Search

The article provides information about the journal and presents submission guidelines for articles for review. The journal aims to cater a medium for the publication of original papers covering the entire complete duration of sociological thought and research. The author stressed that the journal will give preference to publish the original papers whose works are focused on current developments in research and analysis. Contributions, correspondence and books for review must be directed to "The British Journal of Sociology," London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, England.

This paper is an effort to understand Hogarth's unique position in early eighteenth century London, so as to grasp the rich complexity of his work. It begins by tracing two rival competing positions in the sociology of art, derived from Becker and Bourdieu, before taking a closer look at how Hogarth's work conjures up a new vision of the world, providing shape and meaning to the nation's changing understandings of morality, society, and the city. A fundamental transformation in the field of representation appears halfway through the eighteenth century and the interweaving of art theory, national identity, and systems of patronage are at the centre of this dynamic period. It is no accident that in Hogarth's world the main targets are those who seek to transgress their stations in life and cross class barriers. By combining two different sociological approaches to art the study builds a more nuanced picture of the artist and his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rise of a new elite of 'super‐state' schools in London, revealing a growing divide within the state sector which problematizes claims that the capital is a 'hotspot' for social mobility (Social Mobility Commission). Although recent research has revealed a 'London effect' in which students in the capital on Free School Meals outperform their peers in other regions (Greaves, Macmillan and Sibieta), inequalities between London's schools in access to elite universities have been overlooked. Drawing on a case study of a suburban London grammar school, 'King Henry's School', I show how ethnic‐minority suburbanization has combined with an institutional strategy to compete with elite private schools. Strategies of selection have been mobilized alongside elements of elite 'gentlemanly' educational culture in order to reposition the school within the hierarchy of London's schools. The result is a hyper‐selective school which provides a conduit to elite universities for upwardly mobile British‐Asian students. I show that this strategy has strong parallels with the school's attempts in the early twentieth century to compete with London's fee‐paying 'public' schools. The continuing symbolic value of 'traditional' forms of elite educational culture to a school seeking to reposition itself within the field reflects deep structural patterns of inequality in English education. To understand how apparent improvements in social mobility can sit alongside deepening inequalities between state schools, there is a need for a historical sociological approach that takes account of long‐term processes of institutional change (Savage ; Inglis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the experience of researching British South Asian women's lives in London as a female British Asian researcher to explore how cultural commonality and difference is shaped by agency and interaction in the research process. It examines these issues through a discussion of how the shared cultural identity of the researcher and the interviewees emerged as both a point of commonality and difference in the research process; with the researcher being `positioned' in terms of both as a result of the interviewees' agency in interpreting their cultural commonality. In particular, issues of ‘Indianness’ and religion emerged as points on which interviewees exercised agency and interpreted the researcher's cultural identity. This was the basis on which they claimed commonality or difference and this assessment consequently impacted on their interaction with the researcher. The article suggests that more attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher through their agency and interaction in the research process shapes interview dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the widespread deployment of CCTV through most major cities and towns in great Britain, and the importance of surveillance to contemporary debates within the social sciences, there remains relatively little detailed research concerned with the practical use of these technologies in the workplace. In this paper, we examine how personnel in the operation rooms in London Underground use CCTV and related equipment to identify problems and events and to develop a co-ordinated response. In particular, we consider how personnel configure scenes to make sense of and interpret the conduct of the travelling public in organizationally relevant ways, and how they shape the ways in which both passengers and staff see and respond to each others' actions. In addressing how personnel constitute the sense and significance of CCTV images, we reflect on the development of information processing systems which are designed to automatically detect conduct and events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a study on social status and clique formation among grammar school boys in London, England. This paper reports on another aspect of the inquiry into the effects of social class at adolescence, which has been carried out at the London School of Economics and Political Science in England under the direction of Doctor H. T. Himmelweit. Within the broad framework of the research project, an important place was allotted to problems of peer group selection. Moreover, the paper is based on information from three sources: a choice of friend questionnaire, a sociometric questionnaire and an open-ended question on the attributes of a good friend. The most interesting conclusion which has emerged from these data points to an important difference between this country and the U.S. In both countries, the adolescent's value system largely determines his friendship choices. In England, it has been shown that similar class stereotypes may be found and it is quite possibly true that such friendship criteria as are embodied in the choice of a friend questionnaire reflect parental values. It could also be argued, that the working class boys in the grammar school are exceptional, in that they come from homes where middle class values are prevalent. In England, it may be said in general that by having secondary grammar and secondary modern schools, the working class pupils are divided into those who will be given an opportunity for social ascent and those who will not. England deliberately segregates the new recruits to the higher social levels and gives them more advanced training in separate schools. Under these conditions, several factors combine to give the working class boy those attitudes, interests and motives which are concomitant with his future social position.

This article provides information on the biennial conference of the British Sociological Association at Queen Elizabeth College in London, England on March 22 to 24, 1957. The theme Sociology in Retrospect and Prospect was an appropriate one in view of the increasingly felt need to undertake a systematic re-assessment and clarification of the main issues involved in sociological theory and practice. A large theme of this nature could not be pursued in exhaustive detail, but the papers in both the plenary and the group sessions were such as to stimulate much thought, and the degree of interest shown in the conference was such as to suggest that this theme was one of central concern to all. The attendance was greater than had been anticipated. Although not central to the theme of the conference, perhaps one of the most significant facts about it was that it became the basis for a consciously contrived effort to begin and foster co-operative relations between the British Association and the American Sociological Society. Another encouraging feature was that 39 students were sufficiently interested to become student members of the association. The executive officers were very helpful throughout, and finally it proved possible to send over a small delegation.

Based on a recent empirical project on 'the Bengal diaspora', the paper explores the construction and contestation of meanings around the iconic East London street, Brick Lane. Taking the 2006 protests around the film Brick Lane as its starting point, the paper draws on original interviews conducted in 2008 with a range of Bengali community representatives, to examine the narratives of space, community and belonging that emerge around the idea of Brick Lane as the 'cultural heartland' of the British Bangladeshi community. By exploring the representation, production and contestation of 'social space' through everyday practices, the paper engages with and contests the representation of minority ethnic 'communities' in the context of contemporary multicultural London and examines the process of 'claiming' and 'making' space in East London. In so doing, the paper contributes to a critical tradition that challenges essentialising and pathologizing accounts of ethnic communities and racialized spaces, or that places them outside of broader social and historical processes - redolent, for example, in contemporary discussions about 'parallel lives' or 'the clash of civilizations'. By contrast, this paper views social space as made through movement and narration, with a particular emphasis on the social agency of local Bengali inhabitants and the multiple meanings that emerge from within this 'imagined community'. However, rather than simply stressing the unfinished and processual nature of spatial meanings, the paper insists on the historical, embodied and affective dimensions of such meaning making, and a reckoning with the broader social and political landscape within which such meanings take shape. The focus on Brick Lane provides an empirically rich, geographically and historically located lens through which to explore the complex role of ethnicity as a marker of social space and of spatial practices of resistance and identity. By exploring Bengali Brick Lane through its narratives of past, present and future, these stories attest to the symbolic and emotional importance of such spaces, and to their complex imaginings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This article examines how white British residents of a superdiverse London housing estate learn about—and subsequently deploy—the intra‐ethnic stereotypes used by their British Pakistani and British Bangladeshi neighbours/flatmates. Building on recent attempts to bring together conviviality and boundary making, along with insights into intra‐ethnic othering, we show how, for white British residents, these stereotypes offered the chance to add detail and authenticity to judgements about the "unrespectable" behaviour of British Asian residents and/or visitors. Ultimately, however, white British residents' inappropriate and/or imprecise deployment of these stereotypes in relation to British Bangladeshis and British Pakistanis led to the misidentification of low‐status people and the unfair extension of discrimination faced by low‐status individuals and families. Furthermore, the combination of clumsy application and the positioning of "respectable" British Bangladeshis and British Pakistanis as purveyors of "insider knowledge" about intra‐ethnic stereotypes led to the reinscribing of boundaries between racial groups. We conclude that studying the cross‐racial use of intra‐ethnic stereotypes allows for a subtler appreciation of the complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in superdiverse areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Inebriate Act passed in 1898 enabled local authorities to set up State and Certified Reformatories to treat habitual drunkards over a two to three year period as an alternative to a short prison sentence. A large proportion of offenders sentenced under this Act were women. This development has been a somewhat neglected area of social policy, perhaps because it was a short-lived experiment and few local authorities chose to take up the option; although institutional treatment was enthusiastically supported by members of the Society for the Study of Inebriety who campaigned tirelessly to extend the powers of the Act. This legislation is an interesting subject both because of the regimes that were developed to treat inebriety and also because it was one of the few attempts that were actually put into practice to impose an institutional solution on the problem of the 'undeserving' poor. This paper looks at the methods of treatment to be found in the reformatories and the way in which the campaign was proselytised in the Society's journal. We examine the records of one female reformatory run by the London County Council in an attempt to illustrate the characteristics and social backgrounds of women found in the reformatories. Finally, we make some tentative suggestions which might account for the fact that, although more men than women were prosecuted under the Act, the institutional solution was used predominantly for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents updates on the British Sociological Association in 1955. It was decided at the Annual General Meeting in March 1955 that the office of the president should be created so that it might be possible to invite an eminent sociologist to become associated in this way with the association. The president would hold office for one year and would be eligible for re-election. This decision was endorsed by the majority of the members voting by postal ballot and the constitution has been amended accordingly. Professor Morris Ginsberg has been invited to be the first holder of the office for the remainder of the current year and has been pleased to accept. On October 14, 1955 the association will hold a meeting on problems of social change and causation at the University of London in England. Meanwhile, the Urban Sociology Study Group and the Industrial Sociology Study Group will resume their monthly meetings in October 1955. The possibility is being investigated of forming a third study group for examining the territory on which the interests of psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists meet. Furthermore, the association welcomes applications for membership from younger sociologists and others whose disciplines are related to sociology. It offers student membership for those occupied in full-time study at an institution of higher learning. Student members have all the advantages of full membership except the power to vote and make nominations. Subscriptions for 1955 will be waived for all members whose applications are accepted between now and the end of the year. Particulars will be sent on application to all those interested.

During fieldwork conducted with workers and customers in betting shops in London research participants consistently conceptualized betting shops as masculine spaces in contrast to the femininity of other places including home and the bingo hall. According to this argument, betting on horses and dogs was 'men's business' and betting shops were 'men's worlds'. Two explanations were offered to account for this situation. The first suggested that betting was traditionally a pastime enjoyed by men rather than women. The second was that betting is intrinsically more appealing to men because it is based on calculation and measurement, and women prefer more intuitive, simpler challenges. I use interviews with older people to describe how the legalisation of betting in cash in 1961 changed the geography of betting. I then draw upon interviews with regular customers in order to show how knowledge about betting is shared within rather than between genders. Finally, I use my experience of training and working as a cashier to describe how the particular hegemonic masculinity found in betting shops in London is maintained through myriad everyday practices which reward certain kinds of gendered performances while at the same time suppressing alternatives. The article shows how particular spaces may become gendered as an unanticipated consequence of legislation and how contingent gendered associations are both naturalized and, at the same time, subjected to intense attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade the issue of identity has been prevalent in discussions about British Muslims, with the events of 9/11 serving as a touchstone for media debates about religious, national and cultural affiliations. The 7/7 terrorist attacks in the UK led to young British Pakistanis being subjected to intense public and institutional scrutiny and wider political concerns being expressed about the failure of multiculturalism. Young British Pakistanis have thus had to negotiate and maintain their identities in an environment in which they have been defined as a threat to national security whilst simultaneously being pressurized to align with 'core British values'. Within this context, we convey the findings of a qualitative study involving British Pakistanis living in the North-west of England. In presenting the experiences and perspectives of participants, three interconnected processes salient to the maintenance of identity are delineated: solidity, elasticity and resilience. Having unpacked these processes, we draw upon Bhabha's third space thesis to explore the political potentiality of and the limits to hybridic identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the moral economy of detective work in the East-End of London, England. The practice of policing takes many forms, yet all correspond to a perceived demand for a specific style of social control. However, not all police specialisms emerge as the result of rational organizational processes. In the case of detective work, a combination of historical precedent and the demands made upon officers by the enacted environment has resulted in the policed providing the occupational style for the police. The genesis of British Policing has been well established as having its origins in pre-industrial settings. However, the growth of industrialization and its concomitant urbanization, established both the philosophical and economic framework upon which modern state policing was grounded. London's working class emerged as an undisciplined group reliant upon the casual labor market. As the eighteenth century progressed, the economy of London became increasingly reliant upon non-industrial capital such as banking and commerce. Few East Enders were employed in either of these spheres, yet they became progressively vulnerable to the whims of the market place that were often orchestrated in the City of London.

The article focuses on the betting shop located in London, England's East End street market. A market in which the large number of stalls offer a rich variety of commodities, chiefly foodstuffs and apparel. The accent is on price, on repeatable bargains, clearance lines, bankrupt or fire stocks, with occasional innuendoes to bargains owing their value to stuff being nicked. The market is patronized largely by the local population, a heterogeneous mixture of White and Black, Gentile, Jew and Moslem, of firmly rooted and transient, locally born and bred and recently immigrated. They all seem to be able to count on their stable, regular clientele. Although punters, apart from other considerations affecting preferences, will after a prolonged unsuccessful run be inclined to switch custom. Naturally some punters will change under impact of external forces, new job, new home, a new set of mates, and many others, the floaters, will lay their bets at whichever betting shop happens to be most convenient at the time.

According to the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, 1957-60, the government of London, England is a great political prize for any political party since the area reviewed in the report contains nearly one-fifth of England's population and one-third of its rateable value. The region has burgeoned from its center and physically distinguishable areas have become clotted urban settlements. Many circumstances have contributed to this extension. London is the political capital and judicial center, housing the country's major cultural and professional activities and supplying its means of conspicuous consumption. It is the largest port, an international commercial center and an important industrial region. Developments in communications and in power supplies have located employment and housing throughout the region and have enabled people to travel considerable distances for work and recreation. In such an area, life offers attractions, varieties of work and play and high-quality public services. Thus, despite persistent efforts to restrict its insidious growth, the region will continue to generate pressure for high density development and expansion.

This article presents results of a study conducted in two suburbs outside London, England and San Francisco, California, respectively, to ascertain family relationships. It was found that the groups were found to be similar, when in both cases, parents in their old age maintained close ties with their adult children both in terms of geography and frequency of contact, and daughters play consistently more important parts in their parents' lives than sons. The difference was that a larger proportion of the American group have knowledge of and pride in their pedigree, while the English group have relatively little knowledge of ancestry. The study was carried out on a countrywide basis in a limited way with a group of 3,964 for the U.S.A. and 900 for Great Britain. Results of the study suggest that old people generally maintain close links with their children and that the mother-daughter tie is the central nexus of the kinship network of industrial societies. Concern for ancestry seems to be more pronounced in the U.S.A. than in Great Britain. But in view of the size of the inquiry these statements are not so much findings as suggestions for further research.

If it were deemed expedient at this stage of the analysis of the Greenwich data to arrive at positive conclusions, the main one would probably be that social class, in one or other of its protean manifestations, is the chief determinant of political behaviour. The Hall-Jones scale, by providing us with an independent instrument for the measurement of accorded status, enables us to probe with more confidence the sometimes subtle relationships between accorded and subjective status, and to demonstrate the differential effects of such factors as age and kinship. It also enables us to assess objectively the class structure of the local political organizations. This structure conforms closely to the public image of the parties, as the electorate views them, and voting appears to be more closely related to this public image of the parties than to the detailed policies they propound. The classes vote for themselves to an unequal extent, both in fact and by admission. Data on the voting intentions of family, friends and co-workers suggest that the more politically homogeneous the individual's social environment, the more likely he is to vote according to the predispositions of his class ; and conversely, where an individual finds himself in political disharmony with his social environment, he is likely to betray the fact in his indecisions and vacillations. This survey was made possible by an initial grant from the Elmgrant Trust, supplemented by a grant from the Department of Sociological and Demographic Research, London School of Economics. It has been conducted under the guidance of a steering committee consisting of the late Prof. H. J. Laski, Prof. W. A. Robson, Prof. M. G. Kendall, Prof. D. V. Glass, Mr. Michael Young and Dr. Henry Durant of the British Institute of Public Opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]