree that things such as health and safety laws are a way for the Ruling Class to control the Working Class and continue to make Capitalist society work.

You could discuss how Schwendinger wants crimes to be redefined so crimes that harm people in any way can be legally dealt with, thus making the state liable for criminal charges etc. Cohen disagrees by saying there's a clear enough distinction of what crime is, for example genocide is clearly a horrific crime that should be punished, whereas fraudulent activity is just morally wrong. You could draw in the argument that crime is a social construction and thus depends on the country and situation it has been committed in, for example in some middle eastern countries who follow the belief of Islam, they believe in stoning and chopping off hands of thieves etc, whereas in the UK and other Western countries this is seen as criminal. To class something as a crime depends on the severity of the crime and the culture it has been committed in, this includes state crime.

Furthermore you could argue how the state uses neutralisation techniques to justify their act. Sykes and Matza define these. You could also draw on Cohen's Spiral of Denial many states use to try and hide or deny their crime for as long as possible. Blair and the Iraq War, the missing treaties etc from the time he was in government is a good example to use, he tried to deny his wrongdoings for as long as he could using the techniques discussed by Cohen and Sykes/Matza.

Don't forget we have an Item too so I'd possibly use that for one of the paragraphs too but ensure that you draw upon it early on in your essay to highlight to the examiner you are aware you must use it. Also integrate it into your other paragraphs somewhere if possible. If you add it in too close to the end they are more likely to think you forgot/neglected or did not understand what was being said...

Hope this helps somehow

Would it be okay if i talked about symbolic interactionists, inc. Mead, Blumer, Becker and Goffman. Then talk about the methods they use, then Garfinkel and ethnomethodology and their methods, for 33 marks? There's way too much information for social action, considering you should also evaluate it with other theories, esp. Postmodernism...


Posted from TSR Mobile

Really need information on social action theories as I haven't been taught it's. Can someone help?


Posted from TSR Mobile

Thank you so much! It really helped and sounds like the perfect structure for an essay on it


Posted from TSR Mobile

Would it be okay if i talked about symbolic interactionists, inc. Mead, Blumer, Becker and Goffman. Then talk about the methods they use, then Garfinkel and ethnomethodology and their methods, for 33 marks? There's way too much information for social action, considering you should also evaluate it with other theories, esp. Postmodernism...


Posted from TSR Mobile

I've answered your question in the post above re. Postmodernism

You could include Garfinkels stuff after you've talked about Mead and Blumer to strengthen your point as they do talk about almost similar things. And you could include Schutz after the Goffman paragraph- again to support and strengthen. Hope this helps


Posted from TSR Mobile

Yes Its fine so long as you make synoptic links throughout.

At the end you can wrote a short paragraph on how postmodernism can be seen as a contemporary form of social action theory in that it is a pluralist theory in the same way that Weberian sociology is and looks at how meaning is constructed through the exchange of symbols in the way that si. ph.and ethnomethodology does. However where it differs from most of those theories (not weber) it addresses how power is distributed on society through language/discourse and therefore has echoes of structural marxism ( many postmodernists started out as Marxists -some were even stalinists)

I would give a paragraph like that from an A level student an A alone! Lol....only joking but an examiner would not expect you to make those links. That you can have for free



Hope this helps

When you did labelling, identities, subcultures, selvtive enforcement, negotiated family, deviance amplification, self fulfilling prophecy, substantive definitions of religion, religion as a force for social change etc etc you were doing social action theory.

I have sent you a plan for this I believe....