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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]

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.

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]

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

A considerable amount has been written recently on the concept of exploitation, which has extended its meaning beyond Marx's original usage. While the concept has lost its association with the theory of surplus value and ideas about the right of workers to their product, there is still no agreement on how exploitation should be conceptualized. It is in the context of such conceptual debate that this paper brings a historical perspective by focusing on how Adam Ferguson, two and a half centuries ago, anticipated much of the modern reformulation of the concept. Methodologically, this anticipation is not shown by finding vaguely matching quotations from modern and classic works, but follows Foucault and examines the similarity in the meaning of the vocabulary in the context of the different problematics within which they occur. In this regard Ferguson's work has three characteristics which are also to be found in many modern works: exploitation is understood as economic exploitation; it is approached through the notion of human agency; and the discussion of exploitation is integrally linked to an ethical concern about its injustice. Such a historical interest is useful for a number of reasons. First, it augments the conceptual analysis which has so far dominated the debate about the term. Second, it demonstrates part of the origins of some of the modern reformulations of exploitation. Ferguson's work anticipates those writers who perceive exploitation to involve inequality of power and control in the labour process, and to involve situations where skills are not the determinant of economic reward and where workers are denuded, diminished and impoverished. In this respect Ferguson follows those modern writers who tend to merge exploitation with alienation. Finally, a discussion of these particular antecedents of the concept is useful to illustrate the distinctiveness of Ferguson's social thought and to define his major contribution to the development of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

This 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]

This paper develops an analytical framework for the sociological analysis of the clash of economic ideologies. The framework is then used to make sense of the economic debate in South Africa in the 1990s. The argument is that, following Karl Polanyi, we must treat economic life as 'embedded' in social life; that is, economic action is a form of social action. However, the notion of 'embeddedness' must not blind us to the tendency in all economies, especially contemporary market economies, for economic motivations to become differentiated from the rest of our lives. Accordingly, the framework developed through a critique of key assumptions of neoclassical economic theory attends to both the embeddedness and the differentiation of the economic element. Having established a framework of analysis, I apply it to the debate in South Africa about the most relevant frame- work for economic policy in the post-Apartheid economy. The article traces the gradual move of the African National Congress (ANC) away from statist economics to a much more market-oriented policy and shows how this reflects the ANC leaders need to balance the demands of their constituency's (embedded) conception of rationality against the potential investor's more mainstream conception of economic rationality, which is itself embedded in prosperous communities with property and skills. A similar analysis is applied to the development of the economic policy of the ANC's rival, the former ruling National Party (NP). The NP advocates an economic policy framework based on an individual self- reliance and 'free' markets, that is, on an individualistic calculative rationality similar to that of the neoclassical textbooks. However, the NP too has to pursue politics and they, although rather differently from the ANC, have sought to reconcile individual maximizing rationality with the collective rationalities of the oppressed black communities in order to win maximum support. [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]

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

The history of social mobility has been a study of male mobility experiences. That is, not only have females been excluded by intention from these investigations, but, more importantly, it is argued that this omission is justifiable and legitimate. This is particularly so in relation to the British Isles where the heated defence of the traditional position, presently labelled the conventionalist approach, continues to rationalize and justify the exclusion of over one half of the British and Irish population. Drawing together recent North American, British and Australian research, this paper challenges both the theoretical and empirical assumptions of this conventionalist position. Arguing that a woman is neither simply a summation of domestic identities nor is her status one of complete dependency, national and international evidence on the unique and important contribution of women to the occupational attainments of husbands and children, as well as the class reproduction of families in general, is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper poses the issue of distributive justice in terms of the relationship between social class, social mobility and educational attainment, in contemporary Britain. Having discussed various conceptions of justice which might vindicate class inequality, the authors investigate empirically the specifically meritocratic defence, and report survey data suggesting that the effect of class origins on class destinations is only partially mediated by educational achievement. Class privilege can compensate for educational failure. Gender is also significant since women tend to fare worse than men with similar class origins and credentials. This evidence undermines the claim that Britain is a meritocratic society and supports the suggestion that only by political intervention can equality of opportunity be rendered compatible with significant and structured inequality of outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there are many interpretations of the central themes of Talcott Parsons's sociology, it is evident that the idea of citizenship played a major role in shaping the core of his mature social thought. In addition to specific discussions of citizenship in relation to black inequality and participation, of the historical roots of universal participation in the societal community, and of the political openness and pluralism of American society, the problems of universalistic participation were in fact analytically crucial to Parsonian sociology. In other words, the theme of universalistic values was not merely an empirical issue, and not merely an aspect of political questions in his occasional essays and papers, but it coloured the basic components of Parsons's work as a theorist. For example, the notion of universalism defined one possible mode of orientation to action in the pattern variables, being contrasted with particularism. The pattern variables were not merely a passing phase in Parsons's long theoretical maturation; they were fundamental to what he understood by 'modernity'. They were as a result constitutive of Parsons's understanding of social change theory and modernization processes. Indeed, this theme of universalistic participation, its dependence on the legacy of the Protestant idea of universal salvation and its peculiar role in the formation of western societies, was a co-ordinating theme in Parsons's complex theoretical legacy. In addition to its importance in his theoretical development, it was the foundation of the pressuppositional level of his general value position, because Parsons regarded American society as the culmination of the process of modernity which, as we will see, was a process of universalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of a sequence of literary frames suggests that a heightened experience of interactional reality is also anomically constructive of the frame. In each of 16 frames, Durkheimian anomie neither destroys the frame's integrity nor renders its routine grounds unintelligible, as Goffman and Garfinkel would claim it must. Paradoxically, anomie ritually intensifies the frame. The selves in the paper's sequence of highly ritualized frames are not routine selves, however. They are 'strangers to themselves.' The analysis shows how Mead's 'I' can re-emerge from Goffman's ritual thinking -- where the T is collapsed into an interactionally-bound 'me' -- as an original manifestation of great importance to interactants, and therefore to society as well. (Parenthetically it is also argued that selves need an element of rituality in order to be selflike and that it is interactional rituality which guarantees the evolution of social life beyond given frames, corpora, cultural repertoires, and collective representations.) The idea that interactants can be strangers to themselves is an advance on Goffman's and Garfinkel's accounts of interactional selfhood, but one that problematizes the prosecution of the interaction sociology that Goffman and Garfinkel pioneer, since strangers to themselves disappear in normal sociological appearances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Professional codes and guidelines and literature on ethical issues in social research generally subscribe to the view that open methods of research are virtuous whereas covert ones are unethical. In particular ethical conduct is assured in the acquisition of the informed consent of participants. This paper is concerned with unethical aspects of open methods. It is suggested that researchers perceive negotiations with participants as situations of conflict and normally prevail by virtue of superior and practised skills. While research subjects are told that participation is voluntary, their defences -- in particular of their privacy -- are systematically eroded. Invasion is inherent in the textbook paradigm of the interview. Consent becomes a licence and the self-esteem of the investigator is measured in terms which run counter to the interests of subjects. It is argued that consent is a procedure which protects not the participants of social research but the researchers themselves, from whom moral responsibility for adverse consequences immediately passes. One of the implications of the practices surveyed is that ethical principles for social research should be safeguarded less in prescriptions of acceptable procedures than in the recognition of moral obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To resolve the ongoing controversy over Spencer's methodological views this paper establishes that the general philosophy set out in First Principles is a philosophy of science by documenting the influence of the Whewell-Herschel-Mill canons of good science on its structure and content. Its core ideas, the law of evolution and the persistence of force, are not metaphysical principles as most Spencer scholars claim. The law of evolution is a phenomenal law which specifies the course of transformation throughout all classes of phenomena. The persistence of force is a fundamental law which, together with its corollaries, the other first principles, explains why this is the course of transformation. This proscience interpretation of Spencer's position on the science-antiscience controversy also clarifies the role of the law of evolution and the persistence of force in his sociology. They generate a distinct kind of causal explanation, ultimate-causal explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The body is socially constructed; and in this paper we explore the various and ever-changing constructions of the body, and thus of the embodied self, from the Greeks to the present. The one word, body, may therefore signify very different realities and perceptions of reality; and we consider briefly how and why these meanings changed. Plato believed the body was a 'tomb', Paul said it was the 'temple' of the Holy Spirit, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught that it was a 'corpse'. Christians believed, and believe, that the body is not only physical, but also spiritual and mystical, and many believed it was an allegory of church, state and family. Some said it was cosmic: one with the planets and the constellations. Descartes wrote that the body is a 'machine', and this definition has underpinned biomedicine to this day; but Sartre said that the body is the self. In sum, the body has no intrinsic meaning. Populations create their own meanings, and thus their own bodies; but how they create, and then change them, and why, reflects the social body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This 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.

The focus of the closure theories of Weber, Collins, and Parkin on the power relations contained in exclusionary codes which regulate society provides a promising framework for integrating the analysis of property, credentials, lineage, communal divisions between racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups, the relations between the sexes, Communist Party domination, and resulting counterstruggle. This paper demonstrates, however, that the neglect of structural relationships among different sets of closure rules is a central weakness of their theories. It proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for strengthening closure theory by bringing such relationships, which constitute the deep structure of domination, into focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of professional formation have employed the concepts of collective social mobility, closure and the process whereby knowledge is translated into social and economic rewards: in addition, there has been some attempt to show how this occurs. This paper builds on that work by examining the utility of the `five class model' of stratification with its emphasis on the `aspirant middle class' (Neale, 1972) and the `unresolved dialectic' (Portwood and Fielding, 1981) between traditional and modern values, for studying how Scottish accountants established their professional position -- the first of that occupation to do so. The accountancy profession in Scotland was able to place the cachet of ascription on its members because its leaders were associated with the gentry, the legal profession and the more respectable (commercial, as opposed to manufacturing) part of the bourgoisie. The achieved status of members was thus endorsed by the respectability of ascription. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper looks at changing patterns of women's employment in sociology over the last thirty years since the foundation of the British Sociological Association. Starting with an examination of early studies of the sexual division of labour in sociology, we go on to look at the adequacy or otherwise of explanations in these studies. Moving on to more recent surveys of the profession, it becomes clear that there has not been a substantial improvement in the employment prospects for women in sociology, although the subjective situation of women sociologists has probably been improved through the support of the Women's Caucus and increased attention to sexism in the subject matter of sociology. Finally we suggest that improvement in women's employment prospects in sociology would not only affect the construction of the labour market in sociology, but would be likely to go further, and would also affect the construction of knowledge. [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]

Due to the recent introduction and popularity of professional soccer in United States and Canada, this paper looks at whether the crowd violence which tends to accompany the game in Britain will be a problem in North America. Analysis includes a comparison of the historical development and present day conditions of the game in Britain and in North America. It is concluded that due to differences in the historical development and present day physical and social conditions within which the game is played, soccer in Britain lends itself to crowd violence whereas soccer in North America does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns ethical issues raised by a covert research enquiry conducted in a community of primitive sectarians described as ‘old time pentecostals’. Covert methods — interviewing and fully participant observation — were chosen on pragmatic grounds and in view of the subjects' marked rejection of ‘the world’ in general and of sociology in particular. Two types of ethical problem are considered: matters of individual morality and those of professional ethics. Covert research is a pragmatic expedient, ideally nonreactive and giving access to secret transactions: but it is also justifiable in view of the right of subjects to be free from disturbance and inhibition. It is argued that covert methods are in certain cases favourable to and in the interests of subjects but potentially detrimental to the personality of the fieldworker, in whom certain traits may persist even after he has left the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper outlines an historically situated, gender-based perspective on crime and delinquency. The perspective is stated in propositional form and tested with data on juvenile delinquency. The fundamental propositions assert that there is a sexually stratified inverse relationship between structurally differentiated processes of social control, such that women are more frequently the instruments and objects of informal social controls, while men are more frequently the instruments and objects of formal social controls. Implications of our perspective for conflict and control theories of deviance are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a systematic introduction to the major themes of Jürgen Habermas' formulation of critical social theory. A discussion of his views on knowledge, cognitive interests, and scientific method is followed by an account of his social theory and his attempt to combine Marxism with mainstream sociology. In criticism it is argued that Habermas has not yet solved all the problems of a ‘realist’ approach to sociology and that his synthesis is incomplete. It is argued that sociology can progress through a critical dialogue with Habermas' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares one aspect of Max Weber's explicit conception of ‘interpretive sociology’ with his actual practices in his substantive investigations. It shows that Weber's overt emphasis on the importance of meanings and motives in causal explanation of social action does not correspond adequately with the true mode of explanation involved in his comparative-historical studies of the world religions. Rather, the ultimate level of causal explanation in Weber's substantive writings is that of the social-structural conditions under which certain forms of meaning and motivation can achieve historical efficacy. A model is developed to represent the actual nature of ‘Weberian sociology’. It is proposed that this internal comparative analysis and interpretation can have useful implications for contemporary sociological debates and approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]