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This article serves as a reply to comments made by E.G. Dunning and E.I. Hopper on the author's paper on social stratification in industrial society. Dunning and Hopper state that his paper 'explicitly sets out to explore' the problem of convergence. This, the author is afraid, is to claim too much for it. The author also wants to correct the statement made on the notion of one-way convergence. He wants also to explain that he does not think that American work on the subject of convergence as monolithic. He also explains that claim made that he regards national culture, political ideology and political organization as 'fixed and unalterable constraints on the effects of economic organization and technology'. Dunning and Hopper apparently fail to realise that the argument of Leach's to which they refer can equally be directed against the making of comparisons of a superficial kind. Certainly the existence of `generalised structural patterns' may be masked by differences in their specific manifestations in particular cases; but at the same time it is also implied by Leach's analogy that apparent similarities in social structures may be deceptive and may conceal underlying differences which it is the task of sociological analysis to expose.

Some sociologists of religion would argue that there has been a move away from‘religion’, in terms of institutionalised dogmas and established corporate ways of believing, towards‘spiritualities of life’ where the emphasis lies on the personal, the individual and the experiential (;). Given the evidence for the apparent popularity of spirituality in contemporary Western society, it is surprising that between 1996 and 2000, the Zone concerned with religion at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich was re-namedfrom‘The Spirit Zone’ to‘The Faith Zone’. A range of political, economic and religious interests lay behind the Zone’s re-naming, and both the name (and the content) changed to reflect‘religion’ rather than‘spirituality’. The process of constructing the Zone thus moved in a diametrically opposite direction to some of the trends associated with religious belief in modern Britain. An investigation of the dynamics behind the construction of the Faith Zone at the Dome provides an opportunity to evaluate what‘counted’ as religion () at a specific time and context in British society. The paper also shows that behind the Labour Government rhetoric of‘inclusion’, various dimensions of spiritual belief and activity in Britain areexcludedfrom the public sphere. When it comes to religion, taken-for-granted criteria operate– resulting in the prioritisation of the official, the‘representative’, the‘respectable’, and‘the unified’ over the unofficial, the deviant, the private, and the contested. This paper looks at the struggles and the conditions associated with the idea and the policy of inclusion in relation to religion in modern Britain, using the Faith Zone at the Dome as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relevance of the sociology of science for the study of power. Though there is by no means complete agreement between sociologists of science, recent work in this area has suggested that (a) scientists negotiate not only about scientific but also social reality, and (b) the distinction between macro- and micro-sociology is an impediment rather than an aid to analysis. Thus, though there are indeed differences in scale, it is argued that these should be seen as the outcome of differentially effective attempts by scientists to impose versions of scientific and social reality.
The present paper extends this argument by considering the way in which a set of pharmacological experiments was undertaken in order to generate results and control aspects of the scientific and social environment. It is suggested that the experimentalist acted like an entrepreneur, combining a variety of potentially unruly resources with the aim of simplifying these and reducing them to docile figures on a sheet of paper. The strategies and materials used in this process of control are considered and three classes of potential resources are identified: natural objects or devices, people and inscriptions. It is argued that these have certain properties that render them relatively durable and transportable and hence convenient for the purpose of long distance social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article in this journal Graham and Taylor discuss the development of demography and criminology and attempt to draw similarities between these 'sub-disciplines'.[1] The parallel development of these sub-disciplines is held to be comparable along several dimensions. The purpose of this comment it to point out what I perceive as an oversimplified and, in some cases, erroneous conception of demography. As a sociologist-demographer I claim no special competence in criminology; accordingly, my remarks are restricted to the characterization of demography as presented by Graham and Taylor.
Before examining specific points in the Graham-Taylor paper, several general remarks concerning their analysis are warranted. First, their conception of demography is extremely narrow and restricted. The sociologist unfamiliar with demography could easily form the impression, on the basis of their paper, that demography was primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with fertility and family planning. Other important topics such as mortality, population distribution and composition, population growth and decline, internal and international migration, urbanization, etc., are given only fleeting attention or are ignored altogether. Of course, any discussion must necessarily focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology is just as much an art form as it is a science. And while sociologists and those in cognate disciplines have long experimented with their writing, the search for new academic forms and practices has acquired new urgency and potentiality. How we write up our research is of paramount importance: our language can be used in experimental and innovative ways to offer nuanced, critical commentary without foreclosing alternative viewpoints, and without excluding others from dialogue. Sociography offers spaces for new sensibilities and sensitivities; unresolved or incomplete argument; multiple, multi-dimensional and multiplying possibilities: for writing differently. As an intervention in writing the social, our collection works to resist the ideological promotion of dry, dispassionate, and seemingly 'objective' discourse, one which has traditionally upheld a set of dominant, privileged voices. And in so doing, our collection explores the potential of new ways of writing the social for both a trans- and post-disciplinary academy and a wider reading public; and seeks forms of writing that do justice to the critical curiosity that animates sociology. In sum, the challenge embraced by this collection is to argue for and showcase a praxis that activates sociological knowledge and enlarges the sociological imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a paper about what happens when a form of knowledge moves to another part of the university. The author, identifying himself as an 'ex-sociologist', investigates the relationship between the sociology of work, employment and organization and various 'critical' traditions within the business school. I argue that the contemporary divide between sociologies of work and employment, and Critical Management Studies ( CMS) within the business school rests in part on developments in UK sociology in the 1960s and 70s. This means that divergent understandings of the role of sociology and its relevant theoretical resources provided the deep structure for the current tension between CMS on the one hand and research on work and employment on the other. The movement of sociologists and industrial relations academics to the business school provided the preconditions for two very different critical traditions. The paper concludes with thoughts on what it means to be an outsider inside an institution, and on the future prospects for Burawoy's 'critical' or 'public' sociologies in UK business schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that sociologists interested in service work in consumer culture should pay attention to customers' understandings and accounts of their experience and participation in service encounters. It takes the market for sex as a case study and counters the neglect of customers within the study of service work by analysing customer service reviews of paid-for sex published on a UK website, Punternet. It argues that male customers, familiar with the norms of consumer culture, assess the erotic, aesthetic and emotional labours performed by female workers to make judgements of service quality which suggests that the feminised 'good worker' is defined as professional when they disguise the market transaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the French Revolution constituted the basic metaphor through which Pierre Bourdieu perceived and analyzed gender hierarchies; that the class structure of the ancien régime and the mechanisms of its legitimation were the major metaphors he used through his scathing critiques on the order of the sexes; and that the ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité were always his reformatory aims for a just, gender-neutral society. The paper shows how this preoccupation with the Revolution of 1789 structured Bourdieu's analysis of gender relations and sexual identities in contemporary society. It exposes the ways in which he identified men with the nobility and women with the third estate; it presents his analyses of the role that traditional ideologies and state bureaucracies play in legitimating this arbitrary order of masculine domination; and it analyzes his proposals for a sexual revolution while exposing the counter-revolutionary forces that persistently negate attempts to reform gender hierarchies. Fundamentally, this new reading of Bourdieu's exegeses on gender suggests that he was working with a ready-made interpretive scheme, a model of society that he was inclined to see as always reproducing itself: the ancien régime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘This paper provides an overview of aspects of the history of British sociology. In particular, it tries to answer critical historical work by among others, Perry Anderson and Philip Abrams, which sought to explain the supposed indigenous ‘failure’ to develop academic sociology in Britain before the 1960s. It is argued that a narrowly academic reading of the history of sociology cannot do justice to its role in the service of social administration and public enlightenment and may exaggerate the degree to which sociology from its foundations was conceived as a purely intellectual discipline. The paper points to a thriving sociological culture in Britain in the generation before the First World War, though it was one in which many contributions came from philosophers, natural scientists and political economists rather then self-proclaimed ‘sociologists’. It ends with a brief review of Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, a founder of the Sociological Society and editor of the Sociological Review, whose biographies and eclectic social and international interests tell us something about the personalities and political interests of early British sociological pioneers.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept 'social control' has been criticised from a variety of quarters in recent years, particularly by historians and historical sociologists. However, it remains in common usage in sociological studies of welfare, deviance and social control. This paper shows, first, how this reliance on the concept of social control is rooted in a wider-ranging argument in social and political theory concerning the liberal-democratic fusion between the state and civil society, and that the lack of resolution of this argument is the foundation of the persistence of the concept social control in other areas of social inquiry, despite its repeated 'falsification'. Second, the paper highlights the main arguments against the use of 'social control' in explaining social order, in particular the misunderstanding of class, culture and power which its use encourages, and the paper will conclude with a discussion of alternative ways of conceptualising the operation of power in contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article originates from an invitation to give a paper at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in the Autumn of 1980. As then drafted, the paper consisted mainly of a discussion of the writings of selected Polish and British sociologists on the structure and workings of contemporary state-socialist societies, and it was my intention to revise it for submission to the Sociological Review as a sequel to, and commentary on, the article by Christopher G.A. Bryant published in the issue of February, 1980.[1] On return from Warsaw, I decided against doing so for two reasons: first, it seemed to me that the writings which I had taken as my starting-point were too remote from the actual course of events in Poland; second, I did not see how I could use the many informative conversations about those events which I had with Polish sociologists and others in an academic journal article. On further reflection, however, I do not believe that either of these reasons should prevent my attempting to set out and justify my view of the implications for sociological theory of the Polish case, even though it is based in part on non-documentary sources and (more seriously) I lack the knowledge of the language which would give me direct access to the documentary ones. In what follows, accordingly, I first outline the framework within which the forms and distribution of power in state-socialist societies in general and Poland in particular can, in my view, best be analysed; I then set out in slightly more detail what I see as the reasons why events in Poland between 1956 and 1981 followed the course they did; and I conclude with a brief discussion of what I believe to be the principal weakness in the recent British sociological literature on state socialism insofar as it relates to the Polish case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has sought to redress the imbalance in the comments currently offered in interpretation of the work of Erving Goffman. These comments have suggested that the practices described by Goffman exhibit wily machiavellian manipulators at work. The reading of Goffman this paper suggests is that many of the practices include a great deal of tact and kindness; their importance to Goffman's work is easily explained once it is realized that he is an intellectual descendant, in considerable part, of Durkheim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the ways in which sociologists select the occupational titles which they desire to scale, according to the meanings people give them. Studies of the perception, cognition and evaluation of occupational titles have often taken considerable pains over `the sampling of persons who are requested to judge the set of stimuli under investigation. Sociologists who have tried to investigate the social meanings of occupational titles, have worked with lists of pre-specified titles. Again, there has been a tendency to shorten occupational titles and to make them less specific, in the course of inheriting them from other workers. Most have tried to retain some degree of comparability with the work of their colleagues by deliberately "inheriting" certain of their occupational titles. The choice of occupational titles for a scaling study is severely limited by the number that can be handled by the respondents chosen for the investigation. This in turn is determined by the scaling method used and whether each respondent is to be asked to make all the judgements, which are required by the scaling method, or only a subset of them.

The article focuses on the paper of sociologist P.W. Musgrave entitled "Towards a Sociological Theory of Occupational Choice." He states that there is at present no sociological theory of occupational choice. Despite the fact that the explicit propositions of such a theory have not yet been stated formally, there is at present considerable consensus among sociologists on an implicit theory of occupational choice. The authors of this article will show how the various discussions of the process of occupational choice have been converging around one major theme, and then they shall make explicit the propositions involved in a sociological theory arising from this theme. It is just this focus on the process of reconciliation of values and expectations, which provides the common theme around which the discussions making up the second main approach have been tending to converge. Apart from those studies which are idiographic in implication on the one hand, and those, on the other hand, which are concerned with the correlates of differential socialization into occupational orientations, most sociological discussions of occupational choice have converged.

Recently, Savage and Burrows (2007) have argued that one way to invigorate sociology's 'empirical crisis' is to take advantage of live, web-based digital transactional data. This paper argues that whilst sociologists do indeed need to engage with this growing digital data deluge, there are longer-term risks involved that need to be considered. More precisely, C. Wright Mills' 'sociological imagination' is used as the basis for the kind of sociological research that one might aim for, even within the digital era. In so doing, it is suggested that current forms of engaging with transactional social data are problematic to the sociological imagination because they tend to be ahistorical and focus mainly on 'now casting'. The ahistorical nature of this genre of digital research, it is argued, necessarily restricts the possibility of developing a serious sociological imagination. In turn, it is concluded, there is a need to think beyond the digitized surfaces of the plastic present and to consider the impact that time and temporality, particularly within the digital arena, have on shaping our sociological imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper argues for the need to revisit classical sociological texts with a view to excavating the masculinity that inheres in these texts and saturates the concept of the social. Primarily through an examination of Durkheim and Simmel, it explores the strategies whereby masculine individuals could be released from corporeality and granted the sort of embodiment that allowed them to transcend their particularity and become social agents. It is argued that male embodiment is deeply sedimented in the sociological imaginary as the very condition of social action and the constituent of social agency. Thinking through the conceptual lenses of corporeality, embodiment and agency exposes some of the ways in which the analytical scaffolding of ‘the social’ rests on a deeply gendered ontological foundation. While the sociological tradition may indeed have continued salience for contemporary sociologies of the body, a relatively unreflexive recuperation of these texts is problematic. This paper challenges those who seek to rehabilitate the classics in the service of an embodied sociology to produce a much fuller accounting of the truncated corporeal terrain upon which classical sociology developed, and one which explicitly recognizes its gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the theoretical analyses and ambitions of sociologists of the body are increasingly making obstructive and irrelevant the subject boundaries and methodological conventions associated with their parent discipline. Concerns about the utility of the discipline have been expressed by a number of body studies emanating from within and outside of sociology. These imply that it is necessary to reject the dominant problematic of sociology and utilise non disciplinary resources if we are to understand issues surrounding the ‘lived experience’ of embodiment. In opposing this rejection of sociology, if not the use of other intellectual resources, I argue that the discipline contains much valuable theorising about experience which has yet to be developed by body theorists. Many of sociology’s central concepts, indeed, evoke dimensions of human experience that remain highly pertinent to an understanding of the individual and societal significance of the body in the contemporary era. In order to illustrate this argument, I focus on the writings of Durkheim and Simmel. Their work is rarely central to writings on the body, but provides good examples of the diversity of theoretical approaches within sociology that remain relevant to body theorists. Specifically, I want to use it to develop the outlines of a theory of embodiment as a medium for the constitution of society which has at its centre a concern with human experience. I conclude by reassessing the strategic options sociologists of the body confront in developing their analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past twenty years, sociologists have begun to explore the social and cultural context within which sexual relationships are constructed and in Western society, given such importance. However, although it is commonly recognised that the contraceptive pill has changed the meaning of sexuality (Giddens, 1992; Ferguson, 1989) comparatively little attention has been paid to locating the level of pleasure married women derive from marital sex within the situational, structural and cultural parameters of their lives. The material in this paper is based on intensive interviews with 60 married women, aged 20-42 years old and randomly selected from the records of general medical practitioners in North London. The paper indicates that methodological squeamishness about the viability of a study of sexual pleasure is unwarranted. It shows that only just over one third of these respondents had a high level of sexual pleasure on the scale devised in the study (weighted kappa =.89). For the most part, such pleasure was not associated with other aspects of the marital relationship. Drawing on illustrative material, it locates such pleasure within the context of their marital and family situation and suggests future lines of enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the early employment experiences of forty sociology graduates from a northern polytechnic. Questionnaire and interview data are reported under the headings of occupational choice, employment, graduate identifies, and future plans. This material is discussed in the broader context of the changing relationship between higher education and the labour market and is related to the published statistics on the first destination of graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overriding point of this paper is to discuss and compare the criteria of validity attached to (I) descriptions of everyday life by collectivity members, (2) organized descriptions of everyday life by ethnographers and (3) analysis of such descriptions by sociologists. An attempt will be made to point up the main similarities and differences between the criteria of validity considered appropriate to these three different qualitative accounts, and it will be argued that substantially different criteria are appropriate for micro-sociological accounts (e.g. 1 and 2) as opposed to macro-sociological analysis (e.g. 3). In particular it will be suggested that validity is inseparable from what is acceptable as competently and properly arrived at and that such acceptability rests upon ideological assumptions and traditional social practices, conventions; since the natural history of professional academic sociologists differs from that of their research subjects (i.e. collectivity members), we might expect different criteria of acceptability from them and thus different notions of validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on sociology. The opposition between qualitative and quantitative is used to mark many different contrasts. Some of these that occurred in discussion at the SSRC Workshop are presented below. But immediately a problem arises. Sociology is a pluralistic discipline, characterized by numerous alternative conceptions of theory, explanation and data, that is, by different sociological approaches. Each different approach has its own conception of what is qualitative about social data and what are the problems and possibilities for the analysis of qualitative data. Listing approaches to sociology is hazardous, since approaches can be endlessly differentiated and any particular definition or categorization of approaches is inevitably challenged for omitting or mis-identifying crucial boundaries and for associating authors with others considered to be their opponents. Furthermore, any definitional activity is fraught with philosophical difficulties concerning the ontological status of the definiendum and methodological difficulties concerning the means through which the categories are derived. No attempt is made to engage with these difficulties here for it is not the intention to provide an account of approaches that does anything other than locate the discussion of qualitative data analysis.

The article presents the author's comments on the theory of the isolated mass hypothesis advanced in the paper "The Inter-Industry Propensity to Strike," by Clark Kerr and Abraham Siegel. The article argues that although Kerr and Siegel made important new steps in the analysis of industrial conflict and in theorising about the causes of the patterns of activity thus revealed, their work contains several flaws which make it a very weak basis for the conclusions which have been drawn from it. Kerr and Siegel say that miners and dockers form isolated communities in which the workers form a largely homogeneous, undifferentiated mass. There is no occupational differentiation within the mass and, because skills are specialised and the workers cut off from the rest of society, mobility out of the mass is difficult. Thus, discontents are shared by all the members of the mass and cannot be resolved by individual actions such as moving to a different job. Since workers are separated from their employers and the public, there is nothing to prevent these collective grievances from developing into strikes and the normal means of mediating disputes are lacking.

The article focuses on the book entitled "The Sociological Imagination," by C. Wright Mills. It is a great advantage to have this stimulating and provocative book in paperback at last. Wright Mills hits out with splendid impartiality at both grand theorists and abstract empiricists. And those who see the main aim of sociology to lie in finding solutions to practical problems might ponder his comment that this means accepting the framework of his society that the sociologist cannot help but be committed in one way or another.

Since the Second World War, considerable attention has been focused by sociologists on the processes associated with the rehousing of families on council estates on the periphery of large towns. Parallel with this has been a growing interest in the residential mobility of middle-class spiralists. The number of households owning rather than renting in Great Britain today has risen to about fifty per cent. from a figure of around ten per cent at the turn of the century. In a generation, the proportion owning has risen from a quarter to a half. All the indications are that it will continue to grow, encouraged as it is by all the major political parties. The social effects of this change on the families concerned remain unexplored. This paper sets out to investigate the life-style of manual workers and their families on new owner occupied estates, and to compare them in a number of respects with their non-manual neighbors, and with an equivalent group of manual workers in new council houses.

The first two sections of this paper deal with the teaching of sociology as an academic discipline in the United Arab Republic and with its place outside the universities; the third presents an impressionistic evaluation and offers some data about sociology in Egypt which are relatively unknown in the non-Arab world. While some Egyptian sociologists in their nationalistic zeal would maintain that Egypt is the first country in the world where sociology was ever taught, it is certain that it was taught and cultivated from the foundation of Cairo University at the beginning of this century. In addition there are sociology courses in the curricula of the Faculties of Agriculture, in the colleges of education, the intermediate and higher institutes for social work, and in a number of faculties in Al-Azhar University as well as in the girls' college. At Alexandria University sociology is taught in the Department of Philosophical and Sociological Studies, which offers a combined B.A. degree in philosophy and sociology. After the B.A. the students can choose to work for an MA. degree in one of these disciplines; and for students of sociology two roads are open.

It is well established in sociological literature that the classical sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were addressing a common general problem of urbanisation and industrialisation. In the theories of Gemeinschaft and Geselisehaft, traditional and rational legal authority, feudalism and capitalism, mechanical and organic solidarity, sociologists offered theories of pre-modern and modern types of social order, and, perhaps less convincingly, causal explanations of the transition from the one to the other. These pairs of polar concepts have been received in sociology as basic classifications, embodying well-established uniformities in the phenomena. It is characteristic of the discipline that they should all have continued to survive to be learnt by students as alternative models of similar phenomena, rather than suffering the fate of the pioneer works of the mature natural sciences of being unified into a single "authorized" textbook model. This paper has tried to relate George Simmel's formal or geometrical sociology of the dyad and the triad to the major structural classifications of classical sociology.

The article presents the author's comments on the research paper of sociologist A. Etzioni. The author examines the adequacy of Etzioni's analysis by considering it in relation to the study of innovation in a religious organisation. Etzioni's argument implies that, since an organisation is primarily a means to an end, in distinguishing between organisations primacy should be given to distinctions between the means employed rather than to distinctions between the ends to be achieved. In all three types of organisation defined by Etzioni namely normative, utilitarian and coercive, some attempt is usually made to legitimise the exercise of power in terms of a description of the world, such as to permit inferences from that description as to the rightness of both the organisational goals and the means used to achieve them. Etzioni omits the place of legitimising systems of belief in organisational structure as an element in his typology, and this omission is closely related to his failure to discuss the relation of his different types of organisation to their conditions of action. Although he devotes a chapter to considering compliance and organisational environment, Etzioni uses this term to imply structural setting rather than conditions of goal achievement.

While Stuart Hall is often acknowledged as a public intellectual, it is argued here that a better way of understanding his practice is as an interventionist, whose public engagements are always set in a specific context. This way of seeing Hall draws on his own words and from approaches to intellectual work that foreground how scholars present themselves. Combining this approach with Hall's own reading of Gramsci as a grounded intellectual, this article then illustrates the idea of Hall as an interventionist sociologist through three examples of his public works on race and racism, exemplifying his well-known use of conjunctural analysis. Thus, the purpose of this article is twofold: first it seeks to 'disambiguate' Hall from the public intellectual label; and secondly in resituating him it highlights his public engagements on race as interventions in and as sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the specificity of sociological materials and methods in relation to other disciplines and practices (art, literature, science and journalism) and questions the opportunities for sociological attentiveness, experimentation and failure in the context of contemporary UK professional, institutional and academic/ intellectual constraints. It asks whether materials and methods are 'sociological' to the extent that they tell about the problems of society, or whether it is the unique relation of sociology to its materials and methods that defines sociological practice. Exploring these questions in relation to a project that was researched and written during an extended period of unpaid leave (ie outside the profession and the institution), the article also examines some of the consequences of a changed relation between sociology and experience. What would be the implications if the aim of sociology was not only to theorize and explain experience but also, sometimes, to be an 'informed provocation' of experience? The second part of the article considers what the concept of 'make-believe' might offer sociology - not in terms of what sociology is, but rather in terms of what it does with its materials and methods. Finally, the article returns to the most common material that sociologists work with - words - and asks how it is possible to stay receptive to the vitality of words as forces in the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including relationship between the methods and values of sociological research, crisis in social method and value and eroding the lines between sociologists and other professions.

Victor Branford was a central figure in the institutional development of British sociology in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. He is, however, a neglected figure and little is known about his life and his work in sociology. This article presents a biographical account of Victor Branford and outlines his sociological ideas. Particular attention is given to the part played by Branford and his second wife, Sybella Gurney, in the establishment of the Sociological Society and The Sociological Review. Writing between 1903 and 1930, he set out a distinctive view of the nature of sociology and an account of modernity, which he saw as underpinning a conception of a third way in politics that goes beyond capitalism and socialism. He tied this view, set out in the years after the First World War, to a conception of the public role of sociology in which the sociologist was to be a leading element in the building of social citizenship through social reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article paints the portrait of Yvan, a skinhead who lived in close proximity to the streets and to life at the margins, with all its attendant violence, before dying at the age of 28. While the salient features of this portrait might seem to be social relegation and brutal racism, the value of this text is to be found in the complexity and nuance that Yvan brought to the descriptions of his own life. This insider perspective follows on from the tradition of biographical studies dedicated to the process of 'becoming deviant' inaugurated by the first sociologists of the Chicago School, while at the same time providing the material for a theoretical proposition expressed through the concepts of brutalized life and reflective violence. Much of Yvan's life was a litany of violence, which he first endured, then threw back in society's face and perpetrated himself, no doubt precisely because this life of his had been brutalized by such all-permeating violence. These two concepts have the potential to be extended to other cases and to enrich sociological debates about forms of violence that cannot fully be explained by situational and practical approaches (such as those of Randall Collins), or by perspectives that focus on structural and symbolic factors (as in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu). The notions of reflective violence and brutalized life therefore transcend Yvan's biography to form his sociological legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at a form of sociation known as the Bund, conceptualized by sociologist H. Schmalenbach in the 1920's. The author in this article argues that this long ignored concept, dealing with affectual form of solidarity in small groups, is of considerable relevance to contemporary issues concerning individuality and lifestyle, particularly in relation to debates surrounding their significance in modernity and postmodernity. After looking at the historical origins of the German word Bund and its usage by various groups from the Bundschuh to the Wandervogel, the author considers its significance in the sociology of sociologist Herman Schmalenbach, particularly in relation to his critiques of sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies' Gemeinschaft/ Gesellschaft dualism and sociologist Max Weber's typology of social action. According to the author has attempted to make a start on this dual process of evaluation in this paper. The concept of the Bund, the author argues is an extremely strong one that is especially useful when looking at all manner of social activities and enthusiasms that exist outside the normal institutional realm such as in the cases of new religious and new social movements, youth cultures, many new styles of which may well originate in a Bund.

The article focuses on the book "The Study of Society: An Integrated Anthology," edited by Peter I. Rose. The book is a very valuable collection of seventy papers, including work by almost every American sociologist of significance. Only five British sociologists are included, but it is unusual for American anthologists even to be as aware of British writers as this. The anthology is integrated by its grouping of topics and because each section is preceded by a very brief introduction by Professor Rose and followed by a short list of books for further reading-though both of these could have been expanded with profit.

The article discusses British conurbations in 1951. In volume 14 of the journal "Sociological Review, as long ago as 1922, there appeared a article by the late professor C.B. Fawcett entitled "British Conurbations in 1921." His purpose in this article was simply to estimate, as precisely as possible, the number and magnitude of such conurbations in this island. Fawcett used on that occasion the Reports of the Census of 1921, and he repeated the study ten years later after the census of 1931. The present article seeks simply to use the census of 1951 as a basis for an up-to-date analysis of the same phenomena. The Report of this last Census does in fact break new ground, in that it lists the population of six conurbations, which were defined for the purpose by the Inter departmental Committee on Social and Economic Research. In spite of this innovation it has seemed worthwhile to continue the series begun in 1921, for a number of reasons. First, because the conurbations of the Census Report number only six; secondly, because they are confined to England; thirdly, because there is a value in the completely objective definition used by Fawcett, which was not the one invariably followed by the Committee.

What is the relationship between Brexit and biomedicine? Here we investigate the Vote Leave official campaign slogan 'We send the EU £350 million a week. Let's fund our NHS instead' in order to shed new light on the nationalist stakes of Brexit. We argue that the Brexit referendum campaign must be situated within biomedical policy and practice in Britain. We propose a re-thinking of Brexit through a cultural politics of heredity to capture how biomedicine is structured around genetic understandings of ancestry and health, along with the forms of racial inheritance that structure the state and its welfare system. We explore this in three domains: the NHS and health tourism, data sharing policies between the NHS and the Home Office, and the NHS as an imperially resourced public service. Looking beyond the Brexit referendum campaign, we argue for renewed sociological attention to the relationships between racism, biology, health and inheritance in British society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, the renewal of council housing estates in London has involved widespread 'decanting' of resident populations to allow for demolition and redevelopment, primarily by private developers who sell the majority of new housing at market rate. This process of decanting has displaced long-term council tenants and shorter-term 'temporary' tenants, with many not able to return to the estate. In contrast, those leaseholders who bought under the 'right-to-buy' legislation introduced in the 1980s have a 'right to remain' by virtue of the property rights they have. Nonetheless, given the threat that their property will ultimately be subject to compulsory purchase because the redevelopment of the estate is in the 'public interest', these leaseholders experience similar displacement pressures to other residents. Describing these pressures, this article argues that the right-to-buy legislation offered these residents the illusion of entering a property-owning middle-class, but that they were never able to escape the labelling of council estates as stigmatised spaces which have ultimately been seized by the state and capital in a moment of 'accumulation by dispossession'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this manifesto for live methods the key arguments of the volume are summarized in eleven propositions. We offer eleven provocations to highlight potential new capacities for how we do sociology. The argument for a more artful and crafty approach to sociological research embraces new technological opportunities while expanding the attentiveness of researchers. We identify a set of practices available to us as sociologists from the heterodox histories of the tradition as well as from current collaborations and cross-disciplinary exchanges. The question of value is not set apart from the eleven points we raise in the manifesto. Additionally, we are concerned with how the culture of audit and assessment within universities is impacting on sociological research. Despite the institutional threats to sociology we emphasize the discipline is well placed in our current moment to develop creative, public and novel modes of doing imaginative and critical sociological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inability, or unwillingness, of 20th-century sociologists to move beyond the agenda bequeathed by Marx, Weber, and Durkheim is remarkable in view not only of the now outdated presuppositions shared by all three but of the increasing likelihood that the more important influence on the human behavioural sciences in the 21st century will turn out to be Darwin's. Not only has the coming together of evolutionary theory, population genetics, and molecular biology shown that significantly more of human behaviour can be explained by the theory of natural selection than was previously recognized, but non-reductionist explanations of cultural and social evolution from within a neo-Darwinian paradigm can be framed in terms no longer vulnerable to the criticisms previously levelled against the application to sociology of Darwin's original insight about ‘descent with modification’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers brief profiles of sociologists Tony Bennett, William K. Carroll, and Paul du Gay, who contributed to the writing of the journal.

Pierre Bourdieu's approach to sociology has been so widely recognized as being innovative that his innovations can be said to have been academically incorporated to the degree of having-been-innovative. On the other hand, the more recent work of Bruno Latour seems to offer a fresh innovative impetus to sociology. Over against Bourdieu's relational sociology, Latour's relationist sociology overcomes the subject-object dichotomy, and abandons the notions of ‘society’ and ‘the social’. In this contribution, a comparison is made between the ideas of Bourdieu and Latour on the question of what sociology should look like, specifically focusing on their respective ideas on what can be called the relational. A Latourian critique of Bourdieu is provided, as well as a Bourdieusian analysis of Latourian sociology. Rather than ending up with two different ‘paradigms’, an attempt is made on the basis of Foucault's archaeology of discourse to view Bourdieusian and Latourian sociology as distinct positions within a discourse on the relational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of conspiracy theory as a model for the analysis of the communications process, taking the political party Front National as its focus. Topics discussed include rethink on the conspiracy model of mass communication by focusing on the Front National, considerable use of visual media sources in offering Front's conspiratorial reading of its relationship with the media and historians, sociologists, print journalists and broadcasters working in English and in French.

The article outlines an account of the Spirit of Capitalism which has an ambivalent relationship to the sociological tradition, as offered by German theologian Paul Tillich. The theme of the Spirit of Capitalism is a lodestone for the social theory which locates itself by reference to the heritage of the sociological tradition. The debate about the Spirit of Capitalism has become largely identified as a technical problem of economic history or sociological historiography. However it is arguably the case that the debate about the Spirit of Capitalism is more deeply and perhaps even overwhelmingly concerned to understand the existential and moral implications for human being of the constituted present, than it is concerned with the rather drier stuff of the establishment of scientific categories or rigorous history. The contextualisation of Tillich with sociologists Max Weber and Georg Simmel in this regard is legitimate because his intellectual horizons were deeply marked by a sociological awareness.

The article examines the rhetoric deployed in a large private sector organization alongside its invention of internal markets while highlighting the concept of belonging. Private and public institutions can be thought to create interior spaces where people experience feeling of belonging. There has been a long sociological tradition of associating belonging with the work of managers. The current managerialist cant of getting people to take ownership is a repertoire that abuses affiliation as much as it abbreviates belonging. Markets are taken to demarcate the boundaries between the inside and the outside of an organization. The boundaries between the inside and the outside of an organization are always more complex when some labor is made core and some is left hourly. So flexibility, as a critical success factor, is accomplishing division that further split loyalties. Sociologists of organization have all become accustomed to public institutions being bashed by private institution logic.

The article presents a reply by the author to the article "Why Bother With Durkheim?," by David Parker, in the volume 45, number one issue of the journal "The Sociological Review." The author says, I quite sympathize with David Parker's contention that very often the Marx-Durkheim-Weber trio is fetishized or divinized--their writings being used for promoting various dogmas, for legitimizing in post-hoc fashion conclusions that have been arrived at without serious engagement with the classical texts, as well as for giving a scholarly or theoretical veneer to studies with a predominantly empiricist orientation. I would add to all of this my objection to the recent, geometrically expanding, scholastically oriented Marx-Weber-Durkheim industry, at least in so far as a large input of this literature purports to find out what the trio really said or meant on one issue or another. With this last objection I do not want to endorse the opposite extreme: i.e., the ultra-relativistic argument that the readings of the classics depend so much on conceptual spectacles that there is no way of being certain that any particular interpretation is nearer the truth than another. In this regard I do believe that certain readings can indeed be more accurate or closer to what the three classical sociologists have said or tried to say.

The article examines the concept of emotion from a sociological perspective, focusing on how some of the core questions facing the sociology of emotions can be interrogated productively. It outlines some of the core concepts of the sociology of emotions by putting emphasis on work done on the sociology of emotion by Emile Durkheim and other notable sociologists. Durkheim's analysis of the relationship between social gatherings and emotional effervescence exposes the limitations of language as an exclusive means of apprehending human sensuality, and demonstrates how the emotionally saturated bases of action can either solidify or render ineffective those internal controls which have been seen as a prerequisite of civilized life. What is perhaps most useful about Durkheim's approach is his placing of the somatic sensation of society at the very heart of social theory. From this perspective, the study of emotions needs to be saved from becoming yet another enclave within the discipline and connected instead to a series of issues central to the sustenance of social groups. These include the education of children's emotional dispositions, as well as the fate of those sacred phenomena that have supposedly been on the decline within the modern world yet are important to the affective attachment of individuals to society.

The article discusses survey techniques and quantitative analysis in the prosecution of art as against observation and verbal types of analysis. The foundation of statistical inference from samples representative of a wider population has now become commonplace knowledge and most first year students in the social sciences are made familiar with such notions as 'a representative sample', 'sampling error', 'biased and unbiased estimates' and similar ideas developed to express the logic of making inferences about a larger population from a considerably smaller sample. The method of case studies is, of course, general and has been extensively used, for example, in political science and in sociology. The argument that has been advanced here, then, is that case studies of whatever form are a reliable and respectable procedure of social analysis and that much criticism of their reliability and validity has been based on a misconception of the basis upon which the analyst may justifiably extrapolate from an individual case study to the social process in general.

A research project undertaken for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) in 1980-1 is seen as representative of a trend towards contract research and of the problems this creates for sociologists. The project entailed an examination of the 'housing needs' of the Authority's tenants in fled houses m the North of Scotland. It is suggested that the UKAEA was less interested in forecasts of housing needs than in 'expert' identification of trends with which the Authority was already familiar. The 'experts'' final report would then be used by the UKAEA to ease the progress of Authority policy in a sensitive area. The research contract did not inevitably produce a study which could be used by the UKAEA as a cosmetic but the Authority directed the research to this end. Nevertheless, the project did produce contacts and opportunities for independent research which would have been inaccessible. An example is given m the form of an account of the UKAEA's housing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between town planning, urban planners and sociology in Great Britain from the 19th century through the early 1980s, with a particular focus on the post World War II period. An overview of the impact that post World War II British politics played in the increasing role of sociologists in urban planning, including in regard to sociologists' role in urban research, is provided.