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This paper involves an examination of skilled manual work in the modern paper industry. The data were collected at five mills in three countries -- the UK, Australia and the USA. The questions were formulated in order to probe four theories of skilled work. The results suggest that the distinction between skilled and nonskilled work is a fundamental feature of occupational differentiation in all five plants. They also reveal that there are intra-skilled conflicts over relative pay and demarcation lines and that these are affected by the wider socio-political environment. [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 is an attempt to show that distinct dimensions of political alienation are reliable predictors of variations in political behaviour, independently of factors such as level of government and kinds of situations. In other words, there is a direct relation between the type of alienation and the mode in which it is expressed. The paper also calls attention to the functions served by the alienated as agents of political change. Variations in the modes of expression result from the following four types of political alienation: powerlessness, distrust, meaninglessness and isolation. Political powerlessness refers to the "perceived expectancy of an individual that his own behaviour cannot determine the occurrence of political outcomes that he seeks." The incentive to take part in politics is weak among the powerless who consequently elect to express their alienation through non-participation. Distrust is a person's feeling that the occupants of political roles systematically and consistently violate specific political norms or the "rules of the game" when dealing with certain publics.

The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the importance of class divisions within agrarian populations for understanding agrarian collective action. To illustrate, the author describes agrarian class structure and collective action in Ireland during the nineteenth century. In the early part of the century, there was a social cleavage between occupying tenants and landowners, but there was also a cleavage among occupying tenants themselves. Both types of cleavage had a noticeable effect on the character of collective action. Subsequently, a major transformation in the class structure reduced the intensity of the social cleavage between large and small tenant farmers, and at the same time tenant farmers became numerically the largest social group in the rural society, thus laying the social basis for collective action by this social group. There are two principal arguments made in this paper: first, that agrarian populations are often split into distinguishable social classes, which do not all share the same basis for opposing non-agrarian elites and may even come into conflict with one another; and second, that different agrarian class structures give rise to different kinds of collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for greater recognition of the value of Mannheim's work on generations was made by Pilcher (1994). This paper will describe the ways in which one case study employed the generational perspective in an effort to understand the main trends of thought and behaviour amongst a specific social group, i.e. the 'reform generation' of young intellectuals in 1980s China. The application of Mannheim's concept to the delineation of this social generation and how it was distinctive from its immediate predecessor will be described. The idea of a social generation being more than a group of similarly aged people will be explored with respect to the empirical work carried out in the Chinese context. The subsequent identification of possible sources of internal subdivisions will also be discussed and how sample members were classified in terms of intra-generational units. The possible links between these specific groups within a generation and the process of social change will also be raised. The value of some of Mannheim's key concepts will be assessed as they were applied in the case study and the main difficulties which arise in practice will be considered. The identity and particular self-consciousness of the 1980s generation emerged during the fieldwork and there were indications of their distinctive social characteristics such as self-confidence and acceptance of the notion of playing a leading role in Chinese society which will be discussed. Whilst this article does not set out to explain the outbreak of the 1989 student- led democracy movement, it should contribute to our understanding of it. [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.

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]

This paper argues that the social movement literature contains two main traditions for relating social change to collective behaviour, both of which appear sensible at the macro-social level but, when ‘unpacked’ to the level of models of individual motivation, become implausible. The case of the conversion of the Scottish Highlanders to evangelical Protestantism in the late eighteenth century is used as an example of how, by using themes from interactionist sociology, a causal account of social change and collective behaviour can be constructed which does not involve reductionist and unlikely treatments of actors' motivation, and which does not make the ideology of the social movement epiphenomenal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept rationalization considers those intellectual processes endemic to developments of systems of meaning and symbolism. Rationalizing processes foster greater conceptual coherence and clarification, and, in the determination of knowledge, place increasing reliance on rational procedures. This paper constructs a model of rationalization, presenting as an illustration a study of the English testimonial oath, a component of the law of evidence. The meaning, definition, and conception of a valid oath, as well the associated rules of testimonial qualification, have altered significantly since the seventeenth century. The logical and orderly erosion of religious elements together with the emergence of exclusively legal criteria demonstrate the utility and significance of rationalization for understanding cultural developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the author's comments on the article Structure, Consciousness and Action: A Sociological Profile of the British Middle Class, by Frank Bechhofer, Brian Elliott and David McCrone. The central thesis of the paper is that secular trends of change in modern British society have undermined the normative coherence of the middle class: there has been a decline in its cultural distinctiveness vis-à-vis other classes and the degree of value consensus among its own members. The author is in general agreement with this thesis, and believes that it is one of central importance for any understanding of the sociopolitical situation of present-day Great Britain. The author wishes to supplement the account that has been given how the reduction in the normative coherence of the middle class has come about and also to add a view of his own about the future of middle-class politics. The basic theoretical approach of the article is indicated in the trinity of terms used in the title. It may be a case of the shoemaker thinking that there is nothing like leather, the author would regard it as theoretically crucial to insert, as it were, between structure and consciousness, the idea of recruitment; and argues that in considering the middle class in modern Great Britain the empirical importance of this addition could scarcely be greater.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modem democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Israeli protest movement `Women in Black' is studied by focusing on the movement's mode of protest, which is used as a prism through which to analyse the manner in which the structure, contents and goals of protest challenge the socio-political and gender orders. The article analyses the protest vigil of `Women in Black' in Jerusalem, and characterizes it, following Handelman (1990), as a minimalist public event. After examining and analysing the sources of minimal- ism it was concluded that minimalism was the result of two social processes attendant at the formation of `Women in Black' as a social movement: personal interpretation of the political field, and avoidance of ideological deliberation amongst the participants. The minimalism of the public event preserved the movement for six years and created a collective identity that emphasized the symbolic difference between those within the demonstration and those outside it. This difference was symbolized by a juxtaposition of opposites. The essence of opposites is analysed by means of `thick description', i.e., by deciphering them in the context of Israeli society. The study concluded that the mode of protest of `Women in Black' has created a symbolic space in which a new type of political woman is enacted. This identity challenges established socio-cultural categories Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first two professors of sociology in England thought their major research task to be to examine the writings of historians, anthropologists and others in order to write comparative and evolutionary histories of mankind. The first wave of expansion of sociology after the war changed this emphasis. Small scale studies, using detailed primary, sources, traced short-term developments in a selected area of interest. Studies of' the here and now dominated sociology for some time. Twenty years later a second wave changed the emphasis again towards theoretical speculation, although the concept of time now held primary place, just as it had before the war. Historical sociology nevertheless languished until the impact of second-wave feminism, with its emphasis on women having been hidden from history, gave it an impetus which promises much in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Researcher D. Lockwood's distinction between social and system integration' seems to the author one of the most important contributions in the field of sociological metatheory. However, he thinks that there are certain ambiguities and shortcomings in Lockwood's distinction which restrict considerably its wide applicability. In this article the author tries to identify and discuss some of these difficulties with the aim, not of dismissing it but, hopefully, of increasing its utility both as a guide to research and as an instrument for assessing critically conflicting approaches to the study of social change. More specifically, a more systematic discussion of the meaning and implications of such a distinction, as one shall see, leads to a fresh appraisal of the kind of difference existing between functionalist and Marxist theories of change. Lockwood seems to distinguish two types of system integration--according to the type of parts that they refer to. The one type is to be found in the writings of normative functionalists. In this case the parts of the system are institutions and therefore system contradictions arise out of institutional incompatibilities: i.e. certain institutional patterns clash with other institutional patterns.