Category: Sociology on TV
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The Twinstitute – An interesting example of the experimental method
The Twinstitue on BBC2 usefully demonstrates some of the strengths and limitations of ‘laboratory’ experiments. The series subjects a number of twins to various experiments in order to try and isolate the effect of one variable on another. For example in one experiment in a recent episode, the twins were split into two groups and…
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The Church of Stop Shopping – A Sociological Analysis
Reverend Billy and The church of stop shopping are critical of our addiction to shopping – especially at Christmas. They suggest we are facing a ‘Shopocalypse’ – arguing that over consumption fuels the debt crisis, global warming and destroys local economies and communities if products are purchased from TNCs. Instead, they suggest that we should…
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Mary Berry Doffs Her Bonnet – and Legitimates the Class Structure (Again)
I’ve blogged about how Mary Berry’s uses her middle class cultural capital to maintain the class-order through demonising working class taste , but in her latest series of outings – Mary Berry’s Country House Secrets, she takes this to another level… I could only stomach one episode, which I watched to confirm my suspicions about…
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Rich House, Poor House – Spreading the Myth of Meritocracy
In this Channel 5 series, one family in the ‘wealthiest 10%’ of Britain swap lives for a week with a family in the ‘poorest 10% of Britain’. As I see it this programme performs an ‘ideological control function’ – spreading the myth of meritocracy. They two families swap houses, budgets and leisure-timetables for a week…
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Postmodern Methods in Louis Theroux Documentaries
Louis Theroux documentaries are a great example of ‘postmodern’ research methods. I say this for the following reasons: Firstly, these documentaries select unusual, deviant case studies to focus on, which is especially true of the latest series – ‘Dark States’ which consists of three episodes about heroin users, sex trafficking and murder. Secondly, they tend…
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Social Experiments on T.V.
There have been a lot of T.V. productions which have run ‘social experiments’ in recent years. This post simply outlines a few examples of these and some of the strengths and limitations of social experiments run by media companies. Channel 4 seems to be the main outlet for these experiments…. Some (relatively) recent examples of…