Infinitive or Gerund?

1. Choose the proper form of the verb in brackets. Use prepositions when it is necessary:

1) The prospect (judge) by subordinates made some managers very uneasy. 2) Local schools are seeking (reduce) the dropout rate. 3) Hunter proved that experience is not a prerequisite (win) a marathon. 4) Taxes are a way (redistribute) income for the welfare of the whole society. 5) We began (realize) that age and style as well as the use of a tape-recorder were important. 6) They complain (be bored and hang) nothing to do. 7) The answer provided us with a key (understand). 8) We became interested (find out) what the basis of reasonable behaviour was. 9) The government has been aware (mount) public concern about standards of healthcare. 10) The Conservative Party has found it difficult (think) about England outside the context of Great Britain. 11) New Labour has attempted (focus) on aspects which are positive and acceptable to multicultural England. 12) These expressions were less likely (identify) Englishness with the images of race and multiculturalism. 13) People Refused (believe) that they were the sort of people who could be violent. 14) I remember (be scared) of them.

speaking

1. Speak about the social institutions and different perspectives used by sociologists to view them. Which of these perspectives do you share and accept? Why?

2. Comment on the following quotation: ‘Charity begins at home”. How do you understand this?

writing

1. Write a summary of the article “The Elderly in Society” from the Sociology Review.

We are often told today that we are facing the onset of an ‘aged society’ – the idea that, in the near future, dependent, elderly people may outnumber people of an age to work. This is seen to have massive implications for welfare provision and the structure of the economy, but it is, as yet, unproven. It also assumes that elderly people are ‘dependent’ and offer nothing. This attitude is a product of our times. Like ‘childhood’ the notion of ‘old age’ is a relatively recent social construction which has featured in common-sense thought only since the end of World War II.

For Chris Phillipson, living under a capitalist economy creates particular problems for the elderly and, in particular, for working-class elderly people. Since capitalism is based upon the notion that people must be useful to the continuation of the capitalist economy – useful for their labour power – the elderly find themselves a drain on the resources of capitalism through their use of welfare provision.

Looking at successive New Right policies on care during the 1980s, the policies of ‘community care’ and of ‘rolling back the state’ could certainly serve as some sort of evidence for the claims made by Phillipson, if they were to be interpreted from a Marxist perspective. Here, the state demands that the family cares for society’s ‘unproductive’ elderly. Care of the elderly in the family home – rather than by the welfare state – also raises issues of concern for feminist sociologists since the specific ideology of the family used by both the welfare state and the New Right is one where women are seen as those best and ‘naturally’ suited to care for elderly family members in the ‘private’ home while the male ‘head of the household’ goes to work in the ‘public’ economy.

(Warren Kidd)

2. Create a newspaper cuttings folder of government responses to the financial and welfare needs of the elderly.