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

Recent research on social capital has explored trends in membership in voluntary organizations. However, there is currently little robust evidence on such trends in the UK since the 1970s, nor is there any analysis of whether participation bridges social divisions or accentuates them. This paper explores trends in participation in England and Wales since 1972 using data from the Social Mobility Inquiry of 1972 and the British Household Panel Survey of 1992 and 1999. We are concerned with social exclusion mechanisms in social capital generation in Britain over the three decades. Using binomial and multinomial models to 'unpack' the effects of socio-cultural factors on civic participation and on different types of associational membership, we test the thesis of across-the-board decline in social capital by Putnam (2000) and that of rising levels of middle-class social capital versus consistent low levels of working-class social capital by Hall (1999). The results show significant socio-cultural-gender differences, a relative stability of middle-class participation, and a rapid decline in the working-class access to social capital. We challenge the established accounts of both theses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction to this paper provides a brief review of the literature on religious belief and practice suggesting that much of this remains to be fully assimilated within the sociology of religion. The paper examines the contention that contemporary British religious practice can be characterized as 'believing without belonging'. Drawing on a survey of rural residents in five areas of England, the paper suggests that a majority of people express high levels of religious belief and a sense of belonging to a particular denomination. Formal religious observance is, however, low. Through a detailed examination of attitudes to the Church of England, a picture emerges of a populace with a well developed sense of the role of the Church and its clergy which is, in the main, affirmative and positive. An important question remains as to why such sentiment is so unevenly transmitted into formal religious observance such as regular attendance at church services. [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.

This paper compares vertical mobility in Dublin and England and Wales as displayed in mobility tables using the seven class categories developed by Goldthorpe (1980). A model is developed which demonstrates the pattern of vertical mobility in each country and also allows us to measure the extent of class inheritance as distinct from class self-recruitment. The data are used to test the FJH thesis, and some differences between Dublin and England and Wales — in their degree of ‘openness’ and in the relative standings of the different classes — are examined. Patterns of relative mobility are found to differ quite strongly between the two with Dublin being considerably less open than England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]