CCCU Sociology makes the headlines!

Yesterday our Engaging Sociology debate, hosted here at CCCU and the initative of Dr. Matthew Ogilvie, made headlines news. The headline story from the BBC concerned a police request for names of participants and attendees to the event. Learn more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04v0zvj/south-east-today-16122014

BBC Two’s Posh People? Tatler and other cultural intermediaries

By Daniel Smith

BBC Two have a new series covering the everyday realities of the high-society magazine, Tatler, the periodical which dates back to the 18^th century and so chronicles the goings-ons of British ‘upper class’ life. The series is entitled Posh People: Inside Tatler. For some critics, notably Hadley Freeman of The Guardian, the whole idea of the series is tedious; the whole obsession with social class, especially dramatic polarisations of class in British society, is itself an aberration – not the people included in the documentary.

Modern Slavery Strategy?

By Lorena Arocha

On the 29^th of November, the coalition government launched its new Modern Slavery Strategy[1], making headlines on all major news outlets[2]. As part of this strategy, the Home Office commissioned its Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Bernard Silverman to estimate the scale of modern slavery in the UK. He came up with an estimate of between 10,000-13,000 people being under modern slavery in the UK using existing data from 2013. To get to this number, he used a technique called ‘Multiple Systems Estimation’. This technique is a development of a capture-recapture estimation method often used in ecology to determine the size of a particular animal population. This method has been used in the past by the Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour of the International Labour Organisation in 2005 to first estimate Forced Labour in the World[3] and is routinely applied to estimating human rights violations.

Public debate on fracking at CCCU – post-event blog

By Matthew Ogilvie

On Wednesday 19^th November 2014 the Sociology Programme hosted its ‘Public Debate on Fracking in the UK’ as part of it’s Engaging Sociology initiative. The two hour event took place in Augustine House and involved a panel of notable experts and campaigners debating whether high volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) should take place in the UK. After each panellist gave a short presentation, the debate was driven by questions from the floor.