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Throughout the 20th century, objective class position was a strong predictor of both class identity, political preferences and party choice, but since the 1980s, the relationship between objective and subjective dimensions of class has supposedly vanished–according to some as the result of a fundamental blurring of class relations. However, others suggest that this result may be partly due to the use of outdated class schemes. Although still basically focused on inequality of life chances, class relations today are complex and include more than labor market position, such as different forms of cultural resources (e.g., education). As a result, class identity may also have become more complex, and possibly dependent upon the salience of different resources and types of group relations—both in itself and in its relationship with political preferences. Very few contributions, though, test such claims. Using two independent Danish surveys, this paper investigates to what extent class identification is multidimensional and how any such dimensionality is related to, on the one hand, different dimensions of objective class relations and, on the other hand, different dimensions of political conflict. The analyses show that despite changes at the overall, societal level, class identity remains a primarily unidimensional concept both in its structural origins and its relationship with politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the types of work that jurists have historically undertaken and maps how opportunities for legal practice have been shaped by social origins across three centuries: after constitutional independence in the mid‐1800s, during industrial capitalism in the mid‐1900s, and at present‐day advanced capitalism. I analyze historical archive data on law graduates from the 19th and 20th centuries in combination with administrative registry data from the 1990s onwards and employ correspondence analysis to explore how social backgrounds shape careers, considering transformations in class structures and the changing significance of juridical expertise over time. Within each period, jurists have served in very different roles including those that craft and cater to the institutional make‐up of the state and the markets. My analysis shows that the impact of social origin on occupational outcomes has undergone significant changes, mirroring shifts in the broader social structure; from the importance of legal and political capital (within regional jurisdictions) in the 19th century to the significance of economic capital as the main structuring principle, but also a greater significance of cultural capital, in contemporary times. The ability to reach the most powerful positions among law graduates—within the polity in the 19th century, and the economy in the 21st century—has been differently structured by origins. I argue that expansion of the student body, the declining standing of the university, and heightened differentiation of the social structure and the juridical field have made intimate familiarity with the business world pivotal for forging mutually beneficial alliances between jurists and the increasingly dominant capitalist class. Today, a select group of jurists have managed to connect with and contribute to the rising power of private capital. Thus, the historical tale of jurists cannot be accurately captured by notions of uniform descent from national power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an analysis of qualitative interview data from a study of formalized same‐sex relationships (civil partnerships) this paper examines the enduring significance of marriage and family as social institutions. In doing so, it intervenes in current debates in the sociology of family and personal life about how such institutions are undermined by reflexivity or bolstered by convention. Against the backdrop of dominating sociological frames for understanding the links between the changing nature of marriage and family and same‐sex relationship recognition, the paper analyses the diverse and overlapping ways (including the simple, relational, strategic, ambivalent and critical ways) in which same‐sex partners reflexively constructed and engaged with marriage and family conventions. My analysis suggests that instead of viewing reflexivity and convention as mutually undermining, as some sociologists of family and personal life do, it is insightful to explore how diverse forms of reflexivity and convention interact in everyday life to reconfigure the social institutions of marriage and family, but do not undermine them as such. I argue the case for recognizing the ways in which 'reflexive convention', or reflexive investment in convention, contributes to the continuing significance of marriage and family as social institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superficially, Actor Network Theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) are radically opposed research traditions. Written from a realist perspective, this paper asks whether there might be a basis for finding common ground between these two traditions. It looks in turn at the questions of realism, structure, and agency, analysing the differences between the two perspectives and seeking to identify what each might learn from the other. Overall, the paper argues that there is a great deal that realists can learn from actor network theory; yet ANT remains stunted by its lack of a depth ontology. It fails to recognize the significance of mechanisms, and of their dependence on emergence, and thus lacks both dimensions of the depth that is characteristic of critical realism's ontology. This prevents ANT from recognizing the role and powers of social structure; but on the other hand, realists would do well to heed ANT's call for us to trace the connections through which structures are constantly made and remade. A lack of ontological depth also underpins ANT's practice of treating human and non-human actors symmetrically, yet this remains a valuable provocation to sociologists who neglect non-human entities entirely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins to develop an emergentist and realist account of normative social institutions. The argument is developed as a response to Lopez and Scott's historical portrait of the debate on social structure as a dialogue between two different concepts of structure: institutional structure and relational structure, integrated more recently through the concept of embodied structure. The paper argues that all these approaches tend to neglect the idea of structure as a whole and suggests that we cannot understand social structures without recognizing the nature of the corresponding wholes, and how they relate to the human individuals that comprise them. Such a perspective makes clear that embodiment alone is inadequate as a means of integrating institutional and relational conceptions of structure. For a fuller resolution, we must set social structure in an emergentist framework, which can reconcile the complementary roles of institutional structure, relational structure, and indeed embodiment, as aspects of the production of social structures as wholes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we intend to deconstruct the term 'tribalism' as a colonial category, which figures as a prominent concept in social studies on Kurds as well as the Middle East at large. Blithely used, tribalism has occupied a central place, especially in the existing scholarship on Kurdistan. Some earlier anthropological works have gone so far as to regard tribalism as the 'DNA' of Middle Eastern people. Drawing on recent studies on Latin America, Africa and Central Asia, we argue that the use of tribalism as if it is the natural constitution of Kurdish society has caused a significant misrepresentation and oversimplification of socio‐political life in Kurdistan as well as the broader Middle East. In a way, the existing body of scholarship on this region has reproduced statist‐nationalist discourses at the expense of dominated communities (e.g., Kurds). The historical context of both colonial powers and nation‐states 'combating tribes and tribalism' coincided with the emergence of the discourse of racial biopolitics. Thus, the use of the term tribalism to define certain nations or ethnic groups should not be viewed as merely an application of socio‐anthropological categories. Hence, we argue that the ethical aspects and implications of the use of tribalism by both colonial powers and later by nation‐states to define certain ethnic groups must not be overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on original empirical research into the lifestyle migration of European migrants, primarily British, to Thailand and Malaysia, and of Hong Kong Chinese migrants to Mainland China. We combine strong structuration theory (SST) with Heideggerian phenomenology to develop a distinctive approach to the interplay between social structures and the lived experience of migrants. The approach enables a rich engagement with the subjectivities of migrants, an engagement that is powerfully enhanced by close attention to how these inner lives are deeply interwoven with relevant structural contexts. The approach is presented as one that could be fruitfully adopted to explore parallel issues within all types of migration. As is intrinsic to lifestyle migration, commitment to a better quality of life is central to the East Asian migrants, but they seek an uncomplicated, physically enhanced texture of life, framed more by a phenomenology of prosaic well‐being than of self‐realization or transcendence. In spite of possessing economic and status privileges due to their relatively elite position within global structures the reality for a good number of the lifestyle migrants falls short of their prior expectations. They are subject to particular kinds of socio‐structural marginaliszation as a consequence of the character of their migration, and they find themselves relatively isolated and facing a distinct range of challenges. A comparison with research into various groups of migrants to the USA brings into relief the specificities of the socio‐structural positioning of the lifestyle migrants of the study. Those East Asian migrants who express the greatest sense of ease and contentment seem to be those who have responded creatively to the specific challenges of their socio‐structural situation. Often, this appears to have been achieved through understated but active involvements with their new settings and through sustaining focused transnational connections and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

There have been calls from several sources recently for a renewal of class analysis that would encompass social and cultural, as well as economic elements. This paper explores a tradition in stratification that is founded on this idea: relational or social distance approaches to mapping hierarchy and inequality which theorize stratification as a social space. The idea of 'social space' is not treated as a metaphor of hierarchy nor is the nature of the structure determined a priori. Rather, the space is identified by mapping social interactions. Exploring the nature of social space involves mapping the network of social interaction — patterns of friendship, partnership and cultural similarity — which gives rise to relations of social closeness and distance. Differential association has long been seen as the basis of hierarchy, but the usual approach is first to define a structure composed of a set of groups and then to investigate social interaction between them. Social distance approaches reverse this, using patterns of interaction to determine the nature of the structure. Differential association can be seen as a way of defining proximity within a social space, from the distances between social groups, or between social groups and social objects (such as lifestyle items). The paper demonstrates how the very different starting point of social distance approaches also leads to strikingly different theoretical conclusions about the nature of stratification and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares moral panic with the potential political catastrophes of a risk society. The aim of the comparison is threefold: 1. to establish the position of risk society threats alongside more conventional moral panics; 2. to examine the conceptual shifts that accompany the new types of threats; and 3. to outline the changing research agenda. The paper suggests that as new sites of social anxiety have emerged around environmental, nuclear, chemical and medical threats, the questions motivating moral panic research have lost much of their utility. Conceptually, it examines how the roulette dynamics of the risk society accidents expose hidden institutional violations that redound into 'hot potatoes' that are passed among and fumbled by various actors. Changing conceptions of folk devils, claims making activities, and of a safety are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distinguishing between an explanatory and a normative interest in social stratification, this paper considers the relation between class analysis and the value of equality. Starting from the familiar distinction between (in) equality of position and (in) equality of opportunity, and noting the extent to which mobility research focuses on the latter, it suggests that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities they yield to those occupying them. This enables the clear identification of the kinds of inequality that are and are not addressed by research findings presented in terms of class categories and odds ratios. The significance of those findings from a normative perspective is then discussed, and their limitations are emphasized - though the paper also explains in what ways they are indeed of normative relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author responds to the sociologist Bryan S. Turner's comments on his article related to the inter generational conflicts. Turner's interpretation, and suggestion that he was drawing attention away from structural issues, is rooted in a paradigm which is inadequate to the task of properly describing how life course processes are integral to general social arrangements. In his paper, the author took issue with the assumptions and arguments of age stratification and generational conflict theorists. These writers see age and generation related self interest as underpinning a growth in age based conflict. The dimensions of such conflict are seen to cleave around people's current relations to work and welfare. In his response to the author's paper Turner re-asserts the salience of intra-generational cohesion and inter-generational difference in shaping consciousness and action in efforts to secure social advantage. Turner insists that age and generation are important components of social stratification and should be incorporated in theory accordingly.

This paper suggests that, for a variety of reasons, the sociology of social stratification -- and, as a consequence, mainstream sociology more generally -- has neglected the topic of disability. Using material drawn from a range of sources, it is argued that disability is related in definite ways to social class. Further, it is also argued that disability must be considered as a factor contributing to the production and reproduction of stratification in its own right, independently of class relations. These arguments are further advanced in the course of a more detailed consideration of research evidence concerned with mental handicap. The paper ends with a consideration of the role of non-class factors -- specifically social status and citizenship -- in the stratification systems of modern industrial societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symbolic interactionism is often represented as a perspective which is limited by its restriction to‘micro’ aspects of social organization. As such, it is allegedly unable to adequately conceptualize‘macro’ phenomena such as social structure, patterns of inequality, and power. Such a view is routinely presented in undergraduate textbooks. This paper contests such a view through a consideration of the concept of power. We argue that the interactionist research traditiondoesshow a fundamental concern with power phenomena, and that a reconsideration of the concept is timely in light of theoretical developments in sociology more generally. An increasing concern with the analysis of culture, the continuing influence of Foucault, the development of feminist perspectives, and the emerging consensus around neo-Weberian thought have all contributed to a renewal of interest in themes long ago explored by interactionists. As examples we suggest that interactionist studies in the fields of deviance and education have been concerned above all with the authoritative imposition of consequential identities, i.e., with the social processes through which power is enacted and institutionalized in real situations. Such developments have led some to argue that interactionism has now been incorporated into the mainstream of sociology. We conclude, however, by arguing that such a view runs the risk of granting to orthodox sociological thought a legitimacy which is analytically unwarranted, and which fails to recognize the alternative theoretical and philosophical foundations of symbolic interactionist thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent articles seeking to validate the Goldthorpe class schema have implicitly raised some interesting questions about the relation between analytical techniques and theory. The favoured technique of latent class analysis actually brings this variety of class analysis close to the much older tradition of ideal-type analysis. In doing so, it helps to illustrate a much wider problem that arises in any conceptualization in terms of classes. The paper seeks to show how, just as in popular discourse around 'class', stereotypes are used to simplify and summarize a complex set of related characteristics, so similarly ideal types, as used in class analysis, are an over-simplification. As elsewhere in social science, the danger of using them is that they serve to protect a theoretical concept from empirical refutation. An alternative 'research programme' to that of class analysis is presented, based on measures of stratification arrangements that are more closely linked to the reproducing structure of inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within most approaches to stratification gender and ethnicity are seen to pertain primarily to the symbolic or cultural realms, whilst class is regarded as pertaining to material inequality. This constructs gender and ethnic positioning as entailing honour, deference, worth, value and differential treatment (sometimes expressed through the notion of 'status'), but the social relations around these are themselves not seen as constitutive of social stratification. In this paper I will rethink social stratification away from the polarity between the material and the symbolic, and argue that material inequality, as a set of outcomes relating to life conditions, life chances and solidary processes, is informed by claims and struggles over resources of different types, undertaken in terms of gender, ethnicity/race and class. This formulation allows us to include these categorial formations, alongside class, as important elements of social stratification i.e. as determining the allocation of socially valued resources and social places/locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that in many societies ethnicity plays an important role in stratification processes, a common view held by students of stratification argues that the role of ascriptive criteria in stratification processes is diminishing, and that the main axis of the modern stratification system is rooted in the division of labour in the marketplace. Despite this, most Israeli sociologists have taken the ethnic and national cleavages to be the main axes of stratification in Israel. This paper utilizes the 1974 and 1991 mobility surveys in Israel to examine changes over time in the association between ethnicity/nationality (i.e., Ashkenazi-Jews, Sephardi-Jews and Israeli-Arabs) and class position in the Israeli stratification structure. It also examines the extent to which inequality of opportunity within the Israeli class structure is affected by ethnicity/nationality. Here it is found that the ethnic/national cleavage in Israel appears to have played a less important role over time in the allocation of Israeli men to class positions. It is shown that class crystallization processes that result from the differentiation of employment contracts in the marketplace produce a relatively common level of inequality of opportunity in Israel, across sub-populations and over time. Any difference in the level of inequality of opportunity between the various sub-populations would appear to result, in part, from different historical process of, and government policy towards, the three sub-populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the BSE problem as an example of the 'globalization of risk'. In order to determine whether the 'globalization of risk' is a social construction depending on the context, the paper emphasizes the particular role of organizations. It makes an empirical comparison of the BSE-related risk-constructions of five business associations in the German meat industry sector. The results show that the associations construct the risk in close relation to their horizons of globalization, thereby reflecting provision problems, which the companies they are representing face. While the main organizational domains in the sector tried to cope with the risk problem by different means of local market 'closure', one association, founded in reaction to the BSE problem, took over a 'reflexive' role with regard to the emerging risk communication on BSE in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a project in, of, and for empire. This essay excavates a tradition of social thought that grew alongside metropolitan sociology but has been marginalized by it: anticolonial thought. Emerging from anticolonial movements, writers and thinkers, anticolonial thought in 19th and 20th centuries emerged from a variety of thinkers (from indigenous activists in the Americas to educated elites in the American, Francophone and British colonies). I argue that this body of thought offers distinct visions of society, social relations, and social structure, along with generative analytic approaches to the social self, social solidarity and global relations—among other themes. Anticolonial thought offers the basis for an alternative canon and corpus of sociological thinking to which we might turn as we seek to revitalize and decolonize sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. According to the author, sociologist Duncan Gallie's paper returns to a subject which has been at the center of sociologist David Lockwood's work: the extent to which there has occurred convergence in class position between lower white-collar workers and manual workers. After a brief review of work on the impact of automation on the work and class situation of workers during the 1950's and 60's, Gallie systematically addresses the claims of both the proletarianization and embourgeoisement theses in the context of a radically changed technological environment. Gallie uses data from a recent large-scale survey on the association of aspects of work and market situation with new technology to test some of the central claims of both the proletarianization and the proletarianization thesis. The paper analyses the work situation of both types of workers by assessing the following aspects: trends in skill development; control over the work task; and relations with superiors. Assessment of market situation covers the components of income, payment systems, promotion chances and job security.

This paper attempts to breathe a little life into one of the most moribund corners of the methodological literature, namely the 'debate' on interview strategy and the supposed opposition between 'structured' and 'unstructured' approaches. From the very beginning, we tend to learn about interviewing as an issue concerning the pros and cons of each respective strategy. The choke of interviewing style is thus presented as a matter of inclination towards standardization versus sensitivity, enumeration versus emancipation, anonymity versus ardour, and so forth. All such distinctions are essentially method-driven and have resulted in extensive technical literatures on how to achieve the chosen ends. Forgotten, therefore, in most of the literature is the very purpose of the interview - namely to advance data in order to inspire/validate/falsify/modify sociological explanation. This paper proposes a theory-driven approach to the construction of the interview. It takes on board two contemporary approaches to sociological understanding, namely a realist theory of explanation and a structurationist theory of social being, and attempts to incorporate their principles into the basic structure of the interview. The paper is illustrated with examples from the author's research with prisoners, and so hopes to inspire a dons and cons approach to the interview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the post-Cold War era on the social structure of the armed forces of the advanced societies. The end of the Cold War is viewed as one aspect of a broader social transformation. These 'New Times' are defined in terms of the growth of risk complexity, globalization, the relocation of political authority to transnational and subnational agencies, challenges to national sovereignty, and the impact of globalized communications on the relationship between politics and public opinion. The paper shows how armed forces are seeking to redefine their role and redesign their structures in order to address the inter- national and domestic challenges posed by these 'New Times'. The range of missions is being broadened and significant changes in the co-ordination of military and political decision-making are taking place. In response to strategic and financial pressures, armed forces are not only becoming smaller, they are also seeking to achieve greater flexibility in their organization structures. At the same time, armed forces have to respond to pressures from wider society to conform to civilian values such as social equality, as is reviewed in current debates on the position of women and homosexual personnel in the services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of the classification of social class has long been a thorny one in sociological research. This is particularly so where there is any attempt to make empirical research reflect theoretical debates. In particular, the use of census classifications and social class scales has been fraught with difficulties. Is there, then, any sense, or indeed any circumstances, in which such classifications can be used as an indication of class in an empirical investigation? Indeed, how much difference does it make what scales are used? These problems are the central preoccupation of this paper. The discussion begins with a brief review of the theoretical approaches to the topic of class to be found in sociological theory. Then a number of commonly used occupational classifications are outlined. Finally, the results of a case study of school-leavers, and their occupational choices, are used to illustrate the use of four scales derived from different theoretical perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that one important 'moment' in the development of the modern notion of the ethically autonomous individual was predicated on a particular set of historical circumstances connected with the transformation of Puritanism in the late seventeenth century. These included: a) the introjection within the individual of a particular dimension of grace, b) the development of a new set of individual and collective identities, c) the emergence of the above as a result of the particular problems of institutionalizing Puritan salvational doctrines within the orders of the world. Argument is made that these developments can only be properly appreciated when treated as a particular instance of the articular instance of the articulation and institutionalization of charisma in society. Analysis concentrates on seventeenth-century New England Congregational Puritanism as a paradigmatic case of the institutionalization of sectarian or ascetic-Puritanism. The problems of the early communities of 'visible saints' to construct a polity based on 'grace are analysed in terms of the particular contradictions inherent to Puritan ideas of grace as a charismatic model for social and political organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the social structuring of social capital, understood as resources embedded in social networks. The analysis integrates key theoretical–methodological insights from two distinct approaches concerned with social capital and inequality: the position‐generator approach associated with Nan Lin and the spatial approach associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Empirically, we exploit the possibilities of survey data containing detailed information about the social ties of a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population (N = 4007). By means of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), we construct a space of social ties, a spatial representation of systematic similarities and differences between individuals' social ties to a set of 33 occupational positions. In this space, social capital is structured according to two primary dimensions: (i) the level of social ties, in terms of individuals' number of contacts; and (ii), the quality of social ties, in terms of a division between being connected to others in high‐status positions and others in low‐status positions. By means of Ascending Hierarchical Cluster analysis, five clusters are identified within the space of social ties: a homogenous working‐class cluster, a well‐connected working‐class cluster, a cluster of high‐status ties, a homogenous high‐status cluster and a low‐volume cluster. Moreover, the analysis clearly indicates that the structure of social capital is connected to respondents' class positions, their volumes of cultural and economic capital and their class origin. The analysis thus draws attention to the role of social capital in processes of social closure, regarding both resource monopolization and class formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes as its point of departure Lockwood's classic account of the class situation of The Blackcoated Worker. It addresses the issue of whether the rapid spread of new technologies since the 1980s has been accompanied by a change in employer policies that has undercut the distinctiveness of the work and labour market situations of lower non-manual employees. Drawing on data from a national survey carried out in 1992, it argues that, in technically advanced work settings, there is some evidence of a convergence between lower non-manual and manual workers in the nature of relationships with management and in job security. While management styles have become more consultative for manual workers, control over work time has become more formalized for lower non- manual workers. Further, the classes had become more similar due to a marked decline in the security of white-collar employees. None the less, lower non- manual and manual work remained quite distinct in two fundamental respects: the requirements for general conceptual skills and the extent to which there were perspectives for longer-term career advancement. Hence differences in class position are likely to continue to have important implications both for people's life styles and for their wider life chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. How can classes emerge from a system whose goal was to destroy class society and to supersede it with a superior social order? Are there elements in a state re-distributive system, which can be transformed back into a social structure, which had seemingly been obliterated? Simply posing such a question makes it clear that writer George Kolankiewicz is, perhaps, being over-ambitious if he is seeking a common theoretical approach to encompass such a wide range of conditions, from Russia and the Ukraine at one extreme where pre-Revolutionary social structures in the early years of this century were very different to those parts of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire at the other, which were split apart by the Iron Curtain after the Second World War. According to the author, Kolankiewicz has written a very stimulating paper dealing with an exceptionally difficult problem area. The real difficulty is that sociologists know so very little about the networks of the new finance capitalists. There may be parallels with the great families who built up British merchant banking based on the cousinage.

The ageing population structure, and claims on resources by non-working groups, are seen by many to he contributing to a growing welfare crisis. In their arguments, relations between age groups and generations will become increasingly fraught, and welfare arrangements will be undermined, as `unacceptable' levels of taxation blight the experience of a contracting workforce, required to resource a growing welfare population. However, more seems to be known about researchers' views on distributive justice than is known about the perceptions of their subject populations. It has not been demonstrated that members of age groups share interests which are consonant with their cohort experience, or perceive their interests to he in conflict with those of members of other age groups or generations. This paper analyses empirical evidence on people's perceptions of who should get, and do, what, in developing an argument that standard processes do not place age groups or generations in an antagonistic relationship. Understanding the relations between age groups and generations is essential to explaining change in patterns of inequality, but the interdependence of these relations suggests that they are part of a coherent social structure, and not likely to give rise to crisis in the ways predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to explain the underground economy, focusing on state and social structure. It was learned that developments within western capitalism have stimulated considerable interest in the collective, organized aspects of clandestine production, which form the core of the contemporary underground economy. Assumptions that off-the-books employment is extensive and rising throughout the advanced capitalist world, and that this is related either to a crisis of capitalism or to a crisis of the state, was considered. It was argued that the development of a clandestine sector depends on the combined availability of three structural resources such as a dispersed economy, labour market segmentation and a dense system of social networks. It was also argued that the availability of these resources is largely influenced by the historically developed structure and activities of the state, specifically its forms of legal and organizational closure. It was discovered that clandestine work frequently entails a collective, organized endeavour that can involve the mobilization of entire neighborhoods, communities or even industries. According to emerging consensus, such form of underground activity, unmeasured, untaxed and unregulated, is expanding throughout western capitalism.

This paper examines how parents' social position influences their children's educational achievement in China. In 1977, the government instituted a three-tiered examination system to choose students for junior high school, senior high school, and the university. The carefully laid out rules prevent much of the corruption which undermined the system of the early 1970s. But the system perpetuates and accentuates inequality by selecting a disproportionate number of students from the intellectual and cadre families. Given the close family units and differences in social stratifications in China, social background influences educational achievements in ways similar and yet different from the west. It is not so much the economic advantage but the encouragement and coaching of the educated parents that give these children the edge. These children do better in the examination than those from the peasant/worker families and, in turn, the examination system gives them further privileges and opportunities, widening the gap between them and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analysing a case of state/economy relationships in a Western capitalist country, with reference to the particular problem of the public enterprise, and at pointing out some of the characteristics of the Italian situation. The analysis, through an examination of the Fascist period and of the events of the 1950s, tries to identify different patterns of direct state intervention in the productive sphere and to relate them to some significant changes in the class structure and in the political system of the country. The casestudy is intended as a contribution to the debate concerning the construction of a ‘theory of the state’, for which it provides some empirical material about an example of state intervention in economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to clarify the concept of cult and, in particular, an attempt to replace the present predominantly empirical concept with one which more closely resembles an ideal type. The key to such a formulation is seen to lie in the identification of a distinctly cultic system of beliefs, which possess internal coherence and imply a particular form of social organization. Such a system is found in Troeltsch's original description of 'spiritual religion and Mysticism' which is here presented as the ideal-typical cult religion. This form of belief is then shown as logically implying the existence of the mystic collectivity, whilst the cult, as this has been conventionally described, is relegated to the category of a primarily empirical construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many social theorists have pointed to problematic aspects of viewing the 1960s youth culture as an enduring form of social movement;[2] however these analyses spring largely from the traditional sociological frame that sees the frustration and deprivation of a population leading (more or less) directly to the rise of social movements.[3] McCarthy and Zald, in their recent and cogent discussion of resource mobilization and social movement organizations,[4] have pointed to the fact that this focus upon frustrations and deprivations is in opposition to the focus of practical theorists (such as Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung and Saul Alinsky), who have emphasized the ways in which particular social structures make the tasks of resource mobilization more or less difficult.
This theoretical analysis, viewing the relation of social movements to their beneficiaries of grievance base not as given, but as fully problematic and contingent, offers an opportunity for the examination of specific social movements within a new, and possibly more fruitful, frame. I wish in this paper to address the question of whether there is an enduring base for contra-cultural social movements[6] across generations of the young. Can a social movement persist beyond the life span of one generation when it recruits from what is claimed to be a short-term and transitional category? and if there is persistence, to what extent and upon what is this persistence contingent? Focusing more specifically, I shall examine the head shop as a social movement industry,[7] and its relationship to resource base and movement mobilization within and without the youth contra-culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff's attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of 'neediness', 'worthiness' and 'value for money' that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses sociology in terms of complementary strengths and areas of expertise as a team sport. Topics include consideration of combination of cultural and social structural factors to enable and constrain different causal processes and outcomes; failing of cultural narratives contribute to social crisis; and successful religious and humanistic discourses helps in creating good narratives in future with moral lessons to life fostering identification and empathy.

In Britain in recent years social mobility has become a topic of central political concern, primarily as a result of the effort made by New Labour to make equality of opportunity rather than equality of condition a focus of policy. Questions of the level, pattern and trend of mobility thus bear directly on the relevance of New Labour's policy analysis, and in turn are likely be crucial to the evaluation of its performance in government. However, politically motivated discussion of social mobility often reveals an inadequate grasp of both empirical and analytical issues. We provide new evidence relevant to the assessment of social mobility – in particular, intergenerational class mobility – in contemporary Britain through cross-cohort analyses based on the NCDS and BCS datasets which we can relate to earlier cross-sectional analyses based on the GHS. We find that, contrary to what seems now widely supposed, there is no evidence that absolute mobility rates are falling; but, for men, the balance of upward and downward movement is becoming less favourable. This is overwhelmingly the result of class structural change. Relative mobility rates, for both men and women, remain essentially constant, although there are possible indications of a declining propensity for long-range mobility. We conclude that under present day structural conditions there can be no return to the generally rising rates of upward mobility that characterized the middle decades of the twentieth century – unless this is achieved through changing relative rates in the direction of greater equality or, that is, of greater fluidity. But this would then produce rising rates of downward mobility to exactly the same extent – an outcome apparently unappreciated by, and unlikely to be congenial to, politicians preoccupied with winning the electoral ‘middle ground’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study is to examine how to determine the class position of women, especially married women, in Japan. This study examines three different approaches to conceptualizing women's position in the class structure: the conventional approach, the individual approach, and the dominance approach. Since 1975, the overall rate of female labour force participation in Japan has increased, and given this growth, particularly of employees working outside home, I discuss whether the increased entry of women, particularly married women, into the labour market challenges the conventional way of assigning class positions to women by simply deriving them from their husband's class positions. The data set used in this study is derived from the 1995 Japanese Social Stratification and Mobility Survey. An examination of class distributions suggests that the pictures of macro-class structure provided by the conventional approach and the dominance approach show very little difference. Married women who belong to the female-dominant family still form a very small minority of all married women in the society. Furthermore, the male-dominant family shows the greatest stability over the life course whereas the female-dominant family, where the wife experiences withdrawal from the labour market, is least stable. The increasing number of married women in the labour market, thus, has not yet become a major threat to the conventional way of assigning women to a class position in contemporary Japan. Women, even among those working on a full-time basis, perceive their position in the stratification system using not only their own work, but also their husband's. In contrast, men's perception is determined by their own education and employment, not by their wives'. This asymmetry in the effect of the husband's class and of the wife's class on class identification is related not only to gender inequality within the labour market but also to the division of labour by gender... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative standings of four ethnic groups – Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, Asian-African Jews, European Jews – were compared, using mobility data from 1974 and 1991. The findings show that despite the lack of government support and the prevalence of inexorable discrimination against Israeli Palestinians, they have narrowed the gap with Asian-African Jews in both education and occupational prestige. This finding demonstrates that ideological and political hegemony is not always effective in improving the socio-economic standing of preferred minorities (Asian-African Jews), and that social and economic structures may counterbalance the anti-Palestinian nationalist ideology. The analysis suggests that residential and educational segregation of Palestinians protects them from direct competition with European Jews, whereas Asian-African Jews have to compete with this dominant group in schools, as well as in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at proposing some elements for a grounded theory of the network society. The network society is the social structure characteristic of the Information Age, as tentatively identified by empirical, cross-cultural investigation. It permeates most societies in the world, in various cultural and institutional manifestations, as the industrial society characterized the social structure of both capitalism and statism for most of the twentieth century. Social structures are organized around relationships of production/consumption, power, and experience, whose spatio-temporal configurations constitute cultures. They are enacted, reproduced, and ultimately transformed by social actors, rooted in the social structure, yet freely engaging in conflictive social practices, with unpredictable outcomes. A fundamental feature of social structure in the Information Age is its reliance on networks as the key feature of social morphology. While networks are old forms of social organization, they are now empowered by new information/communication technologies, so that they become able to cope at the same time with flexible decentralization, and with focused decision-making. The article examines the specific interaction between network morphology and relationships of production/consumption, power, experience, and culture, in the historical making of the emerging social structure at the turn of the Millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories addressing the relationship between social structure and human agency have stimulated some of the most productive debates within sociology and confront issues which remain central to the discipline. Recent attempts to resolve the structure/agency relationship, however, share with their antecedents two major limitations. First, they possess a relatively disembodied view of the agent which overemphasizes cognition and neglects the importance of the emotional dimensions of interaction for human action and social structure. Second, by investing explanatory priority in either individuals or structures, most have difficulty maintaining the enduring causal significance of the people and the parts of the social system and are, therefore, unable to examine adequately their interplay. This article argues that these problems are related in that a more developed view of the embodied agent and emotional dimensions of interaction has the potential to provide a level of analysis which mediates, and allows for the continued saliency of, structure and action. Disembodied conceptions of agency and interaction, and the conflation of structure and agency, are problems common to some of the most influential sociological perspectives.

Police culture is used as the substantive focus for a critique of the conception of culture as a set of rules that generate action, and as a basis for developing an alternative model. Ideas from anthropological and literary theory are used to propose a conception of culture as a figurative resource made available through stories that construct a sensibility out of which action arises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The encounter group encourages participants to disclose the behaviour and attitudes of their 'real selves', as distinct from those belonging to their social roles and positions, because social roles are by definition general categories, and therefore the behaviour that accords with them is not really individual. A parallel adopted by the encounter movement is the concept of the 'whole person' in contrast to that of 'specialisation'. On this basis it can be argued that the encounter group highlights a distinguishing feature of modern society, namely, 'individuation' or the 'variation of persons independently of roles'; in contrast to the feature of 'commonality'/ solidarity' or the 'fusion of persons and roles', which distinguished primitive and traditional societies. In the following discussion the encounter group process is compared at certain points with the spiritualist group process, which, in its aim of communicating with the spirits of the dead relatives of participants, harks back to primitive kinship and community. It may be said that 'kinship' as a principle of social organisation is the supreme example of the fusion or confounding of persons and social roles. The empirical material on the encounter group presented below was obtained through participant observation supplemented by interview. The field work was carried out between 1980 and 1982 as part of a study of religious and therapeutic groups in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. This is also the source of the spiritualist material. Section one gives a description of the encounter group and movement, drawing attention to those features which support the subsequent interpretation. Section two begins with a general theoretical statement defining the concept of 'individuation' in relation to the concepts of 'solidarity' and 'differentiation'. While subsequent sections relate the concept of 'individuation' or 'dualism of persons and roles', to the observed activity of a particular encounter group. That the co [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of disenchantment has had varying interpretations within sociological theory. Defined as the progressive extirpation of magic from social life, the idea of a disenchanted world carries with it an atavistic, melancholy character. Within the same definition it has been seen as the programmatic liberation of the mind as it is related to the betterment of material conditions. Although interpretations of this nature are invariably tied to problems of value and politics, the concept of disenchantment, more than most other work of social theorists, has been the focus of quiet but intense debate. This article attempts to make the discussion more public in as much as disenchantment, on the historical level, is an important way of understanding the development of sociological theory and, on the analytic level, a promising line of inquiry for studying the effects of the culture of industrial societies. To underscore the polarities involved in the use of disenchantment by sociologists, two divergent approaches to this process will be examined in terms of the theorists' partisan evaluation of the contemporary world. Before the concept of disenchantment can be integrated into a viable critical sociology, it has to be first stripped of its ideological mask.

Paternalism and patronage are two relationships which have received little systematic attention or rigorous analysis in the sociological literature. The categorization of phenomena as examples of paternalism or patronage is often unsystematic and slipshod as a result, and there have been instances of the two being confused with each other. One consequence has been the failure to develop an analytical framework which identifies the formal characteristics of the two relationships in such a way that diverse examples of each can be categorized. A second consequence has been an inadequate appreciation of how widespread the relationships of paternalism and patronage are, and of the extent to which they are to be found in a wide variety of cultural settings and historical epochs. This article undertakes the classification of the formal properties of the relationships on a number of dimensions, in order to highlight their points of similarity and difference. The article also considers a variety of empirical evidence drawn from different cultures, in order to demonstrate the substantive usefulness of the typology for comparative sociology and the real significance of the two relationships. This comparative approach involves some specifications of the conditions under which the two occur.

This article attempts to re-examine the thesis regarding the disruptive effect of rapid urbanization on support for political authority in the context of recent Jamaican experience. A number of studies of a macro level and aggregate data character have suggested a positive link between rapid and extensive urbanization and political and social disorder. Recently, however, these findings have been challenged by survey research and anthropological studies of Latin American societies. The central theme of this body of analysis has been that adaptation and integration of marginal rural-to-urban migrants within large metropolitan and increasingly ghettoized urban centers containing large metropolitan huge areas of impoverished squatter settlements. Urban squatter settler form an integral part of the urban social structure who are no less integrated into the urban social and political environment than are the urban born city population. Some of the analysis advanced to account for this level of adjustment to the urban environment includes the migrants' easy cooptation into urban patro-client politics; their low levels of material and social expectations; and the preservation of their strong integrative social institutions such as the extended family and religious activity.

The article presents information on a social research to develop a classificatory scheme for occupations. The research was conducted from various perspectives. Occupational status studies were aimed at providing illumination of social stratification. The attitude studies demonstrated the alienation of man and instrumentalism in work. The interactionist studies were aimed at understanding the way in which occupation provides the major source of self-imagery in modern society. The studies of professions were intended have a strong sense of social purpose and a code of moral ethics to support it.

The article presents information on a study to describe the social background of the Nigerian university students, and to present data from the Nigerian university to compare with the data from other West African countries. In recent years political scientists and social scientists, have shown an increasing interest in the analysis of elite groups and social stratification. In modern Nigeria, like other African societies, education, which has a great impact on recruitment and stratification, has played a vital role in shaping relations between groups in the Nigerian society. Presently, around 3,000 graduates are produced by Nigerian universities each year. These students are the future of the continuity and change in Nigeria.

The article presents information on the factors related to the urban sociology in an urban society. Some of the factors are the intellectual crisis that confronts urban sociologists, the direction taken by British urban sociology, and the statement of metropolitan dominance. All these factors led to the uneven development of metropolitan centre and provincial satellites. Factors like residence, occupation, religion, politics, legal and military obligation can be considered for the total social experience and for the social structure that extends beyond the urban area. There has been a growing public concern with the changes in cities.