Talks for schools and colleges

How do we come to consider certain forms of behaviour as 'normal' and others not? How do we come to learn and perform roles - for example as student, friend, partner - through a range of scripts, props and performances? Sociologists have argued that comparing society to a drama allows us to ask some far-reaching questions about how we relate to each other in everyday situations. Sociology understands everyday social practices in a way that draws attention to those things that are most often 'seen but overlooked'. This talk explores some of the ways sociology can illuminate a range of everyday 'performances'.

Statistics on crime reveal that young males commit around eight times more crime than females of the same age and in every country where statistics on offenders are collected the number of male offenders vastly outweighs the number of female offenders. Why should this be the case and are female crime rates likely to increase in the future? This talk looks at the gendered nature of offending and explanations as to why men appear so much more ‘criminal’ than women.

We often think of crime as committed on the streets by young thuggish men. But what else happens in our society that can be considered more harmful and even criminal? Can police, army and government officials be seen as criminals? This talk will explore what we mean by state crime in criminology and sociology in light of news coverage of ‘Wikileaks’ releases and recent UK Public Inquiries into Bloody Sunday, Iraq and the UK governments role in torture.

Who is the Victim of Crime?’ A simple tabloid headline nor what we see on TV shows like Crimewatch UK can really answer this question. The answer and the answers are not as straightforward as one may think. In this presentation we will trace the extent to which this question has influenced or failed to influence our understandings of the victim of crime. In so doing we shall identity three different ways of looking at victimisation from the academic (with a focus on crime), to the cultural (with a focus on suffering) to the political (with a focus on justice) and will ask, who is the victim of crime in these different perspectives. The central purpose of this presentation is to consider who or what is made visible and/invisible in each of these views and to explore their meaning in the aftermath of a global economic crisis and the increasing presence of austerity measures.

What are ‘asylum seekers’ and are they the demons the popular media often paint them as? This talk will look at migration in a global and national context. It will look at definitions of different migrants and will consider the reasons why people migrate. There are many myths and misconceptions around migration and this talk will critically challenge these with particular reference to asylum seekers.

This talk will look at ways of addressing the social life of objects. Focusing on HIV prevention devices - the condom and the syringe - it will explore the questions, problems and solutions posed by objects themselves. What role do objects play in the social world? What impact do they have in relation to policies and practices? How can we measure their impacts and effects?

We often find that when claims are made about the nature of society, that this is done using numbers. News media, for instance, frequently report changes in crime rates, many are concerned about the relative proportion of the population who are unemployed, decline is noted in birth and marriage rates, and the results of opinion polls and surveys are pervasive. Sociologists are concerned about all these issues, and social science has driven many of the process that have resulted in the gathering of such statistics. Whilst many are sceptical about the use of statistics, numbers have a power to convince that other forms of knowledge do not, constituting (for some parties, at least) ‘evidence’ rather than mere ‘opinion’. Yet if we look into history, we can see that numbers have only been used in this way relatively recently. Why has this change occurred? How and why are numbers used to convince? And can they really tell us what society is like?

Generally speaking when we think of 'victims' we imagine those who are harmed by criminal acts, the like of which fill our TV screens and newspapers. But can being a ‘victim’ mean something else? What about people who may become ‘victims’ outside of the control and jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, like for example, soldiers in battle and conflict situations? Are they victims with legitimate needs and experiences of suffering likes other victims, or are they something different? This talk explores the experiences of British soldiers during recent conflicts to question if the harms and hardships that they encounter can be understood in terms of their being ‘victims’.

For centuries, politicians and media spokespeople have evoked the spectres of dangerous offenders 'preying' on respectable society. This lecture examines how the idea came about that there exists a group of people habituated to crime, even born into a life of crime, unreformable by punishment or anything else. It shows that the criminal justice system has grappled with the problem of controlling or incapacitating these perceived `types’ of offenders; and asks why and how we are still struggling to deal with the problem of dangerous offenders in the 21st century.

Today we take for granted that the life course comprises three distinct stages: childhood, adulthood and old age. But it was not always this way. In fact, both childhood and old age can be seen as ‘inventions’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when medicine and social policy between them were instrumental in depicting young and old bodies as equally problematic, in the sense of being vulnerable and dependent, and requiring expert surveillance and intervention. But what are the consequences of these age-based divisions? And can, and should, we do anything to challenge them?

We often hear politicians refer to something called ‘public opinion’ to justify their action (or lack of action) on key social issues. For example, some politicians would argue that the number of people in our prisons has been growing because ‘public opinion’ demands harsh punishment for offenders. But how do politicians know (or think they know) what the public want? And how reliable and democratically defensible are their methods for understanding our views? This talk will discuss the various different ways in which researchers try to ‘capture’ and represent public opinion, and consider whether some methods may be more ‘democratic’ than others.

Sociologists are often driven to undertake research investigations that will influence future public policy. How realistic is this aspiration and are there other factors which, alongside research, contribute to the policy-making process? This talk will explore the many influences on policy-making including politics, ideological dispositions, and public finances, and the diverse purposes of sociological research.