BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, Boxing in Gleason's Gym; Sport and Capitalism
"Now, when there wasn't all that much to do at York, we used to play a rather patronising game of reciting mistakes made by first year students.
You know, there were the good ole ones. There was the student who thought the criminals most deserving of punishment were the ones she called child molesters. And there was a student who said he disagreed with the Freudian interpretation of familial psychic life because "no one could ever fancy my mom".
And there were many many students who when asked to comment on a careful piece of sociological research complained, "it was a bit of a generalisation."
I did always have a bit of a sneaking sympathy for that last complaint. Of course, sociology necessarily deals in generalisations. Albeit based on often painstakingly accumulated evidence.
But it's often in the exceptions to such generalisations that one can come across unexpected insights."