SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
TRINITY TERM 2023
Questions
You should engage with, and cite, readings from this paper's reading list in all of your answers. Answers that address the question in a non-specific or general way are unlikely to achieve high marks.
Part A (answer two questions):
1. Why do inequalities in the pursuit of university education persist between social classes?
2. Explain how, and in what circumstances, violence can be understood as a rational action.
3. With reference to social identity theory, discuss how people choose who or what to vote for.
4. How do social ties influence labour market outcomes? Discuss in relation to both strong and weak ties.
5. Why are neighbourhood effects difficult to study? Use Kirk’s (2020) natural
experimental approach to discuss how neighbourhoods influence life outcomes for individuals.
6. Can protest movements ever be spontaneous?
7. Discuss the role of period and cohort effects as explanation for changing attitudes towards same-sex relationships.
Part B (answer one question):
8. Why is it important to consider mechanisms in sociological explanation? Discuss micro and macro levels of analysis in your answer.
9. What does Gambetta mean by “concatenations of mechanisms”? Give examples of concatenated mechanisms as explanation for social phenomena.
10. How should ‘classical’ Rational Action Theory be adapted to be a useful analytical tool in sociology?
11. Describe, with examples, the (sub-)mechanisms of contextual effects.
12. Elster (2015) describes game theory as “the theory of interdependent decisions”.
Explain, with examples, how the concept of ‘interdependence’ can help explain social phenomena.
List of sources cited in the questions
Kirk, David S. (2020) Home free: Prisoner reentry and residential change after hurricane Katrina. Oxford University Press, USA.
Diego Gambetta. (1998) ‘Concatenations of Mechanisms’, in Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg (eds), Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102–24.
Jon Elster. (2015) Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition.