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This paper responds to Nick Gane's "Against a descriptive turn". I argue that descriptive research strategies are more open and inclusive than those which purport to be causal where explanatory adequacy is assessed by expert insiders. I also show how open descriptive strategies can assist a wider explanatory purpose when these are conceived in non‐positivist ways. I argue that epochalist sociology lacks an adequate temporal ontology because it collapses descriptive specificity back into overarching epoch descriptions. Finally, I argue that if the entire range of publications associated with the Great British Class Survey are considered, that it has demonstrated a productive way of recognising the significance of class which has facilitated major research advances in its wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this journal is to provide a medium for the publication of original papers covering the entire span of sociological thought and research. The editor is particularly keen to publish work on current developments in research and analysis. All contributions, correspondence and books for review should be addressed to The British Journal of Sociology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London. Papers submitted for publication are normally read by at least two assessors as well as by one of the editors. The editor's decision will be final. A decision of an article will usually be sent to authors within four months of submission, however, whilst every effort will be made to follow this practice, it should be understood that there may be circumstances where this will be difficult to guarantee. Articles submitted to the journal should be an original piece of work, not been published before and not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form.

The article presents a note to contributors to "The British Journal of Sociology." The aim of the journal is to provide a medium for the publication of original papers covering the entire span of sociological thought and research. The editor is particularly keen to publish work on current developments in research and analysis. All contributions, correspondence and books for review should be addressed to The British Journal of Sociology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Papers submitted for publication are normally read by at least two assessors as well as by one of the editors. The editor's decision will be final. A decision of an article will usually be sent to authors within four months of submission, however, whilst every effort will be made to follow this practice, it should be understood that there may be circumstances where this will be difficult to guarantee. Articles submitted to the journal should be an original piece of work, not been published before and not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form.

This paper examines two significant moments in sexual minority citizenship in England and Wales in relation to one of the Marshallian sets of rights, namely, civil or legal rights, focusing specifically on the Sex Offences legislation and policing practices. The first moment that will be examined here is the process whereby homosexual acts were decriminalized in the 1950s and 1960s: here special attention will be paid to the recommendations made by the Wolfenden Committee. The second moment is one we are currently experiencing, which is associated with the inclusive policing of sexual minority communities (especially lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities) under the provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and in the review of Sex Offences, especially in the consultation paper (Home Office 2000) and White Paper (Home Office 2002) associated with this review. Privacy and toleration dominate the first moment, at the same time it shall be demonstrated that privacy is also central to the British Sexual Citizenship literatures that have emerged in sociology in the post Wolfenden context. However, as the title suggests, the second moment under examination points to the emergence of a rather more extensive sexual minority citizenship beyond the boundaries of ‘homosexual privacy’ (which British Sexual Citizenship Studies is not currently engaging with) and perhaps even beyond the boundaries of toleration through ever more ‘inclusive’ policing strategies and through the review of sex offences in which many discriminatory laws are being ‘de-homosexualized’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the sociological study of resistance in light of growing interest in the concept of affect. Recent claims that we are witness to an 'affective turn' and calls for a 'new sociological empiricism' sensitive to affect indicate an emerging paradigm shift in sociology. Yet, mainstream sociological study of resistance tends to have been largely unaffected by this shift. To this end, this paper presents a case for the significance of affect as a lens by which to approach the study of resistance. My claim is not simply that the forms of actions we would normally recognize as resistance have an affective dimension. Rather, it is that the theory of affect broadens 'resistance' beyond the purview of the two dominant modes of analysis in sociology; namely, the study of macropolitical forms, on the one hand, and the micropolitics of everyday resistance on the other. This broadened perspective challenges the persistent assumption that ideological forms of power and resistance are the most pertinent to the contemporary world, suggesting that much power and resistance today is of a more affective nature. In making this argument, it is a Deleuzian reading of affect that is pursued, which opens up to a level of analysis beyond the common understanding of affect as emotion. I argue that an affective approach to resistance would pay attention to those barely perceptible transitions in power and mobilizations of bodily potential that operate below the conscious perceptions and subjective emotions of social actors. These affective transitions constitute a new site at which both power and resistance operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics related to sociology.

Abstract: This paper offers a defence of sociology through an engagement with Actor Network Theory (ANT) and particularly the critique of ‘critical’ and politically engaged social science developed by Bruno Latour. It argues that ANT identifies some weaknesses in more conventional sociology and social theory, and suggests that ‘critical’ and ‘public’ orientated sociologists can learn from the analytical precision and ethnographic sensibilities that characterize ANT as a framework of analysis and a research programme. It argues, however, that Latour et al. have too hastily dispensed with ‘critique’ in favour of a value neutral descriptive sociology, and that the symmetrical and horizontalist approach adopted in ANT is particularly ill‐suited to the development of scientific knowledge about social structures. It argues that a more straightforwardly realist sociology would share many of the strengths of ANT whilst being better able to interrogate, empirically and normatively, the centres of contemporary social power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Field theorists have long insisted that research needs to pay attention to the particular properties of each field studied. But while much field‐theoretical research is comparative, either explicitly or implicitly, scholars have only begun to develop the language for describing the dimensions along which fields can be similar to and different from each other. In this context, this paper articulates an agenda for the analysis of variable properties of fields. It discusses variation in the degree but also in the kind of field autonomy. It discusses different dimensions of variation in field structure: fields can be more or less contested, and more or less hierarchical. The structure of symbolic oppositions in a field may take different forms. Lastly, it analyses the dimensions of variation highlighted by research on fields on the sub‐ and transnational scale. Post‐national analysis allows us to ask how fields relate to fields of the same kind on different scales, and how fields relate to fields on the same scale in other national contexts. It allows us to ask about the role resources from other scales play in structuring symbolic oppositions within fields. A more fine‐tuned vocabulary for field variation can help us better describe particular fields and it is a precondition for generating hypotheses about the conditions under which we can expect to observe fields with specified characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Wright Mills's arguments in The Sociological Imagination are very popular and this paper focuses on the biographical context in which his programmatic statements were occasioned. This breaks new ground by locating The Sociological Imagination and earlier programmatic statements in the professional and personal travails that motivated them. This approach is adopted in order to display the intersection between biography and sociology in Mills's life and career, a feature that he made a central part of sociology's promise. The paper utilizes this approach to reflect on the reasons why The Sociological Imagination became so popular and was able to transcend Mills's general unpopularity at the time of his death: and as part of the explanation of why the dismissal of the book on its publication contrasts with the contemporary view, enabling it to transpose successfully to a time significantly different than at its writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reveals contemporary transformations of the interaction between Islam and secular states from opposition to engagement. In-depth ethnographic evidence challenges the predominant juxtaposition of Islam against the secular state. Following micro-sites of interaction between the Gülen movement and the state from Turkey to Kazakhstan, my fieldwork revealed a continuum of engagements between them. The paper analyses the engagements ranging from contestation and negotiation to co-operation. The case illustrates the extent to which scholarly interest in opposition and clash has left a wide-ranging variety of state-Islam interaction understudied with regard to civil society. It also reveals the conditions under which effective Islamic horizontal organizations have provided the platforms of vertical engagements with the secular states. The major argument of the paper is that both civil and uncivil outcomes in the Muslim world are primarily shaped by the nature of state—Islam interaction. The evidence suggests that the key to understanding the relationship between Islam and civil society is the state.

In this era of reflexive sociology it is commonplace that subjectivity is of great sociological concern, and that the comprehension by social researchers of their own subject position is essential. Still, old habits die hard. Focusing on selected texts in the sociology of the Australian family, this paper traces the effects of failing to focus the sociological gaze on subjectivity and its variation across society. Highlighted are some patterns of analytic misconstruction of subjectivity, especially the substitution of measurement for a theory of practice, and the projection by sociologists of their own class-specific subjectivity onto society at large. Ultimately, this misconstruction turns works like those discussed in this paper into a powerful denial of alternative subjectivities, and a reinforcement of the socially dominant perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the position that sociology needs to develop an approach to research which focuses on fundamental social problems. In doing so it shares many of the intellectual values and goals of political arithmetic while seeking to move methodologically beyond it. Since such problems are complex they will require, typically, interdisciplinary input and a concomitant approach to the development and appraisal of theories. We are not, therefore, advocating the primacy of sociology but arguing that it has a distinctive part to play in addressing the fundamental problems of the twenty-first century. However, a policy-oriented sociology has also to take up the task, so clearly defined by the tradition of political arithmetic, which is to hold governments to account. Consequently a central principle of a new policy science is that it should contribute to democratic debate about policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." The article's main point is that sociology is more open than the other social sciences and therefore more suited to open democratic public debate At the same time the authors argue that openness must not be confused with epistemological relativism because that simply produces argument without any basis for closure except by exhaustion. What is welcome is the argument that policy debates need to engage the wider public The authors' ideal of "political arithmetic" has a democratic pedigree that can hardly be gainsaid.

Drawing on the sociology of moral panic, this paper argues that the media will shift from alarming to reassuring coverage when a `hot crisis' portends a possible grass root panic. To determine whether this moderation effect follows from dread-inspiring events that are developing in unpredictable and potentially threatening ways, the paper compares newspaper and magazine coverage of emerging diseases with their coverage of Ebola Zaire. The results reveal that the mutation-contagion package, with its frightful account of emerging diseases, was quickly abandoned and subverted during the Ebola epidemic. In its place, the media fashion a containment package that uses a strategy of 'othering' to allay the fear. The conclusion discusses the flexibility in the tool kits used by the media to frame events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the career of the concept scientific community through three discernible stages. The formative stages is presented by Ludwik Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. It was learned that one of the early expositions of the theme that scientific knowledge is socially conditioned, Fleck's work revolves around the correlative concepts of thought collective and thought style. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was discussed. Stage three in the career of the concept scientific community is marked by criticism and the development of alternative models. During the 1960s and 70s, the view prevailed among metascientists that scientific knowledge is produced by communities of specialists. In the works of leading contemporary philosophers of science, as in many historical studies, the existence of scientific communities was assumed without question or argument. Kuhn's paper represents a watershed in the histories of both the concept itself and the entire discipline of sociology of science. Social integration in science was considered a result of a consensus about strategic norms or standards. Findings on the examination of the concept scientific community through the related works of Kuhn and Fleck, the Polish scientist and scientist knowledge, was presented.

This paper examines the relationship between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ social action with reference to recent research in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Evidence is presented in support of the proposal that a taken for granted model of conversational interaction is used by analysts, both lay and professional, as a comparative reference point against which certain actions are categorized as ‘formal’. Such a procedure, it is suggested, results in evaluative interpretations which fail to address the question of how such interactions may be operating to produce orderliness in the settings where they are found. This theme is developed mainly in relation to the way a number of recurrent features of multiparty interaction may provide practical solutions to a general problem which appears to be common to all such settings, namely that of how to create and preserve the conditions for sustaining the shared attentiveness of all co-present parties to the proceedings at hand. The general themes are also briefly considered with reference to small-scale interactions that are likely to be regarded as ‘formal’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of Basil Bernstein's work on language in relation to education and child rearing is widely recognized, but his contributions to the sociology of the school are less well-known. It is not the purpose of this article to make an extended critique of the theoretical and other propositions made in Bernstein's series of writings, but to report an attempt to put some of them to the empirical test. The results of the investigation give only limited support for some of the propositions made by Bernstein about the sociology of the school. This statement must be qualified by a number of reservations. Firstly, the variables used to test the propositions were not constructed for this specific purpose, and may not therefore represent the best use of the concepts involved. Secondly, they do not cover all the examples suggested by Bernstein. Thirdly, the schools to which the measures apply are secondary schools. With these reservations, the results suggest that Bernstein's explanation of the relationship between the different aspects of the school should be reconsidered. The explanations appear to be based upon an adaptive view of education, in which its form and change are determined by, or closely related to, the nature of and changes in superordinate sectors of society.

This paper comments on an article by Lauder, Brown, and Halsey, that deals on a political arithmetic to make sociology useful. These are some of the significant issues raised in the article: 1) relationship between social science and policymaking; 2) association between quantitative and qualitative approaches in social science, and; 3) need for policy research to draw on many disciplines. However, while raising important questions, there are some major uncertainties surrounding the authors' argument. They announce that they are to advance the position that sociology needs to develop an approach to research which focuses on fundamental social problems. But what they are proposing is not really new, since much sociological research has been concerned with fundamental social problems.

In this paper a ‘signal crimes’ perspective is outlined in an effort to unpack the relationships between experiences of crime and disorder, and perceptions of criminogenic risk. Grounded in symbolic interactionist sociology, and developing a social semiotic understanding of risk perception, it is a perspective that focuses upon processes of social reaction and the ways in which people interpret and define threats to their security. It is proposed that people interpret the occurrence of certain incidents as ‘warning signals’ about the levels of risk to which they are either actually or potentially exposed. These signals tend to take the form of signal crimes and/or signal disorders and are important in terms of how social space is symbolically constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on the notion of ‘addictive consumption’, conceived as a set of discourses that are embedded within wider socio-historical processes of governance and control. It examines the discursive convergences and conflicts between practices of consumption and notions of addiction, which it notes are consistently represented in terms of the oppositional categories of self-control vs. compulsion and freedom vs. determinism. These interrelations are explored with reference to the development of notions of addiction, and their relation to shifting configurations of identity, subjectivity and governance. Finally, it suggests that the notion of ‘addiction’ has particular valence in advanced liberal societies, where an unprecedented emphasis on the values of freedom, autonomy and choice not only encourage the conditions for its proliferation into ever wider areas of social life, but also reveal deep tensions within the ideology of consumerism itself.

This paper studies the impact of social class and education on political orientation. We distinguish the ‘old’ middle class from a new class of social/cultural specialists. However, the difference in their political orientation may especially be related to the level and field of education; the new middle class is more highly educated and often in fields of study that extensively address social competencies, characteristics independently affecting political outcomes. Analyses on Dutch data showed that education is more important in the prediction of ‘cultural’ liberal issues than social class. Economically-oriented issues are more strongly affected by social class. This means that interests of the new middle class are served by liberal standpoints relating to a strong government and income redistribution policies, but not relating to cultural issues.

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." Two key issues are addressed in a selective way. First, what is and what should be the role of social science, and sociology in particular, in informing policy making. Second, what is the wider role of social science in facilitating the democratic debate, and in holding policymakers to account. Too little social science research is directed at important issues Incentives in academia are not well aligned to achieving socially optimal goals, whether that be for inter-disciplinary working or policy influencing behavior.

This paper takes issue with Stehr and Grundmann's argument in this journal that sociology's poor record of contribution to practical knowledge results from sociologists' misguided attachment to the idea that social phenomena are peculiarly complex, and so peculiarly resistant to efforts at practical knowledge formation. Stehr and Grundmann develop their thesis by contrasting sociology to economics, claiming the latter's superior methods and disciplinary cultures enable it to contribute more successfully to solving practical problems. We argue that Stehr and Grundmann's comparison of the relative success of economics and sociology as policy sciences underestimates the extent to which the complexity argument has been destructive of economics' capacity to contribute practical knowledge, and overestimates the importance of disciplinary methods and cultures in explaining the use of economics in policy making. Further, we argue that the 'complexity argument' can contribute to better policy making, by virtue of its capacity to highlight the dangers of simplistic or fundamentalist solutions to social problems with complex causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate between the advocates of sociological individualism and those of holism has been pervasive in the development of social theory. This debate is often situated in the false problems of sociology, since it is seen as a particular form of the perennial and irresolvable dilemma between social nominalism and realism, as well as between freedom and determinism. Nevertheless, the debate is far from over within contemporary sociology and other social science, as indicated by the resurgence of individualism in rational action theory and its repudiation by holistic social theories. The aim of this paper is to identify some modern variations on this theme as well as to discern certain common tendencies of two seemingly opposite theoretical perspectives, viz. the convergence upon a normative solution to the problem of social order. This convergence is therefore denoted normative convergence between sociological individualism and holistic sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to challenge selected aspects of Professor J. A. Banks' discussion of Morris Ginsberg's view of the place of historical research in sociological work as they are presented in 'From Universal History to Historical Sociology' (BJS, rot. LX, no. 4, 1989:521-43). Specifically, it challenges Professor Banks' argument that Ginsberg believed that sociologists need not -- perhaps even should not -- do their own empirical research; that they should rely instead on historians and other disciplinary specialists for their data. It is true that Ginsberg was dismissive of a narrow positivist conception of empiricism and of sociology as a science more generally. At the same time, however, he saw empirical research (historical research included) as a necessary part of the sociological enterprise. Indeed, while the formulation of an all-inclusive theory of social development was the first purpose of general sociology, this was not possible without empirical contributions from a variety of smaller-scale specialized sociologies. Thus, it was not a question of historians doing one thing and sociologists another, but a question of emphasis. The paper concludes by noting that part of the difficulty in determining Ginsberg's position on this issue and other related theoretical matters is that, following Hobhouse, he styled himself as a 'rational empiricist'. According to this perspective, which from the dominant contemporary perspective incorrectly conflates philosophy and science (and sociology), the rational analysis of values can be described as a 'scientific' endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the application of Foucauldian perspectives within sociology. While Foucault's epistemology has generated novel historical and philosophical interpretations, when transposed to sociology, problems arise. The first of these concerns the association of knowledge and power, and the concept of 'discourse'. Foucault suggested that there are 'rules' of discursive formation which are extraneous to the 'non-discursive' realm of 'reality'. This formulation is consequently both deterministic and incapable of supplying explanations of why some practices become discursive which others do not. This determinism is reflected in some sociological analyses of embodiment, offering a model of the 'body' which is passive, and incapable of resisting power/knowledge. Secondly, Foucault's notion of the 'self' moves to the other extreme, inadequately addressing the constraints which affect the fabrication of subjectivity. Sociological accounts do not always recognize the ambiguities which consequently result from efforts to use Foucauldian positions. It is argued that post-structuralists other than Foucault may offer more to sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I outline some of the key ideas within Zygmunt Bauman's sociology; both in terms of his contribution to the creation of a postmodern sociology and his substantive texts. The critique that I develop, is that Bauman's work is assembled upon a modernist notion of `the social' which he not only accepts without question, but which undermines his attempts to devise a distinctly postmodern sociology. His substantive texts still contain many personal insights, but they need not make any use of postmodernist abstractions, which in the last analysis provide little more than a gloss over his own reflections on the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational action theory (RAT) is not a highly unified intellectual entity. In the first part of the paper, varieties of RAT are distinguished in terms of three criteria: i.e. according to whether they (i) have strong rather than weak rationality requirements; (ii) focus on situational rather than procedural rationality; (iii) claim to provide a general rather than a special theory of action. In the second part, these same criteria are applied in a consideration of which version of RAT holds out most promise for use in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the authors' comments on the report by John Westergaard and Ray Pahl to the University Grants Committee (UGC) on the institutional state of sociology in British universities. The paper has its limitations. Both authors were members of the working group of the UGC for the subject review, and so among the signatories of the report. At the time of writing this, the report is still only in the pipeline for publication so there are no reactions yet from sociologists to either argue or agree with the report. Nor can we make we make up for possible bias from inside commitment by offering startling benefit of inside view. Not because our lips are sealed; but because we do not think there is much unexpected to expose. We have no breathtaking revelations to make, for example, about mechanisms or pressures which might have been at work to induce the subject review panel to give the report a shape or direction at odds with some of its members' views. Circumstantial pressures there certainly were; but of a kind needing no special insight to anticipate or detect. The working group's recommendations bear no doubt a clear imprint from awareness of the acute, and politically determined, shortage of funds for higher education.

This paper argues that the idea of equality of opportunity should be rescued from general opprobrium. It defines a theory of competitive equality of opportunity as open competition for scarce resources. It suggests that this is an idea which demands objective tests of competence incumbent similarly and equally upon all competitors for scarce resources. Resources should be allocated to those most competent to manage them on the grounds of efficiency. This system is just if that allocation is managed to the benefit of and in the best interests of all. It is also argued that under a social system which does not impose equality of resources between citizens it is still possible to sustain equality of opportunity between individuals if public educational resources are allocated according to testable individual abilities and needs. Acknowledging that under present conditions schools make very little difference to individual life-chances it is proposed that they might do more to equalise opportunities if they were organised under principles of strict selection and separation under educational charters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Weberian sociology, the social conditions which promoted the growth of rational capitalism (free cities, an autonomous merchant class, rational law and an ethic of world mastery) are typically associated with the emergence of modern science. Protestantism, capitalism and rational science are assumed to require an open discursive space, free from arbitrary restraint on conscience and consciousness. This 'uniqueness of the west' argument encounters the following difficulties. Technology and science flourished in Chinese and Islamic cultures in which the political system was patrimonial and bureaucratic. In these societies, innovative science was often associated with oppositional, magical beliefs. Furthermore, in Weber's interpretation of Protestantism, it was the irrationality of the salvational drive which led to the rationality of a calling as an unintended consequence of action. Although this sceptical viewpoint suggests that no general theory of scientific accumulation is possible, the paper employs Weber's economic sociology to identify the close historical relationship between economic change, state regulation and the patronage of intellectuals in the development of science. Scientific rationalism is the outcome of contingent features (such as the requirements of navigation), structural arrangements between the economy and the state, the presence of rational technologies (in mathematics, writing and experimentation) and finally the teleological impact of rationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an advocacy for the employment of psychoanalytical concepts within sociological theorizing about the individual. Through an exposition of Freud's views on the development of intra-psychic structure and a critique of Parsons' reduction of psychoanalysis to a branch of learning theory, I attempt to show that the sociological approach to the individual is implicitly behavioural and imprisoned in a series of assumptions which, among other things, treats subjectivity as epiphenomenal and identity as an unmediated reflection of some external reality. In contrast, psychoanalysis presents to us a picture of the individual as flawed and ambivalent in his relation to society, formed by but at odds with the demands of culture. In particular, the psychoanalytic concept of identification reveals that the acquisition of identity is a hard-won achievement marked by the renunciation of lost and forbidden objects. I argue, following Freud and Lacan, that the ego, far from being an agency of reason, somehow directly ‘plugged into’ reality, constitutes itself in the fantasied image of another and that the quality of this identification crucially affects the way the world is experienced and believed by the individual. This argument is elaborated through a discussion of Peter Berger's remarks on the social causes of identity crisis which, when set against the work of object-relations theorists on those suffering from disturbances of identity such as, for example, schizoid personalities, are shown to be both superficial and misleading. I conclude the paper by arguing that while psychoanalysis can enhance our understanding of the way in which the individual is formed by and through culture it also cautions us against making simple generalizations about the impact of culture upon the person, showing that the individual never submits himself unequivocally to its demands and interdicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the principles and practice of the resolution to the ‘measurement problem’ in sociology. The aim is to amend those criticisms which argue that sociological measures are inevitably arbitrary since they are conventionally based on everyday meanings and thus mirror the mutability of natural language. Such critiques normally fail to distinguish the issue of the indefiniteness of meaning of the elements of ordinary language from the problem of translation from a natural language to the formal or mathematical languages underlying measurement scales. I argue that social variation in meaning, in itself, does not prevent measurement in the social realm and that rather the insurmountable problems stem from crucial differences in the two language forms which prevent determinate inter-translation. The consequences of this revised critique are examined by considering the logic-in-use of two current practical examples in the measurement field, viz. Goldthorpe and Hope's scale of occupational standing and Coxon and Jones's studies of occupational cognition. These authors tackle the question of whether there is socially structured variation in understanding occupational order. They produce conflicting results and thus disagree on the possibility of creating any singular, well-founded measure of occupational hierachy. I argue that both sets of findings are irrelevant and misleading because in concentrating on assessing the degree of social consensus in occupational cognition they ignore the problem of the incompatibility of natural and formal languages. Both investigations depend on making this transition between language forms and in both cases this is managed illegitimately by the use of techniques which bestow those crucial formal properties absent in the ordinary language occupational discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical review and discussion of a major field of Israeli sociology — the study of immigration and absorption. It concentrates on the dominant school of Israeli sociology, that of S. N. Eisenstadt and his associates, and points to the close relation between this body of work and functionalist theory. The paper demonstrates the inadequacy of this approach for the study of the formation of Israeli society, and its inability to deal with important economic and political developments. It is argued that its omissions and conclusions both point to the basic affinity between this school of Israeli sociology and the dominant state ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnomethodology has emerged as an attempt to make problematic the everyday phenomena of the social world and to reintroduce sociology to those forgotten aspects of everyday life. This article is no more than a brief outline of a possible critique of ethnomethodology written from the viewpoint of an implicit Marxian sociology. The paper relates to particular problems at the time of writing and is intended as no more than a statement of the exploratory attempts to understand the confusing relations between meaning in contexts, and more importantly, their political significance within social processes which either grow out of those contexts or which shape them. It is suggested however, that because ethnomethodology neglects to take into consideration the character of certain events, it borders close on being an ideology of conservatism. While it is agreed that with ethnomethodological critique of positivism and conventional research, certain reservation is expressed concerning those areas of ethnomethodological study which ignore such important social features as social change, the relations between meaningful contexts and political processes, and alternative realities to those features under analysis.

The article focuses on the paper "British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline," by Bryan Turner. Philippe Fontaine reviews the fact that sociologist have failed to document the gradual fall Great Britain from world power status, and discusses R. W. Cornell's views on the connection between empire and sociology. The anti-intellectual sentiment seen by Turner in Great Britain is critiqued, as well as Turner's insistence that social scientists chose certain topics to structure their investigations.

This article presents guidelines to contributors of the "British Journal of Sociology." Papers submitted for publication are normally read by at least two assessors as well as by one of the Editors. The Editor's decision will be final. Articles submitted to the journal should be an original piece of work, not been published before, and not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form.

This paper comments on the article "Appliances and Their Impact: The Ownership of Domestic Technology and Time Spent on Household Work," published in the September 2004 issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." The authors of the previous article reopen the old controversy over the domestic labor paradox. They deploy evidence which directly connects household ownership of domestic equipment to household members' time allocations, suggesting paradoxically that possession of household equipment in effect adds to domestic labor rather than reducing it. However, it is observed that there is a methodological trap, a confusing evidence of cross-sectional differences between people for historical change in people's behavior.

Mannheim's 1923 essay 'The Problem of Generations' has often been described as the seminal theoretical treatment of generations as a sociological phenomenon. Yet in practice scant attention has been paid to the sociology of generations by British sociologists. This is despite the notion of generation being widespread in everyday language as a way of understanding differences between age groups and as a means of locating individuals and groups within historical time. This paper aims to raise the profile of the sociology of generations within British sociology. It is shown that Mannheim's essay can be read as a text which contributes to our understanding of key sociological issues, in addition to 'the problem of generations'. These issues include the nature of time, the relationship between biology and the social, and socio-psychological connections of language and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marxian theory of social class has always been troubled by the fact that the coalitions that individuals form have not, by and large, been consistent with the pattern of asset ownership. The purpose of this paper is to add another dimension to some of the existing approaches to this 'goodness-of-fit' problem. This is done by using n-person game theory to examine the coalitions that individuals would be expected to form in a struggle over division of the surplus. This provides a partial analysis of fragmentation within the working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elias's great work, The Civilizing Process (2 vols), was originally published in the inauspicious year of 1939. Elias wrote it as an associate of Mannheim's Frankfurt circle. The Second World War, and his fraught attempts to establish himself in British academic sociology in the first two decades after 1945, plunged his works into obscurity. Only now, as his early publications are starting to become available in English, is the resonance and insight of his sociological method coming to be widely appreciated. This paper considers the main features of the figurational approach and critically assesses its value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to evaluate the contribution of the late Erving Goffman to the field of Sociology. In doing so I have attempted to document some of the main commentaries upon Coffman's work — especially those of A. Dawe and A.W. Gouldner — and to evaluate their validity. This paper is presented within the framework of a general overview of Goffman's work and an elaboration of some of the salient themes within it. The intention of the author is to free Goffman from some of the crude overgeneralizations that his colleagues have used in evaluating his writings. In particular, I have attempted to show, in general terms, how Goffman's work is sensitive to ‘structural’ as well as ‘situational’ concerns and also to class, hierarchy and power. It is argued that Goffman's importance has been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper published in "British Journal of Sociology," the author made the claim that despite decades of intensive investigation, not a single researcher had ever shown that class difference in education was indeed unfair and unjust. It was a charge that was underwritten by a simple, if technical, argument, which drew attention to what, in logic, would have to be shown if such a difference was to be regarded as an inequality, rather than as just another difference in a differentiated society. In this case, it was suggested that, other things being equal, the researcher would have to meet one of two conditions. He would have to show that the different classes were similarly disposed to education or, alternatively, if there were evidence, as in Great Britain, of considerable working-class indifference to education, he would need to demonstrate that such indifference was itself the result of structural or cultural inequality. Only then, it was argued, could the researcher be said to have reasonably shown that class difference in education was unfair; for only then could the researcher be reasonably sure that such a difference was not, after all, just another difference.

Upon his death in 1920, at the age of 56, sociologist Max Weber left behind a huge and untidy mass of personal papers and scholarly manuscripts, some of the latter in the process of being edited for publication by Weber himself, others intended for intensive reworking, others yet superseded drafts. The intended characteristics of the book "Max Weber Gesamtausgabe," in the first of the publications listed below: they are those of a critical-historical edition, intended not to replace the several collections of Weber's writings currently available for the use of students, but rather to serve the needs of scholars, including the editors of such future collections. The edition is to include three sections: Writings and Speeches; Manuscripts of and notes from lecture courses. In the first section, the arrangement of material will embody a compromise between chronological and thematic grouping; that is, the numbering of volumes will reflect the shifts in the prevailing concerns of Weber's scholarly and publicistic activity, but each volume may contain again, in chronological sequence writings and speeches. From a number of years in so far as they bear on its chief theme. Each volume will contain editorial material which elucidates the circumstances of each piece of writing or speech, indicates the state of the relative sources and eventual discrepancies among them, and clarifies or corrects such parts or points in the text as might baffle or mislead even a relatively informed contemporary reader.

This article presents a content approach to recasting the concept of ideology. The legacy of the encounter of the independent effects of ideology on social development has been scholars' preoccupation with the social functions of ideology and a corresponding disregard of what ideology is. As a result, it is not surprising that the relevant sociological literature reveals a bias towards a functional definition of ideology and, conversely, a lack of concern for a definition based on, or even related to, content. Despite some significant contributions, the sociological understanding of ideology, in particular the adequacy of its definition, has not recovered from such a legacy. Implicit in any attempt to overcome the problem of the sociology of ideology is the assumption that the retention of such a concept is worthwhile. Assuming that ideas and beliefs are the broad subject matter of the study of ideologies, a concept of ideology is worth having because sociologists find it useful to distinguish certain beliefs which are thought to have influence in the social domain. In attempting to arrive at a definition of ideology, it makes sense to look at those situations where there is good reason to believe that certain beliefs have had some impact to see what special properties they have.

This paper presents the author's reply to the article The Misconstruction of Occupational Judgment, by A. P. M. Coxon, published in the 1983, volume 34, number 4 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. Coxon has charged that the author's article on the linguistic base to sociological measurement misrepresents the methodological presupposition of his project on occupational cognition. In reply, the author would like to counter the charge of misrepresentation, restate the source of their disagreement, challenge Coxon's advocacy of methodological pluralism in the study of social cognition and, finally, examine the broader consequences of this exchange for measurement practice. In his article, the author suggested that there is root incompatibility between the structure of ordinary language and that of formal language, and that the attempt to achieve a description of the former in terms of the latter, by way of scaling techniques common in sociological research, is achieved, quite illegitimately, through the surreptitious imposition of the key elements of formal language at certain contrived points in the data collection and analysis procedures. The reader will note that Coxon has made no attempt to defend himself against this charge in relation to the artefactual results generated by his use of the paired comparison technique.

Recent discussions in the philosophy of the social sciences exhibit a remarkable agreement about what has become one of the most urgent problems for sociological methodology. The situation may be summarized thus: ethnomethodological developments in interpretative sociology have shown that there can be no firm and certain basis on which to ground truth claims for our propositions. The conclusion drawn from this is that the traditional aspirations of conventional sociology — to be objective and scientific — cannot be attained. However, the programme of work promised by those who have developed ethnomethodology as a critique of ‘conventional sociology’ itself contains certain difficulties. Thus, the problem addressed by those writing in the philosophy of social science is this: given the contradictions in sociology as traditionally practiced, and given the problems in the programme offered by those largely responsible for discrediting it, whither sociology now? The purpose of my paper is to show that the question may be unnecessary. This is not so much because interpretative sociologists are mistaken in their understanding of the conditions in which research is undertaken, but rather because the positivist epistemological assumptions taken to be necessary for an objective scientific sociology, are not required for this and indeed are erroneous. I shall argue specifically that a Popperian account of (objective) science is wholly compatible with the understanding contemporary interpretative sociologists have of the research context, and indeed that there are striking similarities between this and Popper's ideas, most especially those developed in recent years. Thus, I shall go on to suggest that, by adopting a Popperian epistemology we may thereby recognize the validity of the fundamentals of the ethnomethodological position without being forced to abandon the effort to be objective and scientific; we may also sidestep the particular dif... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I want to address two question marks which arose during my reading of Michael Burawoy's inspiring piece. First, sharing his spirit of recreating the sociological enlightenment by differentiating between different types of public sociologies, I do not share his optimism that sociology can easily become an integral part of public discourse and practice. Second, I don’t think that mainstream sociology is really prepared for this adventure. My argument points in the opposite direction: all the different forms of public and non-public sociology are in danger of becoming museum pieces. Thus, sociology not only needs a public voice, it also needs to be reinvented first – in order to have a public voice at all! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on Michael Burawoy's article "For Public Sociology," in volume 56, issue number 2, of the "British Journal of Sociology." Michael Burawoy has presented 11 theses on public sociology. Some of his main claims can be summarized in three statements: public sociology is part of a four-fold bundle of disciplinary activities; public sociology is important and should be made stronger and developed as an integrated part of the discipline; and public sociology requires well functioning publics. Comments are made on: academic institutions as bundles of activities; the nature of public sociology; and why and how dissemination and public discourse should be made stronger.

This article comments on Michael Burawoy's article "For Public Sociology," in volume 56, issue number 2, of the "British Journal of Sociology." Focus is made on two aspects of Burawoy's arguments which would be inaccurate if they were directed to the international community of sociologists: the division of social labor or functional differentiation among the four sociologies; and the nature of the friction among them. Thus, while Michael Burawoy's challenge to sociologists to think constructively and critically about sociology is timely and welcome, his ideas should be discussed in the context of the geographical breadth of the discipline.