Time to call in some favours

I enjoy helping people.
It's why I do my job.
Well. That and my frankly enormous salary, obviously...
And I help students without asking for anything in return, because, again, that's the deal.

But now I've got a favour to ask.

I'm part of a university project who are looking at how students use DISCOVER and we need some students to volunteer for the trials we're running on the 9th and 16th of May. I reckon each student wouldn't be required for longer than 15 minutes.

So think of this as your gift for all the times I may have helped you! How's that for potentially shameless, guilt-induced participation?

If you're interested in participating on either day, email me directly and I'll explain in more detail what the study involves.

Alan

E-books on demand project is now finished

Hello.
The clue's in the title with this one.
The e-books project has now run it's monetary course, and we'll be reviewing what was bought and rented by students since Christmas over the coming months.
What I can say already is that over 1000 e-books were purchased, which is amazing and very encouraging for the long term prospects and possible future return of the project next academic year.

If you rented any titles then thanks for taking part.

BBC1 programme on the prison system.

I watched the first episode of a four part series on the prison service this week.
I didn't really intend to watch it all, but I found myself wanting to know what would happen to the individuals who featured in the show. It highlighted many of the usual issues relating to short stay prisoners; drug problems, homelessness, lack of support on leaving prison. Despite that, it was on the whole a surprisingly optimistic programme (maybe overly so?) and I'll be watching the other episodes.

Have a look here to visit the BBC website for the programme and to view last week's episode.

Psychology and Sociology; why can't they just get along?

You've probably heard me say before that I'm a psychology graduate. This supposedly gives me a psychological (as opposed to a sociological), approach to life. In reality, I'm not sure it quite works like that. In my case I was always drawn to theoretical approaches that had no problem with criticising the shortcomings of mainstream science. Hence, I found myself attracted to what's broadly known as the social constructionist approach. This standpoint suggests that language is the driving force behind everyone's wholly individual view of reality; that language actively creates reality and doesn't just describe it. This is still pretty much my view.

Psychology symbol

The reason I'm sharing this today is that I've been listening to some great archived radio shows which describe the history and impact of seminal psychology experiments. And I got to thinking about whether I should promote these shows to you. The conclusion I came to was that I should; not because I'm looking to wilfully confuse you (although I've been accused of that more than once...), but because there are occasions when it's an awfully thin line between what's defined as psychology and what counts as sociology.

The social sciences just aren't that tidy. If the family of social sciences were a real family they'd be awfully prone to getting drunk and fighting each other. The Daily Mail would label them as 'FAMILY OF SHAME'. Put it like this; if they had a party there'd be a lot of individuals not prepared to sit next to each other because of some supposed slight uttered in 1935.  

However, my reason for suggesting you look at these radio shows is simpler than that. The social sciences are partly defined by each other-to know what sociology isn't you need to know what psychology is. Also, these shows are very easy to listen to as well and feature key experiments by theorists such as Maslow, Piaget, Ainsworth and Bandura, all of whom are known as psychologists but who you've probably come across on your sociological-based course.

OK. Enough. The radio show is called 'Mind Changers' and you can find the archive of shows here. If you want to reference any of them in assignments just ask for help.

Anthony Giddens lecture

If you're not doing anything important at 1pm on the 17th April you could do far worse than go to a guest lecture by Anthony Giddens. You may well have read some of his theories previously; if you're studying sociology then you certainly should have! The lecture is due to cover a whole range of issues related to living in the 21st century, including the nature of uncertainty and the balancing of optimism and pessimism. I'm sure it'll be fascinating stuff.

I don't know how many tickets are left, but to try and book a seat you need to email Helen Connolly.
Her address is helen.connolly@beds.ac.uk

Hopefully see you there.
 

The legacy of Margaret Thatcher

I have to be careful on this one but here goes...

First thing's first; former PM Margaret Thatcher has died. You've probably heard already, but just in case I'd better make it clear what I'm talking about. Many of the reports on her death and subsequent media discussions have used the word 'divisive' to describe her. Personally I can think of no politician in my lifetime who has so elicited such profound adoration and hatred. Your own reaction to the death of Margaret Thatcher may be indifference. I strongly suspect that your reactions, should you have one at all, will be governed partly by your political leanings, your age and more personal values.

To those of you who are bemused by the vitriol and adoration which has spewed forth since her death I'd like to guide you towards just a couple of issues (with appropriate links) which occurred during her tenure.
The first of these was the Poll Tax Riots in 1990 which is widely considered to be the beginning of the end for her Premiership. In addition there was the residual anger left over from the Section 28 legislation which banned the 'promotion' of homosexuality in schools. David Cameron apologised for this undertaking in 2009.

As a student of the social sciences (I'm making an assumption here) you may well have a view on her assumption that, "there's no such thing as society". The providence of this quote has been fought over for many years, so can I suggest you listen here (fast forward to 50 minutes and 30 seconds if you want to go straight to the piece) to hear an interview with the journalist who Margaret Thatcher actually gave this quote to.

It's a fascinating insight into her values and also how words, when taken in isolation, can be used to subtly alter an intended meaning.

We have lots of books in the library on the history of British politics and Margaret Thatcher will be mentioned in all of them, which pretty much demonstrates her significance no matter you may think of her personally. I'd suggest browsing the shelves at 320.941.

If you'd like any other recommendations then just ask.

Welfare reform

I was struggling a bit to come up with one angle on welfare reform. I could have gone with any number of links to The Telegraph, The Guardian or the pointless and diverting campaign to get Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week.
And then the Daily Mail did a typically vitriolic and obfuscatory job on their front page yesterday and my point became easy.

Sometimes, individual, extreme cases are used to make political points in the wider context of social policy by people who require 'evidence'.

But I would argue that Mick Philpott is no more typical of parents who claim child benefit than Abu Hamza is of Muslims.

Or Boris Johnston, David Cameron, Sir George Young, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Oliver Letwin and Zac Goldsmith are of men who went to Eton.

The big book of mental illness

The Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) is a massively important book. It's the big book of symptoms which allows psychiatrists to categorise and diagnose mental disorders.

I heard a nice 30 minute show about the history of the DSM at the weekend.
You've got 4 days left to listen to it from here.