DD101 Introducing the Social Sciences - Week 10

The suggested time table for Week 10

     Chapter 6 of Making Social Lives (7 hrs)
     Online activities 20 & 21 (2 hours)
     Making Connections : Psychology & Geography (Audio CD 2, 30 - 45 mins)

     Online Quiz - Making Social Lives, Chapter 6 (10-15 mins)

     Reflection : Working Through Study Issues

To be completed by 15th April.

Another Chapter which was interesting, but didn't seem to cover too much ground.

It started talking about the paradox of neighbours, in that we want friendly helpful neighbours, but still want our privacy. It is a fine line between friendly and prying, and one that differs with culture, but not always for the reasons you'd first expect. This section also looked at how people speak to each other to identify themselves as neighbours, rather than 'outsiders'.

The next section was about the etiquette of neighbouring and how to complain about, for example, excessive noise.

The last section was definitely the most interesting, but seemed more psychology that social studies. It talked about when neighbouring fails, with the examples of Catherine Genovese & James Bulger murders, and asked why bystanders do nothing, especially when there are multiple bystanders. The chapter then outlined experiments on 'bystander effect', which is definitely psychology based.

Having read this chapter I'm struggling to see how this will help at all with the TMA......