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This article presents an author's viewpoint on teaching sociology in the 1990s. A staunch defender of the Western canon poses the key question well: "who reads must choose, since there is literally not enough time to read everything, even if one does nothing but read." Time constraints are even more pressing in designing courses, given that not everything can be taught. If the role of the teacher is to encourage students to have productive relationships with texts; it is imperative that these relationships are not confined to a handful of authors held to represent all sociological thinking. Instead, the following three lines of development should be pursued: A retrospective enlargement of the entry point into sociology; A re-interpretation of the implicit hierarchies underlying choices of classic authors and canonical texts; and A re-periodisation of the narratives organizing the understanding of sociology to correct the myopic focus on modernity. Teachers should distinguish more clearly between saying what sociology has been and what it might become.

This article considers the relationship between journalists and social scientific organizations in the context of a professional conference. Social scientists perform a multi-functional role as researcher, teacher and expert. The academic conference provides an opportunity for all these roles to be engaged and as such is a political and social site where meaning is debated and new research born. The conference is also attractive to journalists as news fodder. This article considers the relationship between journalists and social scientific organizations in the context of a professional conference and seeks to explain the tensions that exist. It concludes that the two cultures of journalist and academic are in conflict where they converge. This article has explored the role of the conference in getting media coverage for the social sciences. This research reveals very real tensions both within the profession of social science research and between the social scientist and journalist. Between social scientists and journalists the tensions can be explained in part by the sharply differentiated cultures of public dissemination.

The article explains the actual incidence and intensity of strike action in docks over both time and place. While community isolation and occupational culture cannot be invoked to explain the actual incidence of strikes, either level or timing, they are nonetheless essential to an understanding of the character of workplace relations, the connections between work and non-work activity, and ultimately the processes involved in strike action, most notably the ability of some groups to mobilize and sustain collective solidarity in the face of employer and/or state opposition. The temporal pattern of strike activity in any industry is simply an aggregate of the many different workplaces that constitute the industrial sector in question, which thus requires attention to both time series and cross-sectional data and a combination of both historical and sociological analysis. By combining structure and agency and exploring the dialectics of labor regulation at the workplace as well as the industry level, the evident variations in strike activity that can be discerned at different ports not only reveal much about the overall pattern of dock strikes, but several standard theories of industrial conflict.

The article looks at the work of the Chicago School in the 1920s and 1930s from the standpoint of the debate between positivism and its critics in sociology. In short, the behavioral approach in the social sciences generally is inextricably linked with the doctrine of positivism, and especially with that particular version of the doctrine known as logical positivism. It has been argued that, despite appearances to the contrary, Chicago sociology at this time is based on a rejection of the principles of positivism. One such reason is that the sociology of the Chicago School is usually thought of as being closely linked with the theory of "symbolic interactionism" and with the originator of this theory, George Herbert Mead. A second reason for arguing that the sociology of the Chicago School implies a rejection of positivism has to do with the methodological approach which was employed by the individual members of the School who were actively engaged in research. The article has been an attempt to apply the principles of interpretative understanding to the practical problems of empirical research.

The article presents a paper that aims to make a contribution to the sociology of skills. It explains that a research, which suggests that skills and their transmission are the properties of communities, leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. It further discusses, studies of skill accept that skill acquisition occurs within a culture; it also examines in detail, which aspects of skills can be explicated and which cannot. Such a second-order study is presented here. It identifies a quasi-quantitative measure of skill acquisition-hardness. This measure is useful in understanding how task uncertainty is resolved in practice and how new skills are learnt. It explains learning how hard something is and how hard one should go at it is a part of becoming a skilled person. It mentions that the question of the transfer of skills is deeply sociological so long as one thinks of skills as being the properties of communities.

The article focuses on the importance of realism in sociology. It has been argued that in the present era of ecological threat one needs a critical sociology, which requires a realist ontology. Using sociologist U. Beck's "Risk society" as an example, the author in this article maintains that to the extent that postmodernist sociology rejects realism, its critical and substantive potential is compromised. Arguments from human needs offer one way of grounding a critical sociology without foundationalism, since these arguments depend on the current understanding of "human frailty" and "social precariousness." Through various examples it shows that while postmodernist thinkers reject meta-narratives and universal truth, they are inevitably moral realist in practice when talking politics. Against sociologist Z. Bauman, sociology cannot dispense with the project of emancipation. The moral realist discourse of human needs permits sociologists to move from statements about the world to recommendations for action.

It is argued that sociology lacks an adequate conceptualization of the museum/society relationship. It is further argued (1) that the museum is an agency of classification; (2) that it is a relationship of cultural interdependence and (3) that museums have an internal relationship to modernization. The institution of the museum is shown to arise out of the indeterminacies of modernization. A dispute in the early history of London's Tate Gallery is explored as it illuminates that institution's organization of the contradictions of modernization. Pace Bourdieu and Elias, a key contradiction is seen to arise from a differentiation of the field of power and the cultural field. It is argued, against essentialist accounts of museums, that the Tate produced its point of view through the medium of this contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the sociological study of environmental issues. One area in which this is evident is in the application of social scientific methods in social impact assessment (SIA): the study of the anticipated social impact of proposed changes to the environment. This paper addresses one aspect of the debate about appropriate methods for SIA; whether, and how, to include the expressed views and perceptions of those who will be affected. It is argued first that although SIA ostensibly deals with the social effects of projects there is a tendency for assessments to avoid any detailed consideration of the ways in which people are affected. Instead there is an emphasis upon technical and economic considerations. When assessments do attempt to incorporate the perceptions of local people they typically do so through some form of attitude research. However if language is viewed as a form of social action rather than as a detached commentary on reality there are radical implications for the methods traditionally used in SIA to gauge people's views and attitudes. I conclude by outlining an alternative to the traditional practice of viewing peoples' accounts as a repository of their attitudes, arguing that they might be more profitably used to explore how social impacts are socially constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental choice of school is one of the main platforms of government education policy and is the centre piece of the Parents Charter. But sociological understanding of choice and choice-making is woefully underdeveloped. This paper draws on an ESRC study of market forces in education to explore social class variations in choice of school in one specific locality. The complexity of choice-making is portrayed using data from interviews with parents and it is argued that middle-class parents are taking full advantage of `the market' to sustain or re-assert their class advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents discussion related to modern nations. It argues that modern nations are products of nationalism and can be defined only as such and not by their own distinctive traits. Sociality with its endemic fluidity and indefiniteness elbows out structure with its implied fixity and determining power. Process takes the place once occupied by systems. Endless communication flow and never conclusive search for consensus take precedence over objective description, while hermeneutics, always conscious of its location in time and space, challenges the ideal of logical-experimental strategy of extemporal and exterritorial science. The orthodox consensus of sociology has been found guilty of aiding and abetting practices of the nation-state. Some time will pass yet before the new sociology, now relishing its honeymoon period and blithely self-congratulating, stands charged of complicity in the present fashions in identity building. This, presumably, will not happen before those fashions are re-defined, as usual in retrospect, as wrong choices and lost chances.

Relatively little attention has been paid within mainstream sociology to the examination of marital power, although there is considerable disenchantment with measures of it based on replies to questions about who makes a range of decisions. Marxists anal feminists have stressed the importance of economic dependence as an element in understanding power relationship within marriage, although there has been little empirical work to support/undermine their views. This paper draws on material from 60 in-depth interviews with predominantly white married women aged 20-42 years old whose oldest child was at most 15 years and who were randomly selected from general practice medical registers in North London. The paper looks at three aspects of their marital power position: first, their experience of powerfulness/powerlessness; second, their level and pattern of emotional dependence on their husband (in the context of Waller's and Hill's (1951) 'principle of least interest'); and, third, their absolute and relative levels of structural power resources (such as education, occupation, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it has become almost axiomatic in much contemporary sociology that geographical mobility for husband's career reasons is disruptive of wives' labour market careers, there have been few systematical empirical inquiries into the issue. This study reports findings from a survey of in-migrants in Aberdeen in 1986. Considerations relating to male partner's occupational career were the main factor accounting for the in-migration of married women, but single women were more likely to come for educational or employment reasons Levels of grievance among la-migrant partnered women about the consequences of this move for their employment were low but there was some evidence that women in-migrant for such reasons saw the move as less helpful careerwise than other in-migrant women More, however, saw the move as helpful or making no difference, rather than being a hindrance. Many respondents were able to find what they regarded as suitable new employment and others saw themselves at the time of the move primarily as mothers or housewives. The research findings lend support for the view that migrant wives' roles are orientated primarily around their husband's occupational concerns but this need not be detrimental to their own labour market activity since their skills, aptitudes and resources facilitate their adaptation to the new situation.
The inter-relation of male and female partners within households and the manner in which these inter-relationships affect the development of their individual labour market biographies is an area containing challenging empirical and theoretical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology almost entirely neglects later life. This contrasts with social policy where elderly people are largely seen as a burden on society and their carets. The article examines three areas of sociological enquiry and suggests reasons for the omission of elderly people. Parallels are drawn with sociology's earlier neglect of women. The feminist agenda has largely excluded the concerns of elderly women and at times has contributed to the pathological image of elderly people as burdens to be shouldered by their daughters. We argue that sociological theories would be enriched by incorporating the experiences of elderly people within their theoretical net. [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]

Both the nature of philosophical and sociological discourses are undergoing a profound change, attuned to the gradual substitution of the postmodern sensibility for the cultural climate dominant during the modern age. In particular, philosophy sustained by legislative reason recedes, replaced by a philosophical style informed by interpretative reason; a movement in many respects reminiscent of the Pyrrhonian Crisis of the 16th-17th centuries. The passage from the orthodox consensus of modern sociology to a postmodern sociological strategy parallels this transformation. The present change, however, affects the very relationship between philosophy and sociology. From the search for the foundations of cognitive certainty, the outspoken domain of philosophy guided by the legislative reason, epistemological concerns move to the communicative problems of communally founded cognitive systems - the acknowledged realm of sociological investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the existing sociological literature on the learned professions and on scientific occupations has developed in ways that are now theoretically unproductive. One symptom of this dead-end is the failure of sociologists of the professions to include research on scientists in their discussions and vice versa. A second symptom is the lack of attention to the implications of the work of Jamous, Peloille, and Bourdieu in both the sociology of scientists and of professions. The third symptom of the malaise is the failure to generate sociologically plausible explanations for the marginalisation of female entrants to science and the professions. The paper argues that a novel direction for sociological argument can be derived by remedying the three symptoms simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between gender and class is important and controversial within sociology and has significant theoretical and political dimensions. But how do women experience class? Is it a meaningful dimension of everyday life? The experiential aspects of class were explored with two hundred women. A third of them perceived social class in terms of level of income. Others perceived it in terms of occupation (their parents', their partner's or their own), type of housing or the need to work to earn a living. These different perceptions relate to women's own occupational class and educational background more closely than they relate to the occupational class of their partners. Women occupied full-time as housewives did not appear to differ from those in full or part-time paid employment in terms of their perceptions of class, nor did they experience their situation as marginal to the class structure of society. Although women's class does count there are problems with assigning individual women to classes solely on the basis of their current position in the occupational hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age identities are a product of negotiation between acquaintances and intimates. The negotiation takes place against a background of assumptions about appropriate ways of moving through the life span. This study of ageing in the context of an English church shows how organisational needs must be taken into account in understanding the ageing strategies of participants. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in the south of England in 1985-6. The analysis draws on the literature of social gerontology which is mainly American. It is part of a larger ESRC-funded study of the social construction of old age in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawrence Scarf (Sociological Review Vol. 36, no. 1) proposes a 'sociology of culture' as the site for a comparison between Weber and Simmel's responses to 'modernity'. It is suggested that in so doing Scarf neglects important differences and similarities between Weber and Simmel's accounts of culture and selfhood. I argue that these are as much a product of specific analytical commitments as of intellectual-historical milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many social scientists the transition from academic research to research within a policy and practice setting is riddled with theoretical difficulties. Research models and the role of the researcher have to be re-examined and re-defined. In discussing the work carried out within one Health Authority particular difficulties will be addressed and the need to develop new models emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schopenhauer criticized Kant's moral theory on the grounds that it was non-empirical and inadequate, because it attempted to establish morality on the basis of reason and duty. Contrary to Kant, Schopenhauer argued that genuine morality is irrational, based on compassion, and a human product, hence that it could be studied empirically. Schopenhauer established the 'science of morality' which occupied the attention of a host of turn of the century precursors of the social sciences, especially Durkheim. Durkheim's version of the science of moral facts is compared and contrasted with Schopenhauer's critique of Kant, and it is demonstrated that Durkheim tends to follow Schopenhauer's lead. Problems with Durkheim's and Schopenhauer's critiques of Kantian ethics are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review provides a critical commentary on the sociology of consumption recently developed by Peter Saunders in the new edition of his Social Theory and the Urban Question and elsewhere. Comment is made on the politics of socialized consumption, the sociology of consumption sector cleavages and the concept of a privatized mode of consumption. Note is also made of the methodological critique of realism and the assertion of a Weberian alternative which underpins the contribution. It is argued that although the approach provides some insights it tends to get locked into a series of unproducive conceptual and methodological polarities in its attempt to undermine the supposed hegemonic position of Marxism within contemporary urban studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years writers in the field of the sociology of gender have turned to psychoanalysis for insights into the psychological dimensions of female sexuality. The same insights are now being applied to the analysis of masculinity. This paper argues that the full advantages of this are undermined by the adoption of an object-relations perspective which restores the social determinism from which many such writers seek to escape. This argument is pursued through a detailed analysis of one recent text in the field -- The Sexuality of Men (eds) A. Metcalf and M. Humphries (1985) -- but is applied more widely to the treatment of sexuality in the sociology of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting-point for this analysis is a remark made by André Lalande that Durkheim was so enamoured with Schopenhauer's philosophy that his students nicknamed him 'Schopen'. The intellectual context shared by Schopenhauer and Durkheim is explored, especially with regard to the opposition between the id-like 'will' and the mind. Schopenhauer's influence upon Durkheim's contemporaries is examined briefly. Then, this new context for apprehending Durkheim's thought is applied to selected problems in Durkheimian scholarship, problems that have to do with the dualism of human nature, perception, the unconscious and the unity of knowledge relative to the object-subject debate. The implications for sociological theory are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Durkheim endorses moral and rejects methodological individualism. But he arrives at this 'general position' via a particular development of it that runs into serious sociological, apart from any philosophical, trouble. It depends on an ethical relativism that in turn depends on an idea of society qua harmonious system, generating more or less practical aspirations, and a single appropriate, 'normal' morality. Yet modern society generates ideals quite unrealisable in it, and continuing, fundamental conflicts between moral doctrines and beliefs. To uphold central humanist, individualist ideals, we cannot rely on Durkheim's particular sociology or on his ethical relativism, and to defend his general position must unhook it from both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During its eighty-year history, the sociology of youth has provided a succession of partial explanations of the circumstances and responses of the young. The paper critically reviews this history and defines the challenge currently faced by sociologists: to develop a conceptual framework for understanding both the transitions young people pass through as they become adult, and the differential experiences of young people from different social groups. It is argued that such a framework requires the integration of the concepts of process and structure Secondary analysis of existing large data sets is suggested as an available means of meeting the challenge, since such data sets can provide both large representative samples which allow inter-group comparisons, and wide-ranging longitudinal data which allows the study of processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the relationship between sociology and postmodernity. Most current concepts of postmodernity refer solely to intellectual phenomena. In a few cases they reach deeper, into the fundamental preconceptions of contemporary consciousness. Rarely, if at all, they step beyond the boundary of the spiritual, into the changing social figuration which the artistic, cultural and cognitive developments, bracketed as postmodern, may reflect. Indeed, if postmodernity means what the current concepts imply, a reform of culture, of world-perception, of the intellectual stance, then sociology faces the task of an essentially strategical adjustment. Postmodern phenomena, most commonly confined in their description to the cultural, or even merely the artistic level, can be viewed in fact as surface symptoms of a much deeper transformation of the social world, brought about by the logic of modern development, yet in a number of vital respects discontinuous with it. These deeper transformations ought to be sought in the spheres of systemic reproduction, social integration, and the structure of the life-world, as well as in the novel way in which these three spheres are linked and coordinated.

This paper critically scrutinizes the thesis put forward by Jennifer Platt in a recent article in The Sociological Review about the general relation between theory and method, based on her investigation of the specific example of functionalism and survey research in post-war US sociology. The present paper questions the extent to which Platt's analysis and general conclusions mask important levels of connectedness between theory and method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data gathered in settings where the family side of personal troubles is a regular concern, it is argued that the family enters into social relations as a collective representation. Adapting Durkheim's usage to everyday life, the family is analyzed as a 'public' project of those whose domestic affairs are challenged for consideration of family order. Three features of the family project are considered: (1) the awareness of the social form, (2) family conduct in the large, (3) family usage. As an object of experience, the family presents itself in a category separate and distinct from its members, while at the same time being a practical, discursive construct built out of, as well as reflecting concrete domestic affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts are being made to associate a supposed 'return to the private' with a parallel phenomenon of a 'return to community'. Both terms, private and community, are central to sociological theory, but are surrounded with confusion and a profusion of historical referents which confirms their importance but obscures their significance. This review of the literature and of the various problematics for which the 'private sphere' is a key concept concludes that it is civil society which determines the modalities of discussion as well as the actual degree of autonomy of the 'private', and thus that an approach from the side of the 'private' (or of 'community') can be of only restricted value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in a British circus between 1975 and 1979.[1] It focuses on the dynamics of the frequent disappearance and reappearance characteristic of travelling circus shows in Britain. It shows that these dynamics are to be understood in terms of circus economics, social and semiotic constraints. It argues that, understood in these terms, the appearance and disappearance of circuses should not be taken as unequivocally confirming the notion of circus decline or, on the contrary, as supporting the notions of circus continuity (see White, 1977; Bouissac, 1976: 4; George and Mulford, 1977). Rather, they are structural characteristics of circus marginality epitomizing both circus precariousness and its endurance within the general socio-historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining 'family policy', previous work on 'family ideology' is developed to demonstrate that 'traditional family sociology' has been 'doing things with words'. In this area sociology, far from being innocuous, has had real impact upon society and may well have been oppressive and deeply reactionary.
Sociological interest in 'family life'[1] and 'family policy' seems to be a growth area in the UK.[2] Many, however, seem to regard 'family policy' debates as somehow neutral, even a technical issue (e.g., Family Impact Statements as discussed by Ory and Leik, 1983 or the Study Commission on the Family, 1983, 46--9). The central argument here is that 'family policy' debates, especially those in which sociology has taken part, are very much 'political', have substantive results and are in fact both dangerous and repressive.[3]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of 'schools' as a metascientific construct is reviewed. Tiryakian's (1979a) increasingly popular construction of a school of sociology is examined and the case of 'The Chicago School' is considered in detail. The efficacy of a 'schools' approach to understanding the nature of the growth and development of scientific knowledge is called into question. It is suggested that schools, as used in the literature, tend to be convenient groupings of practitioners rather than metascientific categories and that they fail to adequately engage knowledge transformative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intellectual reasons for the failure of sociology to give sufficient attention to warfare and military organisation as central problems in social theory. These reasons are to be found in the dominance of liberal functionalism and Marxism as paradigms in the development of sociology. A reorientation of social theory is called for and it is suggested that writers in the neo-Machiavellian tradition provide an important corrective to sociological orthodoxy in respect of the role of war and military organisation in social life. The paper goes on to show that these factors are crucial components in an adequate account of one of the most important problems raised by sociology: why did hegemonic capitalism develop originally in the West and not elsewhere. Thus, ironically, those factors which sociology has tended to ignore are actually the key to solving one of its central problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews previous estimates of the frequency of 'normal families'[1] in the UK and USA. Using evidence from the 1981 UK Census it is found that 'normal families' account for a very small percentage of all 'families' in England and Wales. No single central type of 'family' exists and there is therefore an urgent need to develop theoretical approaches which address this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'New Working Class' theory, popularised in French sociology during the 1960s and 1970s, envisages the advent of a politically inspired class movement that rekindles the vision of a new social order as the technicians rise to become its vanguard. According to writers like Mallet and Touraine, these technical 'white-collars' tend to take over from the traditional manual groups in posing as the 'standard-bearers' of class-based industrial radicalism and solidarity. This paper proposes to trace the recent vein of discussions on the class implications of occupational and technological transformation from such a neo-Marxian perspective. It also attempts to apply these arguments to interpret the characteristics of a new occupation in Hong Kong -- the technicians working m the electronics and related industries, with reference to an empirical study carried out in the early 1980s.[1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many writers hold that research method is necessarily determined by theory, and it is common to suggest the relationship between functionalism and survey method in post-war US sociology as an example of this. This paper questions the extent to which that method and that theory were in reality meaningfully associated, and argues against the position that theory and method are in general invariably connected in the way suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief note argues against the tendency in sociological fieldwork to limit observation and explanation to one medium of communication -- speech. Against such ethnographic reductionism, it pleads for a reincorporation of a sense of place and space in fieldwork, and for attention to the multiple ways in which messages are communicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis takes Elder's work on the life-course as a starting point. Two proposals are made: (1) That the sociological use of the concept of 'the family' should be restricted to indicate only the occurrence of everyday usage; (2) That the notion of the 'family life-course' be replaced by the notion of individual life-courses coinciding upon developmental pathways. In this way the idea of a central type of 'the family' is made redundant and we are required, instead, to discover when and why participants refer to a particular developmental pathway as being 'a family'. This approach not only facilitates the conceptualisation 'family diversity' but also compels researchers to engage the rich complexity of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that the problem of 'structure and agency' should be reconsidered as the problem of 'fate and agency' (or event causation and agency causation). The problem of fate and agency is addressed by outlining a model of the conditions of action derived from work by Giddens and Wright Mills. The model uses the concepts of different forms of knowledge and of the unintended consequence to set up a framework by which it should, in principle, be possible to decide which outcomes are the product of agency and which are the product of fate or events.
This framework is then used to discuss the problems raised by defining power in terms of interests. It is argued that this definition is inadequate and suggested that a definition of power based on access to resources and causal responsibility for outcomes may be more useful. [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]

The article discusses simmel's rationalization and the sociology of money. Sociologist Georg Simmel's perspective has been regarded as an example of the nature of modern society. . His writing has been as a result characterized as perspectivism and an aestheticisation of reality. Three themes can be said to embrace the core of Simmel's sociological perspective, namely relationalism, sociation and social forms. For Simmel, no item of society can be understood in isolation, but only in terms of its interrelatedness with the totality. Thus, money as a social institution cannot be understood separated from the total social framework within which it is embedded. The second crucial feature of Simmelian sociology is the emphasis on what Simmel called "sociation". Simmel wanted to avoid both methodological individualism which ontologically claims that only individuals exist and sociological holism in which collective entities like the "state"or the "church" are reified and treated as autonomous social personalities. The third basic aspect of Simmel's position is that the forms of social life , groups, families, networks, exchange relations and so forth which emerge out of the endless sociation of individuals assume a logic of their own, which over time becomes separated from the content of human interaction. The Philosophy of Money is a classic study of the roots of modernity and modern consciousness.

Humour may have a number of different effects within organizations, but it is usually manifested in one of two major 'joke forms': standardized/canned or situation/spontaneous. Using examples of each from fieldwork conducted in a large manufacturing bakery, it is argued that both forms depend for their effect on their appositeness to the 'joke in the social structure'. Both forms share the capacity to enable the reversal, within the humorous framework, of problematic social relations, patterns of control, or customary mystifications. Humour may be used to create ambiguity or to promote closure: its impact on the organizational culture will depend on the extent to which the symbolic transformations achieved within its boundaries can be transposed into material, 'real-world' relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most curious omissions in the sociology of work and occupations is what would seem to be one of the most basic questions: When is an occupation an occupation? While there have been recent attempt to explore the issue by examining the history of census categories,[1] these represent the end-point of the process at which new occupations receive official recognition and legitimation. My purpose in this paper is to discuss how occupations form and come to be recognized as such. The creation of health visiting between 1850 and 1919 will be taken as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critique of the tradition of sociological writing which has emphasized the ability of occupations organized on the professional principle to gain for their members an occupational monopoly and a position in the division of labour which provides them with autonomy to determine occupational tasks and functions. It is argued that theories which seek to account for the conditions which provide the framework for successful resistance to rationalization and codification in professional work have not adequately articulated the concept of power. The theoretical discourse on professional and managerial power has therefore tended, with few exceptions, to locate the determination and exercise of power as though it were a zero sum commodity deriving from social relations or organizations. Theories predicting the emergence of professional rather than mangerial forms of control therefore have little explanatory ability other than for a particular mode of rationality within a limiting theoretical framework. This analysis represents an attempt to propose a mediation between structuralist theories of power and organization and those theoretical reflections on the professions which locate the determination of occupational authority in a broader matrix of social processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews Chinoy's Automobile Workers and the American Dream as an example of a lot of work which revolves around themes of alienation, worker degradation and quiescence. Two aspects of the automobile as an item in the sphere of consumption in post-war America are then detailed to try to point to the theoretical assumptions and empirical absences which characterize the dominant tradition exemplified by Chinoy's classic text. The paper ends by making some criticisms of the way production activity is privileged in social analysis and calls for the creation of a sociology of consumption to combat the emphasis on production as the source of social meaning and worth which is institutionalized in much sociology and most Marxism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents criticisms of works of the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons. The article argues that the conventional criticisms of Parsons are misplaced and that Parsons and his critics share basic assumptions. It concentrate upon two areas where criticism has been most frequently focused, firstly, the relationship between Parsons's early formulation of the action frame of reference and a functionalist methodology and secondly, the concept of the normative and its place in Parsons's theory. The criticisms of Parsons discussed in this article lead to a sociological impasse. It is important to recognise, however, that the form taken by this impasse serves to make the conventional criticisms of Parsons appear plausible, that is, the breakdown of Parsons's theoretical system does take the form of unintegrated theoretical principles, in this sense, then, there are 'two sociologies', but they are not distinct approaches. The attempt to represent them as separate paradigms is an abstraction or reification. The deficiencies of Parsons's theoretical scheme are the characteristic deficiencies of the action frame of reference in sociology.

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.

The article presents a comparative study of the social mobility of women in France and Sweden. One question which will be central to this and to subsequent papers will be that of how far analyses of the mobility of women tend to support, or to require qualification of conclusions that have been drawn with respect to the mobility of men. On the basis of absolute rates of intergenerational mobility for women, Sweden would appear to have markedly more mobility overall than France. The total mobility rate is consistently higher than in France, whether mobility is assessed in terms of our nine-class schema or various collapses of this. The composition of the various occupational classes of women as regards social background is somewhat more similar in Sweden than it is in France. But the striking contrast is that the differences in origin distributions of women by occupational category are much greater as compared to men in Sweden than they are in France. It is in the case of women's outflow mobility patterns-and thus chances of mobility according to social background--that our two societies show the most marked differences, in contrast to results obtained when comparing men's mobility.

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]