Search

This paper discusses the concept of 'professional ideology'. I shall argue that in studying the nature of social welfare policy and the attitudes of social workers and other professionals upon whom the effective implementation of that policy so often depends, a formulation of this concept is useful which allows the social scientist to cope with policy ambiguity, inconsistency and apparent incoherence, rather than a formulation which diverts his attention from such features or leads him to regard them as theoretically embarrassing. I came to this conclusion during the course of a piece of research on some aspects of the Children's Panel system in Scotland.[1] This present paper, however, is intended not so much as a report on that research per se but rather as a reflection of the uncomfortable process of moving continually between theory and data and back again in the attempt to 'make sense' of empirical material.[2] The paper mirrors the conceptual problems of a research investigation. I shall report some difficulties encountered while trying to use the idea of 'professional ideology' and conclude by drawing distinctions between several quite different kinds of phenomena which are sometimes grouped together and loosely termed 'ideology' to confusing effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive mobility between class of origin and class of destination has been a characteristic feature of societies in Europe and North America since the middle of the twentieth century. Most mobility has been upward, and most of that has been explicable by occupational change – by the rise in the proportion of the labour force which works in service-class jobs and the decline in the proportion in manual jobs. This pattern may now be changing, because parents of younger cohorts (people born since the 1960s) have themselves benefited from upward mobility and so there is less scope for further upward movement by their offspring. The paper uses a large new data source for Scotland to investigate these topics. It finds that there is still a great deal of mobility, and that, although upward mobility still predominates, its amount is lower in younger cohorts than in older. Nevertheless, relative mobility has not changed as upward mobility has declined, just as in earlier studies it was found not to have changed as upward mobility rose. These patterns are similar for men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust has been seen as operating within situations in which an individual's ability to assess risk or probability is absent and yet they still choose to believe in something. The development of new sets of knowledge in modern societies raises interesting questions about how the public come to trust the ‘experts’ who practice them and there is a paucity of work which addresses how trust ‘happens’ in these new relationships. This paper uses the accounts of patients who use cranial osteopathy to discuss the bases of trust in complementary medicine. It is argued that the practitioner and their therapy is not the basis of patient trust. For the initial attendance the patient relies upon the accounts and credibility of other people (network trust). After this it is the phenomenological work of the patient, who strives to find meaning in the treatments they experience, which is essential to the development of trust relationships. The paper demonstrated that patients mobilise ideas and understandings which they are familiar with to understand the unfamiliar and that it is this process of seeking meaning which is central to the creation of trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the claims about the explanation of violence around football put forward by Armstrong and Harris in the light of more widespread faults in the analysis of 'hooliganism'. It argues that conceptual, definitional and methodological problems mean that the data Armstrong and Harris supply should not cause anyone to abandon either of the two theoretical positions they think they criticize. In particular their dismissal of the moral panic type of approach to the study of football hooliganism is rebutted. Evidence concerning Scottish football is supplied to support this and to indicate that all English researchers into this issue require to revise their arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that the migration experiences of present residents may have profound implications for both the structure and organization of a local population, and an analytical framework is proposed which takes account of the variety of types of migration encountered in the Highlands and Islands. Firstly, the categories used in the analysis are explained; secondly, data are presented on the distribution of migrant types in seven study areas, and thirdly, some suggestions are made as to the implications of different types of migration experience for the communities concerned. Whilst all seven places have at least until recently suffered net migration losses in varying degrees, the aim here is to show that out-migration is not the only type of movement which has an impact on the local society; the focus, therefore, is entirely on the resident population and out-migration will not be considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The patterns of neighborhood life adopted by the residents of a locality are unlikely to be accounted for to the equal satisfaction both of those whose interest is in the unconscious levels of individual personality and those who are concerned with social structure. The group of housewives whose pattern of interaction is described in this paper were such a set of close neighbors, unknown to each other on moving in, some from their parents' homes, some from sub-let rooms. How this group of women in a Scottish town deal with the tensions inherent in such a degree of closeness as they maintain is the main theme of this paper, in which consideration is also given to the significance of the life stage of the women, their geographic origins and socio-economic level, and the layout of the building.

This paper discusses the way in which ideas about deviance and thus moral judgements are ultimately grounded within native culture. Through focusing on underage drinking and soft drug use in the Western Isles of Scotland an analysis is presented which seeks to unfold the relationship between tradition, morality and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to argue that part of this dilemma results from the abandonment of the concepts of rle. Its reinstatement, in suitably modified ways, may provide that sense of form which is missing from much interactionist writing. The argument is based upon a study of professional-client interaction in various medical settings in Scotland and the United States.[2] The study was not undertaken in search of rles, indeed it was initially assumed that these, like the unicorn, would never be seen again. Nevertheless, only the. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines whether civil society effectively represents popular views, using a survey of teachers in Scotland. It has been claimed by many writers recently that civil society can lead a process of political renewal in the liberal democracies, However, the extent to which civil society is in touch with popular feeling has been challenged from both the right and the left. It has been claimed that civil society provides a bulwark against an excessively powerful state, a source of legitimacy for the state, and a network of institutions that are more in touch with popular feeling than remote politicians and bureaucrats. In Scotland, civil society has been the carrier of the nation's relative autonomy throughout the period since the Scottish and English parliaments united in 1707. The outcome was a referendum in September 1997 which endorsed the ideas for a parliament by a margin of three to one. Amidst these political debates, there has been little systematic analysis of the views of influential segments of civil society, and almost no survey-based research into the views of the personnel in leading institutions of civil society.

In 2005, the location of the G8 summit meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, brought the contested boundaries of the state and the nation to the fore. Confronted by the prospect of significant public disorder police forces in Scotland routinely flagged up a ‘Scottish approach to policing’. Drawing on research with key police officers and others we explore the processes through which national identities come to be articulated, contested and acted out in the context of one particular institution: the police. We consider the claim that policing of the summit was ‘Scottish’ and assess the implications of this assertion. Whilst the police have been argued to be integral to the constitution and expression of nation-statehood we highlight the dangers in an uncritical acceptance of police philosophies and also point to the banal ways in which national identity is naturalised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate about the relationship between religion and economic activity in the wake of Weber has been cast largely in terms of belief and values. This article suggests an alternative focus on practice. It argues that taken for granted practices of church governance formed to-hand resources for the organization of economic activity. The argument is developed through an examination of the historical development of church governance practices in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, with particular emphasis on the way in which theological belief gave rise to practices of accountability and record keeping. In turn such practices contributed to a ‘culture of organization’ which had implications for economic activity. A focus on governance practices can help to illuminate enduring patterns of difference in the organization of economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland is often seen as a good example of a civic/territorial rather than an ethnic/cultural form of nationalism. From the 1970s the campaign for a Scottish parliament stressed an inclusive, residence based, civic sense of being Scottish, and more recently, Scotland's political elites have seen the new parliament as an endorsement of territorial belonging. How valid are these assumptions? To what extent is political ideology at odds with people's sense of their national identity? Using a qualitative approach, we explore different identity claims currently being made in post-devolution Scotland– those based on blood, birth and belonging. We argue that these are better conceptual tools for the purpose of unravelling the complexities of identity politics in this context than the contrast between civic and ethnic. Our data come from the Scottish part of a study in England and Scotland, and focus on three sets of respondents: English migrants to Scotland making blood or birth claims to Englishness and/or Britishness; English migrants making belonging claims to Scottishness; and Scottish nationals making claims for themselves as well as assessing migrants’ claims. We also explore the significance of constitutional change in the context of respondents’ identity negotiations, and examine whether it has affected their understandings of Scottishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses hill-walking as a popular leisure pastime in the mountains of Scotland, analyzing aspects of prescription and performance from an ethnographic perspective. It comments on the performance of facts, examining processes of mapping, surveying, counting, and navigating. The author also reflects on debates on technology, considering navigational technologies such as Global Positioning Satellites (GPS). The authors address the larger topic of performances of nature. Classification tables of Scottish mountains made by cartographic critic Sir Hugh Thomas Munro in the late nineteenth century are also explored.

Popular commentators on marriage and the family often interpret the increase in heterosexual couples living together without marrying as reduced willingness to create and honour life-long partnerships. Survey and in-depth interviews with samples of 20-29 year olds living in an urban area of Scotland finds little support for the postulated link between growing cohabitation and a weakened sense of commitment to long-term arrangements. Most of the cohabiting couples strongly stressed their 'commitment'. Socially acceptable vocabularies of motive undoubtedly influenced answers but interviews helped to explore deeper meanings. Many respondents' views were consistent with previous research predictions of a weakening sense of any added value of marriage. At the same time, some respondents continued to stress the social significance of the distinction between marriage and cohabitation, consistent with research interpreting cohabitation as a 'try and see' strategy part-way to the perceived full commitment of marriage. The notion that 'marriage is better for children' continued to have support among respondents. While, on average, cohabiting couples had lower incomes and poorer employment situations than married couples, only very extreme adverse circumstances were presented as making marriage 'too risky'. Pregnancy-provoked cohabitation was not always in this category. Cohabitation was maintained because marriage would 'make no difference' or because they 'had not yet got round to' marriage. Most respondents were more wary of attempting to schedule or plan in their personal life than in other domains and cohabitees' attitudes to partnership, including their generally 'committed' approach, do not explain the known greater vulnerability of this group to dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how people perform the task of national identity construction and maintenance in the context of a study of landed and arts elites in Scotland. It also identifies rules of receiving claims and attributions. With reference to the empirical material throughout, the key national identity processes: claim, attribution and the receipt of claims and attributions are outlined. Central to these are identity markers and rules. Identity markers are those social characteristics presented to others to support a national identity claim and looked to in others, either to attribute national identity, or receive and assess any claims or attributions made. identity rules are probabilistic rules of thumb, guidelines to how these identity markers are interpreted, combined or given precedence over others within these three processes. Particular attention is given to identity rules, and consideration of the contexts in which they are adhered to or transgressed.

The article presents young people's reasons for leaving or remaining in a rural area in Great Britain, the Scottish Borders. Young people's views about migration and attachment demonstrate a contradictory and more complex pattern than that of detached late-modern migrants and traditional backwater stay-at-homes. These stereotypes have some resonance in local culture, for example in disdain for rootless "incomers" lacking real sympathy with the community and in the common accusation of the parochial narrow mindedness of locals who have never been elsewhere. However, such stereotypes emerge from complex social class antagonisms and cross-cutting ties to locality. Many young people's ties contradict the classifications these stereotypes imply. There are young out-migrants who are the children of rootless in-migrants, but also, nevertheless, have lasting attachments to the locality of their childhood. Then there are young "stayers" who are the children of born and bred locals but yet feel serious disaffection from their locality. These attached migrants and detached stayers may not represent settled orientations to their locality of childhood, but they, nevertheless, contradict both certain local stereotypes and Baumanesque "late modernist" sociological theorizing.

The slump in house prices in the early 1990s created a degree of uncertainty in the housing market which contrasts markedly with the optimism of the 1980s. In particular, the market downturn made it sharply apparent that there could be losers as well as winners in the unstable housing market. This study looks at a sample of owner occupiers drawn from Glasgow and Bristol in 1995. While still endorsing home ownership as the major housing option and as potentially enabling in housing and neighbourhood terms, a note of caution is recognisable. Aspirations to climb the housing 'ladder' are tempered by fear of overextending financially and by the broader uncertainties that people perceive to be endemic in the labour market and the housing market. Strategies reflect both diverse personal histories and the adoption of defensive or risk reduction options. For many respondents maintaining current housing standards is more important than market advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concern with 'identity politics' has grown in recent years, there are few studies of the ways in which people order and negotiate their national identities. The study reported here focuses on the identities used by members of the arts and landed elites in Scotland in the assertion of perceived cultural differences between Scots and non-Scots. These two groups have good reason to be sensitive to the problematic and negotiated nature of national identity in a changing cultural and political context in Scotland. The raw materials of national identity, in particular, birth, residence and ancestry, are used by individuals in these groups to make claims which are sustained by and through social interaction in the course of which various 'identity claims' are made and received in various ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on a study conducted on a number of heterosexual couples from Edinburgh and Glasgow to examine the changes which took place in their eating habits and food related activities when they began living together. Semi- structured interviews were carried out three months before and after moving-in dates and on each occasion both men and women were interviewed separately. Both felt that eating together had a symbolic importance when they set up home together and most couples made efforts to eat a main meal together most evenings, while shopping and eating patterns tended to become more regular and formalised than they were at the pre-marriage/cohabitation stage. In a small majority of cases the women were mainly responsible for buying and preparing food. A significant difference between these women and those of other, earlier studies is that they tended to be less deferential to their husbands' food choices. However, associations between women, food and nurturing were evident in the efforts women made to improve their husbands' diets. Where food purchase and preparation were shared, so was choice of food. The goal of enjoying food together was achieved by learning, influence and compromise but no significant gendering of power in food choice was identified.

Focuses on a particular period in the generation of structural underdevelopment in the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Information on crofting; Importance of fishing and ancillary onshore work as sources of non-croft income; Effects of the imposition of a capitalist political economy on to geographical space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of the article narrates how contradictory definitions both of legitimate womanhood and the conditions engendering it are dominant both in the penal discourses and in the extra-discursive practices of the women's prison in Scotland. The features of the disciplinary regime which are specific to women's imprisonment elevate, fracture and realign opposed ideological elements of the prisoners' subjective experience until they have been constructed as women both irrevocably within and irretrievably without adult female subjectivity. Women prisoners are contradictorily defined as being, both within and without family and sociability, both within and without femininity and, concomitantly with the two previous conditions, both within and without adulthood. Family-ness is one dominant conceptual axis along which women's imprisonment is conceived by the Scottish judicial and penal authorities. Femininity is another. Officers continually pointed out to me that few of the women had acquired the ordinary female accomplishments of baking and sewing, whilst the women complained that the prison authorities denied to them most of the sartorial and cosmetic props to femininity which they were accustomed to enjoying outside the prison.

The article discusses the significance of communal and individual identity. The identity of the unfamiliar is always gross, rarely discriminating, generally insensitive to subtleties of difference or to nuances of character. Individuals are perceived merely as components of some larger collective entity, and are reduced to a lowest common denominator of identity. It is only for this reason that there can be futile discussion about the habits and characteristics of such woolly generic categories of people as "cultures," "politicians," "the working class," "middle America," "women." So the exigencies of communal life provide sound reasons for restraining the exhibition of one's individuality. But here there enters an apparent paradox whose resolution reveals one of those most subtle and intricate systems of rule-following and sanctioned infringement which inform tightly-bounded societies whose cultures are alive and well. The maintenance of the integrity of a collective identity is important for reasons other than the mere continuity of the society and its structures.

The article focuses on the social condition of landlords in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the present time there are in Great Britain comparatively few studies of those who own privately rented housing. Occasionally, as in the mid-sixties, a scandal involving gross forms of exploitation of poor tenants may prompt an official enquiry' as to the workings of a local housing market, but typically it does comparatively little to change widely held images of landlords as peculiarly rapacious profit seekers and indeed press treatment of the events which lead to such enquiries positively encourage stereotyping of `the landlord'. Purely academic interest in landlords is remarkably limited, partly no doubt because, at least within sociology, a certain sympathy with the underdog constrains researchers to look mostly at tenants and partly because research on landlords is surrounded by some awkward methodological problems. The most obvious of these is the lack of good sampling frames, but even if difficulties in that quarter are overcome there remains the fact that many property owners are elusive or reticent about their activities.

Deferential traditionalists typically live in local status systems based on interactional, rather than attributional, criteria. Status is distributed not according to a single attribute of an individual--typically his income--but through interaction with the individual in a wide range of social settings. On this analysis one would most certainly expect that agricultural workers in the north-east of Scotland between 1840 and 1914 would have been deferential traditionalists. Among the farm servants, unmarried men were usually lodged in a "chaurner" in the farm steading and received their food, as part in their wages, in the farm kitchen. Married men received a cottage on the farm, rent free, as part of their fee/wages and customarily defined allowances of oatmeal, milk, potato ground and fuel as well as a sum of money. The ratio of unmarried to married male farm servants varied from parish to parish, depending largely on the willingness of landlords to invest considerable sums of money for poor returns in building cottages, but in general unmarried men heavily outnumbered married men.

The remarkable persistence of the localities has been noted by urban sociologists; indeed, it could be said that there has been an institutionalization of inequities in certain localities in cities. There were, until 1971, three categories of Corporation housing estate in Glasgow, constructed according to the provisions of what can be seen as three sets of Scottish Housing Acts. The Acts of 1930 and 1935 were specifically aimed at the clearance of Scotland's notorious slums. The key problem with Glasgow's slums, apart from their physical condition, was that they were grossly over!crowded due to the fact that they were made up of very small houses. In one sense, the slum clearance estates have replaced the very slums whose problems they were meant to eradicate; they contain the detritus of capitalism, the manual working-class family with low occupational skills, whose problems tend to get swept under the carpet or hidden in a corner. Slum-dwellers and slum-clearees in Glasgow were seldom given the benefit of the doubt. They were by-and-large viewed as deviants who had to be controlled.

The article describes a case of the anticipation and avoidance of cognitive inconsistency. The potential cause of inconsistency was a workers' pension scheme introduced by a large engineering company of Scotland. It was anticipated by the management of the company that the scheme would have some effect on the men's attitudes to the company. The pension scheme was devised in the company's interests. The company was worried about the very high turn-over of labour in the works in a time of full employment when new firms were opening in the area and offering much better pay and conditions. Moreover, the company was using the scheme to raise money on a large scale and that the men's savings would provide this more cheaply than any bank. These two points explaining the company's motives were accepted by the convener and shop stewards, and were passed on to the men and accepted by them also. It was also claimed that the primary reason was to benefit the men but it was expected that, as a secondary effect, the scheme would lead to some change of attitudes.

The article measures leadership in two groups of contrasting socio-economic status and examines the relationship between the sociometric measure of leadership and various mental, physical and personality factors. The groups investigated consisted on the one hand of a class of second year pupils from one of the best fee paying secondary schools in Glasgow, Scotland and on the other of a class from one of the toughest junior secondary schools in Glasgow. The trait description of the leader that emerges from this study does not appear to be affected by the difference in socio-economic status between the groups. The effort to discover the traits that distinguish leaders from other members of the group has been disappointing. It is also important to note that leadership is situational. Sociologist C.A. Gibb in his survey of the literature in this field states reveal that numerous studies of the personalities of leaders have failed to find any consistent pattern of traits which characterises leaders. Gibb holds the view that leadership traits may exist, but if they do, they have not been recognised. In essence, the results of this investigation indicate that an approach based on the individual should be replaced by the group approach to the problem of leadership.

The article discusses the sources of leadership and innovation in the Hebridean crofting communities. The communal aspects of crofting township organization perpetuate an immemorial pattern, once associated with the quasi-military rule and social stratification of the clan system. Today, after an unfortunately long period, leadership provided by the agricultural advisers is beginning to take effect. The agricultural revolution, which ground to a halt in most crofting districts with the passing of the 1886 Act, has begun again. But the emergence of local natural leaders in unlikely until some means can be devised to diversify the size of agricultural units. This must be an evolutionary process. Meanwhile the most effective method of promoting innovation would be to increase the number of agricultural advisers. Under Hebridean conditions, the adviser can not only act as the innovator but, by imparting to the individual crofter skill and, above all, confidence in his agricultural ability, he can generate a demand for larger holdings. Thus leadership and innovation from without could ultimately promote leadership and innovation from within.