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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]

Neo-Weberian closure theory developed principally by Parkin appears at first glance to suffer from two opposing weaknesses — that its central concept of exclusion is either too broad or too narrow. This paper demonstrates that these objections are spurious. It then uncovers several real problems which have not yet been examined by the critics of closure theory. These problems have to do with Parkin's conceptions of usurpation, of the withdrawal of services, and of property, as well as with the ambiguity in the politics of Parkin's closure theory. The paper corrects these weaknesses and clarifies this ambiguity and concludes that closure theory so-corrected provides a promising framework for going beyond analyses focused narrowly on one particular means of domination and one particular set of monopolization and exclusion rules to a focus on monopolization and exclusion per se. [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]

The high point of research investment in mobility research was in the early 1970s, when three major national surveys of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland absorbed very substantial proportions of the spending of the SSRC on sociology. Only the Oxford Social Mobility Group retained a sufficiently large team of scholars to sustain active work on the data collected, although the number of publications that have subsequently made use of the three data-sets must now be several hundred in number. The dismal economics of large-scale survey research have since prevented ant similar follow-ups of mobility per se, but there have been some smaller specialist studies and new data have been derived from other sources. Both the range of articles featured in this paper, and the secondary analysis referred to, demonstrate how the original paradigm of mobility research and has become modified. Social mobility is now not so much a single area of sociology as four or arguably five connecting clusters of work. The first, not least in terms of paradigmatic dominance, concentrates on discovering and describing large-scale flows of people between social origins and social definitions. It is this which gives rise to our knowledge about patterns and rates of mobility.

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 recognizes the contribution made by Robert Miles to marxist scholarship on 'race' and class in Britain but it suggests that his central thesis is flawed in that a consideration of gender and community should be as central to the analysis as that of social class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using as a case study the 1914 report of the government inquiry into the pay and working conditions of the Royal Irish Constabulary, this paper will address two issues in Max Weber's writings on class and status. The first concerns the recent claim by Barbalet that market situations are ultimately rooted in actors' subjective orientations and cognitions, something which has been taken for granted with respect to social status but which runs counter to previous interpretations of Weber's work on class. Certain implications for the way Weber's notion of class is conceived follow from this, which are supported by the case study. The second issue concerns Parkin's criticism of Weber for ignoring the role of the state, and his related observation that any consideration of class and status must address how the state functions to uphold or reshape structures of inequality. The deliberations and recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry afford an opportunity in microcosm to document some of the motivations the state has for endorsing social closure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper directs critical attention to Emile Durkheim's considerations about the crucial role of non-transferable, human talent resources within any coherent theory of social justice. It is argued that Durkheim's appreciation of this question anticipated all modern formulations of the issue, and has been insufficiently acknowledged in the contemporary literature. It is contended that Durkheim developed a theory of 'equal treatment' through a rigorous repudiation of Mill's theory of self-ownership, but tempered the sociological force of this idea by developing a parallel 'equal opportunity' theory, which established the basis of a coherent defence of the idea of equality of opportunity through the principle of proportionality. It is concluded that the ethical and sociological compromise for which Durkheim argued between these two egalitarian theories of social justice remains philosophically coherent and sociologically plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Crisis has become such an all-pervasive rhetorical metaphor that its analytical utility for contemporary social thought has become devalued and confused. The normalisation of a sense of crisis has however blurred the conventional distinction between crisis as a decisive moment in the resolution of a narrative or illness and normality. This paper responds to this 'crisis in crisis theory' by reaffirming the distinction between crisis and normality. Starting out from the axiom that only subjects can be involved in crisis, a number of reasons are presented for the pervasiveness of crisis-talk, hinging on a western loss of faith in European Enlightenment rationalism. Attention then shifts from problems of cultural meaning to the development of a modern sociology of crisis within the system-theories of Parsons and Habermas. This enterprise involves an approach to crisis and crisis-resolution in terms of problems of social differentiation and institutionalisation. The delimited accounts of crisis that emerge are capable of distinguishing between crisis and normality, while yet retaining a critical sense of the provisionality and problematic nature of the 'normal'. They are therefore more compatible with the politics of this-worldly social reform than other-worldly utopianism. [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]

Max Weber's reputation is based almost exclusively on the methodological writings and substantive sociology published after the essay on `Objectivity' (1904) and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). But Weber had in fact published theoretically significant work on capitalist development, agrarian social relations, and antiquity in the decade of the 1890s. This paper investigates these `early writings' as a basis for Weber's later sociology. Placing Weber in an intellectual and political context, the paper sets forth an interpretation of the distinctive characteristics of his structural analysis of society and his understanding of history. It also considers the innovations in Weber's conceptual language, particularly his use of the concept `Arbeitsverfassung', and in his early relationship to Marx and Nietzsche. The discussion defends the view that there is a distinctively Weberian `structuralism' and `developmental history', setting Weber apart in important ways from Marx and Nietzsche. [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 article explores the question: can the variation that have been observed in class mobility rates in England, France and Sweden be in fact attributed entirely to differences in the evolution of the class structures of these societies - or in other factors affecting the demand and supply conditions attending mobility; or is it rather the case that there are, in addition to such structural sources of variation, differences also among the three societies in the pattern of what we would term their social fluidity or, in other words, in mobility considered independently of structural influences? To use the conceptual language that has been conventional in mobility research- but from which we would wish to depart -- the issue could then be alternatively posed as that of whether the cross-national variation that we have demonstrated is confined simply to structural mobility, or whether it extends to exchange mobility as well. The source of mobility data in England, France and Sweden have been fully described in previous paper of these authors. Here it will be sufficient to say that the data derive from nationally-based sample survey inquiries undertaken in the three countries during the early 1970s.

The overwhelming emphasis in social research on collecting positive data has had the dangerous effect of minimizing the worth of negative evidence, which is defined in this paper as either (1) the nonoccurrence of events, (2) an occurrence that is not reacted to or not reported (because it is outside the frame of reference of the population or of the researcher), or (3) although noted in its raw form, distorted in its interpretation or withheld from analysis and report. A paradigm of seven types of negative evidence is developed: (1) Events Do Not Occur; (2) Population Is Not Aware of Events; (3) Population Wishes to Hide Events; (4) Commonplace Events Are Overlooked; (5) Effects of the Researcher's Idea Set; (6) Unconscious Non-Reportage; and (7) Conscious Non-Reportage. Each type is discussed, and examples are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of the place of negative evidence in both inductively and deductively based social research, and a caution against ignoring such data. [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]

The present paper examines Weber's work on charisma from the original formulation in Economy and Society to the final statement in the essay on ‘Politics as a Vocation’. Both the intended meaning of charisma in the earlier formulation and the uses and limitations of the new formulation are discussed. The paper concludes with some observations on the place of charisma in Weber's ethical and intellectual life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the paper is to examines sociological ramifications of the philosophy of T. H. Green. The main arguments of the paper flow from the opening critical remarks on M. Richter's account of Green in The Politics of Conscience. (I) Green was innovative in respect of this Kantian philosophy of duty, philosophy similar to which were subsequently common at Oxford, rather than in respect of his Hegelianism, and (2) although Green had reformist intentions, the Kantian philosophy of duty was harnessed by others to the pre-emption of utilitarian reform: this is shown through an analysis of the direction of change prior to Green, and of the strategy of those who promoted his mode of thought. Senses in which this analysis substantiates conceptions of the peculiarly British pattern of pre-emption of middle class revolution by the aristocracy are discussed. [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 corpus of Alfred Schutz's methodological writings is directed at creating a scientific method which does not subjugate a meaning-endowing actor to objective, impersonal causal laws. Given the nature of this task, it is surprising that the list of Schutz's published writings is so small. It consists, in fact, of only one full-length book and numerous articles which have been compiled into a three-volume anthology. This relative paucity of published writings is partly due to the extreme care and meticulousness Schutz exhibits in writing and re-writing each work, and partly the result of a Jekyll-Hyde type of life in which days are spent pursuing money and success in the business world, leaving only nights to teach and write. In this paper I shall summarily describe Schutz's efforts and see if his phenomenologically defined notion of subjectivity is reasonably incorporated into a valid scientific method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces some consequences of characterizing the sociological discipline as an 'occupation.' The concept of 'occupation,' while suffering from abuse, nevertheless retains its reference to the crucial defining process which characterizes sociology. Using the concept of 'occupation' in its sensitizing function, it was suggested that evidence of phenomena in sociology which indicated efforts to achieve orientation could be found by the location and identification of 'pieties' of individual sociologists, by granting recognition to a form of knowledge termed mystique, by the identification of forms of ritual and what was termed 'secular prayer,' a form of character-building and by the location of different 'cognitive styles.' Two styles were mentioned, one being characterized by continuity, the other by 'conversion' experience. These phenomena it was suggested, would best be termed 'cultic' in character. Possible hypotheses were suggested. Some attempt was made to indicate types of interpretations and observations possible using cult as an orientational or sensitizing concept.

This article discusses the book "Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences," edited by May Brodbeck. The author gives attention to three topics discussed in this anthology. The first is the controversy over whether the account of explanation given by sociologist Hempel is applicable in the human as well as in the natural sciences. The second theme in the anthology obviously relevant to sociologist is that of methodological individualism versus holism. Many of the papers in this anthology characterize at one level the alternatives confronting a scientist whose theorizing confronts either empirical or conceptual difficulties. Just because actions are informed by intentions and purposes, and intentions and purposes presuppose beliefs, so a social role-which specifies and prescribes or permits certain courses of action for certain types of person presupposes certain beliefs. The matter of the philosophy of science may not only be regulative as regards the form of our theories and the lessons to be learnt here may well be one that the sociologist now feels have been conveyed to him almost too often-but suggestive as to their content.

The paper attempts to outline some of the major problems and opportunities involved in efforts to apply sociology to social work training. Social work, along with other professional disciplines, is becoming increasingly interested in the application of sociological theory and research to its particular field of activity. Social workers have been encouraged to investigate the social factors surrounding the social and psychological causalities whom they have attempted to help. Social workers' interest in social factors has met, however, some formidable obstacles which have generally prevented them until recently from developing this interest into a fuller exercise of the sociological imagination, an exercise which demands a sound appreciation of sociological theory. The areas of social work research are closely linked and should provide eventually interlocking analyses giving an overall picture of social work practice, for the study of the professional development of social work students leads inevitably to the study of social work practice in its organizational and wider sociocultural setting. The sociology of social work, based as it must be upon theoretical analysis and empirical research can provide for the sociologist a new field of investigation and for the social worker an important part of professional training.

The article presents a paper on the theory of working-class Conservatism. In any study of voting behavior in industrial society, social class would figure prominently as a predictor of party choice and political loyalty. Whilst it is obvious that other influences are brought to bear upon individuals which help to shape their political commitments, such as religious, historical, ethnic, regional factors, and so forth, social class membership has proved to be one of the most reliable single indices of voting behavior. This theory of working-class conservatism would make the notions of deference and class perception unnecessary, in so far as it seeks to encompass both of these within its explanatory orbit. These two concepts differ from the ones employed here in that they are essentially socio-psychological in character, in the sense that they focus upon individual attitudes and perceptions as a means of explaining political behavior.

This paper present results obtained from a study of workers in a British car assembly plant; results which, in certain respects, differ fairly clearly from the pattern which has emerged from previous investigations. In the literature of industrial sociology since World War II studies of workers in car assembly plants have almost certainly outnumbered those of any comparable industrial or occupational group. Furthermore, the findings of these studies have shown a relatively high degree of consistency. In most previous studies of car assembly workers, attention has been given to the way in which assembly-line technology inhibits the formation of cohesive work groups. Although the majority of men work in fairly close proximity to others, the fact that they tend to be strung out along the length of the "track" means that the "development" of specifically group relations is usually impeded; that is to say, workers are prevented from sharing in common networks of social relationships, set off from others by more or less distinct boundaries. Furthermore, following this interpretation, assembly-line technology has also been seen as having important implications for the attitudes of assemblers towards their first-line supervisors. Because of the limits on group formation, it is argued, the relationship between worker and foreman is of increased significance. It was apparent from observation in the assembly departments that the nature of technical organization did in fact largely rule out the possibility of the formation of cohesive work groups.

The purpose of this paper is to review some of the structural determinants of the interaction between the civilian government and military organizations in developing countries. Perhaps the most obvious expressions of this interaction are coups d'état. Both their frequency in recent years and their dramatic quality have ensured their study, mostly by historians and political scientists, rarely by sociologists. Societies always have difficulty in adapting themselves to change, especially where the change undermines the power of existing elites. Military involvement in politics is symptomatic of the centripetality of conflict; the more the dissensus, the more alternative sources of power become involved in the dispute. Military power, by virtue of its organization and equipment, is usually supreme. At first sight it may seem an ideal solution for the management of conflict. But its very supremacy prevents the independent growth of other mechanisms of tension management and limits further change.

The growing application of science and technology to production involves the increasing employment of scientists in industrial organizations. Industry will soon be the main employer of scientists. Nearly 70 per cent of all chemists engaged in research and development work are to be found in industrial laboratories. The research reported here arises out of the now familiar theme that the employment of professionals in organizations gives rise to problems which derive from the conflict between professional and bureaucratic authority. The professional demands autonomy in the exercise of his expert knowledge. But at the same time, he is expected to comply with the demands of the organization which employs him, and in particular is subject to the authority of administrators. This paper will firstly attempt to construct a typology of scientists based on fresh research data. But once it is recognized that there are varying degrees of attachment to scientific values, and that in this sense, there are different types of scientist, the problems of role strain and organizational tension take on a new perspective. In particular, the author will attempt to demonstrate how the mechanisms of occupational choice and selection may reduce the conflicts between scientists and organizations, and the resultant strains.

This article presents a list of books on sociology, received by the "British Journal of Sociology," between January and March 1964. Some of the books include "Local Government in Developing Countries," by H.F. Alderfer, "The English Voter," by A.J. Allen, "Dimensions of Work," by N. Anderson, "The People Called Shakers," by E.D. Andrews and "Population and Society in the Arab East," by G. Baer.

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, are a group of countries that have boundaries with each other and lie between India and China. In all but Vietnam, Theravada Buddhism is the predominant religion. Apart from these resemblances, the pattern of cultures and of political trends is variegated and complex. Thailand, however, is relatively homogeneous in culture and tranquil in politics. Yet in spite of its notorious charm, it has not attracted many field investigators. The major exception to this is the work of the Cornell University Thailand Project, and especially its study from 1948 to 1958 of the village of Bang Chan near Bangkok. From the improvised fieldwork in a north-east province the impression one gets is that some factors that divide and cause conflict within other societies are absent or at least well concealed in Thailand. The Thai intelligence is pragmatic rather than theoretical and hitherto sociology has had no very great appeal in Thailand. Of countries in the list, the one most fitted by temperament and intellectual tradition to produce its own sociologists is probably Vietnam. Unfortunately the widespread political disturbance is an adverse factor.

The purpose of this short paper is to review the present the position of industrial sociology as an academic discipline as of September 1959. It will focus therefore on its approach, its field of inquiry, the selection of problems for study, methods used and the present provision for its pursuit. The treatment given to the article is analytical rather than descriptive, since it can be assumed that most sociologists will have some knowledge of particular developments and various researches in this field, and only passing reference will therefore be made to them. There is still a tendency to use the term industrial sociology compendiously, to refer to all developments in the study of social relations in industry, in a manner which is reminiscent of the way in which the role of sociology itself was seen at one time simply as synoptic. This tendency of course is indicative of the developmental stage of the subject, but is quite illegitimate and emphasizes the need for clarification of the special position of industrial sociology.

This article discusses, by way of general outline, some of the recent sociological treatments of conflict in industrial relations by U.S. social scientists. Conflict in this paper is measured primarily in the form of the strike. The first text in the field of industrial sociology, Wilbert Moore's Industrial Relations and the Social Order, however, goes beyond the cursory description of the broad environmental factors in industrial conflict. In two chapters devoted to conflict, he outlines the range or types of collective bargaining relations, from extreme conflict, to issue bargaining, to problem bargaining, and to cooperation. There has been, however, an attempt to use a basically human relations approach towards conflict between a union and its management. It is William F. Whyte's Pattern for Industrial Peace. It is a case-study of the union-management relations in a small subsidiary plant of the Inland Steel Company, in Chicago, of less than 1,000 employees. It traces the development of these relations, through the improvement of the nature of the personal contacts between union officials and managers, from conflict to co-operation in a brief span of seven years. The study itself took place after the event, a fact which mitigates the value of the interpretation by Whyte.

This article highlights the first conference of the British Sociological Association held in London, England on March 27-29, 1953. The conference was attended by 233 persons of whom 125 were members of the Association. The theme was Social Policy and the Social Sciences. The conference opened with a plenary session which was addressed by Myrdal on the Relation Between Social Theory and Social Policy. For the second day the conference divided into three groups, each of which devoted its attention to a topic chosen to illustrate the general theme. The three topics chosen for group discussion were: health; design and planning of buildings, towns and countryside; needs and standards in the social services.

This article discusses the concepts of cybernetics and social science. Cybernetics is the analytic study of the isomorphisms of communication structure in mechanisms, organisms and societies. On the other hand, the development of science as a social enterprise is a function of the growth of certain new kinds of communication and their formalization into patterns of behaviour. The immediate origin of cybernetics is to be found in the development of calculating machines, of guided missiles and of the anatomy and physiology of the brain. The problems of the sociology of scientific organization are intrinsically interesting and of contemporary concern. One of the major problems of sociology is the difficulty of knowing when a prediction is fulfilled or falsified. This paper will also deal on the status and sociological relevance of cybernetics itself. There is, however, a fundamental weakness in the whole of the cybernetic analysis of purpose. Purposive behaviour in cybernetics is a consequence of an overt change in the milieu. There may be no new science of cybernetics but there is at least a stimulus for a large number of already existing disciplines.

Julian Go's 'Thinking Against Empire' identifies the corpus of 'anticolonial thought' as being instructive for a wider rethinking of how sociology might rally its key conceptualisations of social relations. He insightfully identifies the marginalisation of such thinking from Sociology as an institutionalised discipline. In our response we take up some of the warnings Go provides in the closing sections of his essay—which concern the expanse of intellectual engagement being currently bracketed under or connected to the 'anti‐colonial', not least vis‐à‐vis the 'decolonising/decolonial' turn—to further unpack how the 'anti‐colonial' might be adapted for thinking through contemporary socio‐political dynamics. Offering, first, a precis of some particularities of British Sociology vis‐a‐vis the contributions of anticolonial social theory, this article then expands upon the dilemmas arising when anticolonial theory contemporaneous to the pre‐decolonisation era is transposed to contingencies of the present 21st century. Namely, whilst the anticolonial archive has proved invaluable to upending the omissions but also complicities of European social theory canons, allowing for a much more expansive sense of how the modern world and its violences were conjured and how we might accordingly escape its miseries, it is also clear that much of the postcolonial world has undergone sufficient shifts to warrant an adapted sense of how we consider the anti‐colonial for our current politics. We suggest that the important deviations which anti‐colonial theorisations might heed include the dangers of conflating the anticolonial with an affirmation of Global South, non‐white nativist identity; the need to recognise some key conjunctural premises by which the anticolonial is no longer geographically indexed to a straightforward Global North‐Global South distinction; and the need to acknowledge that, at its most radical, anticolonial thought is itself still invested in traversing both the dreams but also corruptions of those dreams as intrinsic to modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post-Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo-liberal governmental technology and its application in post-socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state-run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between 'neo-liberal' and 'Soviet' regimes, we should understand the double-move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo-liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo-liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a examination into the history and trajectory of sociology as scholastic discipline in Great Britain, debating the flaws, challenges and possible future of the field. The author heavily cites and responds to a paper by John Holmwood included within the issue discussing the same topic. The author confirms and expands Holmwood's analysis, discussing the divergences which occurred in the discipline between the 1960s and the 1990s. Attention is particularly given to the role of sociology as an interdisciplinary art and the internal fragmentation of the discipline as a result.

Compressed modernity is a civilizational condition in which economic, political, social and/or cultural changes occur in an extremely condensed manner in respect to both time and space, and in which the dynamic coexistence of mutually disparate historical and social elements leads to the construction and reconstruction of a highly complex and fluid social system. During what Beck considers the second modern stage of humanity, every society reflexively internalizes cosmopolitanized risks. Societies (or their civilizational conditions) are thereby being internalized into each other, making compressed modernity a universal feature of contemporary societies. This paper theoretically discusses compressed modernity as nationally ramified from reflexive cosmopolitization, and, then, comparatively illustrates varying instances of compressed modernity in advanced capitalist societies, un(der)developed capitalist societies, and system transition societies. In lieu of a conclusion, I point out the declining status of national societies as the dominant unit of (compressed) modernity and the interactive acceleration of compressed modernity among different levels of human life ranging from individuals to the global community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The concept of generation within sociology has until recently been a marginal area of interest. However, various demographic, cultural and intellectual developments have re-awakened an interest in generations that started with the classic essay by Karl Mannheim. To date, the sociological literature has generally conceptualized generations as nationally bounded entities. In this paper we suggest that the sociology of generations should develop the concept of global generations. This conceptual enhancement is important because the growth of global communications technology has enabled traumatic events, in an unparalleled way, to be experienced globally. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the era of international generations, united through print media, and the mid-twentieth century saw the emergence of transnational generations, facilitated by new broadcast communications. However, the latter part of the twentieth century is the period of global generations, defined by electronic communications technology, which is characterized, uniquely, by increasing interactivity. The 1960s generation was the first global generation, the emergence of which had world-wide consequences; today with major developments in new electronic communications, there is even more potential for the emergence of global generations that can communicate across national boundaries and through time. If in the past historical traumas combined with available opportunities to create national generations, now globally experienced traumas, facilitated by new media technologies, have the potential for creating global generational consciousness. The media have become increasingly implicated in the formation of generational movements. Because we are talking about generations in the making rather than an historical generation, this article is necessarily speculative; it aims to provoke discussion and establish a new research agenda for work on generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological understanding of generations can be enhanced by avoiding defining them rigidly as chronological cohorts but rather linking people's accounts of their generational experience with an historically informed political economy. It then becomes possible, for example, to understand the complexity of generational politics. This paper uses data on the ‘War Generation’ taken from the Exeter Politics of Old Age project to link an empirically based political economy of generational inequality with a cultural sociology of generations. The ‘War Generation’ recognizes itself and is referred to by others in terms of a common identity. It is also an historical generation; its values, attitudes and, above all, sense of national solidarity and mutual obligation were forged in the direct experience of war. But it is also divided by divergent economic interests in property and pension rights based on the historical experience of the life course by successive groups and this segmentation can be observed in political action. The political culture of the War Generation manifests both continuity and change. Understanding these dynamics requires listening to people constructing their worlds, understanding their full range of historical experiences, and analysing the conditions for their conflicts and their cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines two strands within contemporary gender essentialism – that is, the argument that men and women are fundamentally different and that it is this ‘difference’ that explains the continuing social and material differences between the sexes. The first strand we examine is Hakim's ‘preference theory’, which has argued that persisting sex differences in employment patterns are an outcome of the ‘choices’ made by different ‘types’ of women. We next examine the claims of populist conservative feminism, that has argued that women (and men) in partnerships will be happier if they adopt a gender role traditionalism in the domestic sphere. Our empirical findings suggest that neither of these theoretical explanations are supported by our data, which is derived from the samples of six countries participating in the International Social Survey Programme Family 2002 module. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the relationship between nationalism and localism have brought evidence that these orientations might maintain either relations of opposition or congruence. By conceiving of localism mainly as a strategy, this paper argues that localism can be used alternately as an anchor of nationalist narrative or as an alternative to nationalism by the exact same community. This argument is illustrated by the case of Sakhnin, an Arab-Palestinian town in Israel. Local pride in Sakhnin has developed around two separate foci: a nationalist heroic narrative of martyrdom and the success of the local football team. These two foci developed in complete isolation, since the first is embedded in a Palestinian nationalist narrative while the latter is oriented toward the Israeli Jewish public. An ethnographic study follows the construction of these separate spheres and a survey conducted among 174 men in the town confirms that involvement in the football sphere correlates with both local pride and integrative orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

This paper examines urban China's socio-political control crisis under the impact of economic reforms as an epitome of a more general social crisis. The traditional urban institutional form of socio-political control in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the work unit form of control, is a variant of age-old forms. The latter's reproduction in variant form in the former was premised upon the fact that the PRC's industrialization was carried out by a peasant-based party creating a new working class of rural migrants engaged in non-market production and exchange. The persistence of non-market economic relations ensured this form of control's continued reproduction. Post-1978 market-oriented reforms have undermined this form. As the emergence of new forms has been slow, a socio-political control crisis has arisen, at a time when millions of urban employees are being thrown out of work. In dealing with the crisis, the official trade union, an organic constituent institution of the work unit form of control, plays a prominent part, in being given the tasks of sustaining this decaying form, and preventing and defusing potential social explosion. Yet, the very economic reform programme that has undermined the work unit form of control, is also gravely weakening the union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates regarding the status of age in social analysis are foundational to the sociology of aging, with scholars continually questioning the role of age as a social force. The contemporary politicization of age in British politics sheds useful light on this debate. During the past decade, age has emerged as a potent predictor of political preference in the United Kingdom, encompassing numerous intertwined political economic developments. At face value, the emergence of age as a key political variable substantiates the status of age in social analysis. However, I argue that it is articulations of age‐stratified politics, as much as the associations themselves, that should be of principle concern for the sociology of aging, because such articulations are reformulating age, aging and intergenerational relations. The sociology of aging should, therefore, engage with the contemporary politicization of age as a new answer to foundational debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dorfman is eulogized as the creator and curator of the definitive account of Veblen's life and work. He argued that Veblen was the archetypal marginal man and that this explains his dissenting contribution. Dissemination of Dorfman's pathography of Veblen led to its hegemony - until now. Andrew Veblen was the first to challenge Dorfman's portrait of his younger brother's life in the mid 1920s. He asserted that his family were not linguistically, socially or economically deprived. However, it was not until Dorfman's private papers became publicly available in the 1990s, that his flawed view of Veblen became more widely and comprehensively contested. An alternative appreciation of Veblen is advanced with reference to his experiences in general and the works of Bellamy, Morris and Ibsen in particular. Data sources include Dorfman's original tome, Andrew Veblen's extensive correspondence with Dorfman, and Veblen's own writings. It is concluded that Veblen's radical views are entirely congruent with his life experiences during an era of capitalist transformation. The moral of this saga is that a dose of Veblenian scepticism is essential to intellectual health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]