Search

The article presents the author's response to Martyn Hammersley's paper "On Feminist Mythology." Hammersley questions whether or not it is justifiable to privilege the significance of gender. What strikes me here is the assumption that gender is indeed privileged by feminists in a uniform way. The case for criticism is considerably weakened when Hammersley himself cites leading feminist writers who have not only questioned the privileging of gender over other factors such as race and class, but who presumably do not privilege gender in their work. Hammersley's references to methodological injunctions to explore women's experiences suggest a reading of feminist work which is limited to redressing the balance in theory, policy and research by focusing exclusively on women. The later part of his paper which focuses on the validity of experience as opposed to method is really making two claims: firstly, that in using experience as part of the approach to research then anything goes--critical awareness, rigour and so on are abandoned; secondly, that the recognition and inclusion of experience in knowledge or knowledge production does not automatically increase the validity of that knowledge. I have more sympathy with the second claim than with the first. Firstly, however, I do not believe that experience and method are polarized in quite the way, which Hammersley suggests. My view is that recent feminist debates have been about the role of experience in method rather than verses method.

The dominant position on research methodology and methods among British sociologist has for many years been that of 'methodological pluralism'. However, concerns have lately been expressed about the lack of research involving quantitative methods, not least by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). A study of the four mainstream British journals over two years, tighter with associated sources, demonstrates national patterns of research methods used in published work, the topics tackled and variations between authors in the methods chosen. The findings suggest empirical support for the concerns recently expressed by the ESRC, and an argument, not for less qualitative research, but for more quantitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces relations between the study of work and the evolution of British sociology as an academic discipline. This reveals broad trajectories of marginalization, as the study of work becomes less central to Sociology as a discipline; increasing fragmentation of divergent approaches to the study of work; and -- as a consequence of both -- a narrowing of the sociological vision for the study of work. Our paper calls for constructive dialogue across different approaches to the study of work and a re-invigoration of sociological debate about work and -- on this basis -- for in-depth interdisciplinary engagement enabling us to build new approaches that will allow us to study work in all its diversity and complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers reflections on the author's working experience as an industrial sociologist from the 1960s. It seeks to contextualise this in more general considerations of the part played by industrial sociology in the development of sociology in the UK. This is evidenced in thematic concerns, the importance of historical perspectives as well as the use of case studies and the development of ethnographic work. It discusses the role which industrial sociology has played in bringing issues of power, authority, control and class into sharp focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the "Orders of Ordinary Action conference in 2001, discusses edited conference papers, and refers to an article "Garfinkel and his Ethnomethodological 'Bastards'" which is in volume 40(5) of this journal. A conversation with Kenneth Liberman, the author of "Husserl's Critique of Reason," is explained as an allusion to the production of emergent orders and social fact. The impact of Liberman's sociological philosophy in his book "Dialectical Practice in Tibetan Philosophical Culture" is mentioned.

Many manage risks of urban violence through constructing of no-go areas--not so the residents there. How do they manage risks of violence? This paper approaches this question through the concepts of risk and (dis)trust of Sztompka (1999) and within a framework of disadvantage in a 'matrix of oppression' (Collin 2000). Based on ethnography, the paper asks how people experience risks of 'street violence' and 'personal violence', how they manage them, and how their discourses about it relate to institutional discourses of how to solve problems of violence. I show that violence is being accepted and rejected in their specific relation to identity enhancement and respect within a context of intersecting forms of oppression along lines of race, class and gender. Through a discourse of fate, residents tell that violence concerns the wider context of stigmatization and exclusion--which does not match with the approach of local institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to the articles published in this issue that deal with sociology research on issues of gender.

The article discusses the vision and plans for the journal "Sociology," the flagship journal of the British Sociological Association. Aside from extending and developing the journal's international reach and appeal, its editorial team aims to increase its impact factor and actively encourage and extend high quality and diverse, interdisciplinary debate with "Sociology," as well as develop its online presence and features.

This article borrows the form and metre of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner to describe and analyse the social situation of the globalised mariner. The shipping industry is characterised by complex global value chains and an outsourced, casualised labour force. The paper aims to be a piece of ‘public sociology’ and (in seeking to appeal in as vivid a manner as possible) is written in a style that Wright Mills called ‘sociological poetry’, attempting a pastiche of perhaps the best known poem in English. The auditor in the poem is a late-modern consumer and the narration is shared between the mariner, an inspector of shipping and (to remind the reader and the auditor of the mariner’s partisanship) a Chorus of Greek Shippers. The narrative covers deficiencies in seafarer training, reductions in crew numbers, the consequent long hours and seafarer fatigue, and the failure of global governance of the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is the first e-special issue for the journal Sociology and its chosen focus is the article ‘The coming crisis of empirical sociology’ by Savage and Burrows (2007). This article challenged sociologists with a variety of questions about the role, relevance and methodological opportunities for sociological research in the 21st century. On publication it stoked the already charged debates on a public sociology (Burawoy, 2004), the role of publicly funded research (ESRC, 2009) and relevance of sociological research in an age of burgeoning social media (Brewer and Hunter, 2006). This e-special provides a reprise of these debates and explores relevant papers in Sociology, as well as alerting readers to recurring themes and new directions on the topic of methods and social research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides an empirical investigation of Israeli flight attendants in order to characterize the structural underpinnings of the liquid self, and their resultant phenomenological consequences on personal morality, conceptions of self and interpersonal relations. The study touched upon the motivations and behaviours of flight attendants, how they juggle family and personal commitments, and the internal persona they adopt vis-à-vis their own selves. By contextualizing their narratives through the structural elements of their jobs, the study exposes the attendants’ ambivalent and incoherent lives and the complex ways in which they manage their social networks across place and time. While flight attendants evince chameleon-like selves and fluid morality in their interpersonal relations – taking advantage of their ability to stage different selves in different ports of life – they maintain their multiple selves in functioning ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article lists individuals who reviewed papers for “Sociology,” including Helene Aarseth of the University of Oslo, Tahir Abbas of Birkbeck College, and John Abraham of the University of Sussex.

This article considers the challenge of regulation across national borders using the example of the shipping industry. It examines the success of different global regulatory strategies in the sector; specifically the implementation of smart regulation and enforced self-regulation. In doing so it draws upon empirical research into the enforcement of labour standards via port-State control in India, Russia and the UK, and the regulation of training in Singapore, Philippines and the UK. It concludes that effective global regulation faces considerable challenges. Within the relatively conducive environment of shipping it finds that smart regulation has been vitiated by perceived inconsistency in inspection practice and that enforced self-regulation has been rendered less effective by cross-national differences in resourcing and regulatory commitment, compounded by the difficulties of paper-based validation. It argues that, in relation to issues of effective global governance, the shipping industry may stand as a critical case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Times Index is a well-established and important paper resource for researchers that is perhaps not fully recognized Using a study on 'Homicide and the Media' as an exemplar, this article considers the strengths and weaknesses of the Index. The Index will usually provide better focus into the researcher's area of study than CD-ROM searches, and can identify stories which CD-ROM searches miss. A modest quality control study indicates its accuracy, but it is stressed that a quality control test is study-specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In all developed societies the class position that individuals come to occupy depends, inter alia, on their class origins, gender and ethnic group membership. It might be argued that these inequalities had 'meritocratic legitimation' if it transpired that they were largely the result of the differential distribution of merit across sexes, classes or ethnic groups. In this paper I address the question of how far Northern Ireland can be considered to be an educational meritocracy. In other words, to what extent might inequalities according to class origin, gender and ethnic group membership in the class positions that individuals attain be attributed, or legitimized, according to differences between classes, genders and ethnic groups in average educational attainment? The results suggest that in Northern Ireland, as in the cases of Britain (Marshall and Swift 1993; Breen and Goldthorpe, 1999, 2001) and the Republic of Ireland (Breen and Whelan, 1993), men and women and people from different class origins and ethnic groups experience different chances of gaining access to better class positions, even when they have the same level of educational attainment In seeking to explain the results of the analyses I draw on recent work that discusses and illustrates some of the difficulties with the concept of 'merit' and with the attempt to equate meritocracy with a diminishing role for ascription. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notions of active citizenship and community involvement have become increasingly prominent in political discussions and policy practices within Britain in the past 15 years. This is a significant development as the modus operandi of modern liberal democracies has been a representative mode of government in which the wider citizenry has a passive role. This paper contextualizes active citizenship in terms of the interrelationship between civic society and the political realm. The Foucauldian-inspired literature on governmentality has made a concerted attempt to examine such issues. Governmentality regards government, not in the conventional sense as the provenance of centralized institutions, where interest groups and ideologies play their part, but as a complex and ever-changing process that forges ways of thinking about governing with a myriad of practices that proliferate throughout society. Whilst it is informative, it is questioned whether this analytic approach can fully explain and illuminate political developments like active citizenship, given its rejection of realist and critical approaches to government. The second half of the paper addresses such concerns. Here, community involvement is regarded as a contested notion and one where the central state has played a prominent role. To highlight these analytical points, the historical development and political configuration of community involvement over the past 20 years is traced. It is shown that central government, through policies influenced by contrasting ideological conceptions of citizenship and political expediency, has played a key role in shaping community involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines, in a comparative way, the situation of refugees settled in Italy and the Netherlands. It examines how refugees themselves perceive their social condition in the two contrasting 'models' of integration in Italy and the Netherlands and how they define integration success and develop strategies to achieve their goals. The narratives of refugees explored in this paper documents that integration, as it is perceived and desired by the refugees themselves, is both about its functional aspects and about social participation in the wider community. These aspects of integration consist of sets of overlapping processes that take place differently in various spheres of the receiving society and have various outcomes. It is argued that policy should recognize this complexity and acknowledge refugees as social actors rather than turning them into policy objects in order to facilitate integration in each of these sub-sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how qualitative feminist research can inform the study of engendered practices in organizational settings. It reviews current debates about feminist research, including Oakley's (1998, 2000) critique of the ways in which qualitative methods and data are used by feminists. The work of Skeggs (2001) on feminist principles for undertaking qualitative research is also examined, The paper then considers two pieces of research on work and engendered organizations that used mixed methods and data. Finally the paper considers some of the methodological challenges faced by the author in two recent qualitative projects about manager-academics. Using qualitative data, it is argued, does not necessarily restrict the wider policy applicability of the project findings. However, working in teams with those not committed to feminist research can present other challenges, which may also throw light on the phenomena being researched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clarifies and develops some of the arguments put forward by W.G. Runciman in his 1998 Sociology article 'The Selectionist Paradigm and its Implications for Sociology'. It intends to support his basic claim that mechanisms analogous to (but not synonymous with) natural selection are an important way of understanding both continuity and change in social systems. Nonetheless, it questions the emphasis of his discussion and extends his analysis of two substantive points. The argument proceeds in two stages, The paper begins by examining the many objections that Runciman rebuts and showing that many of them do not need rebuttal but are simply irrelevant to the selectionist paradigm. By irrelevant, I mean that the objections are logically flawed or simply do not apply to the selectionist paradigm as Runciman defines it. The purpose of this part of the paper is to sharpen the debate, so that attention can subsequently be focused on a smaller number of relevant objections that remain. The remainder of the paper attempts to open that debate by discussing the two relevant objections that appear most forceful. It attempts to show that. on closer examination, both objections are mistaken. The first objection is that human deliberation makes any analogy with random mutation in biology untenable. The paper argues that in fact selection and deliberation are complementary. Selection will continue to act on social practices to the extent that our models of the world are imperfect and our practices have unintended consequences. The second objection is that while selectionism is interesting, it may be irrelevant to sociological practice. The last part of the paper provides a more detailed analysis of an example used by Runciman, the task of explaining differing levels of male lethal violence across societies. This analysis suggests that while Runciman's 'discursive' selectionist analysis (like functionalism) can generate suggestive hypotheses, appropriate techniques wi... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to John Holmwood's critique of a paper by the present author which argued that much feminist research on the gendered nature of organizations, such as bureaucracy and the market, confuses a contingent association of gender and organizational forms with a stronger claim that they are intrinsically gendered. According to the present author, his paper was informed by a critical realist philosophy. He notes that Holmwood's response goes beyond the immediate arguments of the paper not only to wider issues of social theory but to critical realism upside down. While the present author responds to both philosophical and substantive issues, he points out that like other philosophies, critical realism does not entail particular substantive claims and the latter have to be assessed on their own terms. He argues that critical realist philosophy and substantive theories stand or fall independently of one another. This article begins with issues regarding critical realism and then moves to substantive theory--concerning system and lifeworld, markets and identities, capitalism and domestic work, bureaucracy and class--and ends with some comments on feminism and Marxism and the nature of abstraction.

One of the most characteristic features of contemporary debates in the social sciences is the growth of interest in non-class forms of social division and identity, accompanied by an increasing focus on ethnic and gender inequalities. This paper attempts to provide a frame for incorporating such divisions into stratification theory by placing the notion of 'social division' at centre stage and redrawing its boundaries. The paper pays particular attention to ethnicity and class for the purposes of the argument. It is argued that a theorisation of social divisions can show how non-class forms of division and identity constitute central elements of the stratification system of modern societies. Such an approach also marries better with the wealth of evidence that scholars of ethnicity and 'race' have been collecting on the importance of race/ethnicity as structuring social location and differential and unequal social outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a Particular debate in the scholarly literature on ethnicity in the United States regarding ethnic entrepreneurship which has come to be known as the 'ethnic enclave economy hypothesis'. According to this hypothesis, ethnic enterprises and their workers benefit from clustering. The current consensus seems to be that the hypothesis is both redundant and misguided. In denying this critique, this paper draws on Lefebvre's theorisation of space and on industrial cluster and actor network theories to argue that the dominant interpretation of the notion of an enclave has been misconceived. Hence the need is to begin to theorise what ethnic enclave economies really are, beyond the spatial metaphor in which the hypothesis was first grounded, in order to interrogate generative processes of ethnic business formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central ways in which institutional racism is perpetuated is through the designation of the somatic norm. However, although the classed and gendered nature of the somatic norm underlying somataphobic representations of the universal 'individual' have been both theoretically and substantially explored, the racial character of this embodied being has received scant attention. This paper introduces race to the wider debates on the embodied nature of the political 'individual', before analysing the specific ways in which an institution that is deemed to be at the absolute apex of disembodied, neutral professionalism--the British senior civil service--is naturalised as the domain for white men. The somatic norm underlying the representation of the impartial senior civil service is brought to the fore in this paper by discussing the location of black senior civil servants, whose presence helps us to highlight the synchronic relationship between racialised bodies and elite spaces in the body politic. These 'Space Invaders' disturb the racialised nature of these spaces whilst at the same time adhering to the assimilative pressure of the somatic norm. An engagement with the interview accounts of black senior civil servants allows us to grasp some idea of what it is like for them to coexist in a place that is built on a 'racial contract' which has demarcated spaces in accordance with racialised corporealities. As matter out of place these 'different' bodies generate disorientation, undergo the burden of invisibility and abide by the racialised and classed informal rules of behaviour, particularly those of the legitimate language. All of which problematises the notion of 'difference' in organisations as entailing much more than the mere existence of 'different' bodies, on the basis of race or gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper locates labour process theory in broader sociological debates concerned with the action-structure dualism before examining three broad programmes for research that have emerged in response to the question of subjectivity and agency. Whereas the 'orthodox' school tends to re-assert the structuralist and economistic features of Marx, the 'anti-realist' or deconstructionist position invites the abandonment of analysis that has traditionally been orientated by the polarities of 'structure' and 'agency'. We identify and develop a third, 'hybrid position', one that is informed by poststructuralist insights but does not neglect or reject established traditions of 'modern' sociology and labour process research. Critical examinations of two recent studies of 'subjectivity and the labour process' -- Mike Sosteric's (1996) case study of a night club and Douglas Ezzy's (1997) paper on 'good work' -- are undertaken to show how poststructuralist insights may offer an instructive way of understanding how subjectivity is co-implicated in the accomplishment and reproduction of capitalist employment relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science has long fought shy of the natural sciences. Meanwhile, concerns with the environment, health and the new genetics are creating a need for systematic links to be made between these disciplines. This paper suggests a new way in which social theory can be linked to biology. Recent developments in biology point to the importance of considering organisms in relation to their environment. And work in epidemiology stresses the links between the infant-development, health in later life and the well-being of future generations. Complex combinations of genetically-determined predispositions and capitalist social relations are responsible for important features of contemporary social stratification and well-being. The paper is informed by critical realist epistemology and Marx's theory of the subsumption. Such a fusion leads to a key assertion. Capital tends to modify the powers of human biology in its own image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a content analysis of a hundred heterosexual dating advertisements, the paper, in part, seeks to build upon the findings of previous research emerging mainly from the disciplines of sociobiology and psychology, which shows that when selling the self, men market their financial and occupational resources, whereas women offer physical attractiveness and appealing body shape, consistent with traditional 'sex-role' stereotypes and mating selection strategies. The main focus of this paper, however, is on the repetitive and changing meanings of masculinity and femininity. Locating analyses in the context of a postmodern, consumer society, it shows that whilst consumer culture appears to provide men with a wide range of resources for the creation of identities, reflexive self-fashioning is more problematic for women. It argues that although what constitutes a 'feminine' identity has now diversified as men and women deal with a novel set of social conditions, women's subjectivities remain more fixed and stable than those of men. It concludes, therefore, that access to cultural resources for identity construction are not equally available to men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates husbands' and wives' perceptions of fairness of the domestic division of labour. Using data from a recent national Australian survey, the paper shows that 59 per cent of women report that the division of labour in the home is fair even though they also report responsibility for the bulk of the work. On the other hand, 68 per cent of men report that the division of household labour is fair. Drawing on Thompson's distributive justice framework, the paper analyses the factors underlying these patterns in relation to perceptions of fairness of childcare and housework. The results show that, for both men and women, the key factor determining perceptions of fairness is the division of tasks between men and women. The amount of time spent on domestic labour is also significant, but is less important than who does what around the home. There is little support for other hypotheses relating to gender role attitudes, time spent in paid work and financial power. The conclusion examines these findings in light of the distributive justice framework and considers their implications for understanding perceptions of fairness in households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to understanding the relationship between organised labour and the racialised worker in England, the conclusions reached by black radical theorists like Sivanandan and Gilroy have gone unchallenged for many years. In this paper, it is contended that these accounts of trade-union racism are constructed on the mistaken assumption that a trade union represents the interests of all the working class. Instead, an alternative conceptual framework is advanced underpinned by the recognition that the response of trade unions towards racialised labour is contingent on a wider set of economic, political and ideological circumstances and the type of strategy trade unions employ to protect the economic interests of their members. Through an assessment of events between 1945 and 1979 (the period black radical theorists use to advance their arguments), this paper challenges the conclusions drawn by black radical theorists regarding the basis of trade-union racism, the significance of 'black' self-organisation and the likelihood of 'inter-racial' class action developing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a sociological investigation of instances of a class of claimed paranormal phenomena: the apparent demonstration of paranormal means of cognition by psychic practitioners, such as mediums, psychics, clairvoyants and tarot-card readers. Using a conversation analytic perspective, this paper examines recordings and transcripts of sittings between psychics and members of the public. It describes a linguistic sequence through which (unattributed) information is offered by the psychic, accepted by the sitter and then established as coming from a paranormal source. This form of analysis is located within an emerging social scientific interest to explore ostensibly anomalous human experiences to enrich understanding of everyday behaviour. In this case, it is argued that analysis of the socially organised properties of exchanges in which apparently successful demonstrations of paranormal cognitive abilities are accomplished can contribute to broader debates about the relationship between discourse and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's purpose is to highlight key sociological issues, that come to light when 'the body' becomes a theoretical site in reproductive genetics. By positioning the body as a central feature in this analysis, the paper: (1) describes how a mechanistic view of the body continues to be privileged in this discourse and the effects of this view; (2) examines how reproductive limits are practised on the gendered body through a feminised regime of reproductive asceticism and the discourse on shame; and (3) explores the social effects and limitations of reproductive genetics in relation to disability as a cultural representation of impaired bodies. The central assumptions concerning reproductive genetics are that it appears within surveillance medicine as part of a disciplinary process in society's creation of a genetic moral order, that it is mobilised by experts for the management of reproductive bodies and that it constructs a limited view of the body. Thus, the way reproductive genetics operates tends to hide the fact that what may appear as 'defective genes' is a result of a body's interaction not only with the environment but also gendered social practices valorised by difference as well as rigid definitions of health and illness. The research is from a 1995-96 European study of experts interviewed in four countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the development of a new regime in a major bank where total quality management (TQM) has recently been introduced. A number of recent critics have suggested that TQM all but eliminates resistance either through a management regime that removes waste or through the totalising discourse it propagates. We argue that new management innovations associated with TQM and 'empowerment' are effective in increasing control over work processes and the subjectivity of stag Even so, employees are able to retain some control over areas of their working lives. A central concern of the paper is to provide some limited evidence of how an analysis of subjectivity enhances our understanding of both consent and resistance at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the subspecialism of sociology of education has, for a century, been ambivalent about the 'hooligan'. It has both celebrated and excoriated the anti-school working-class boy. Similarly, the mainstream of sociology has been ambivalent about sociologists of education, both relying on them and ignoring them. Thirdly, the paper speculates on the position of hooligans in Britain in 2025 and the relationship between mainstream sociology and the sociology of education in that year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that notions of the future and social change have been central to the sociological enterprise since its inception. However, sociology developed with the modern project and the rise of nation-states. This is reflected in the way that sociology has consistently taken for granted the geography of the nation-state as a basic organising principle for the understanding of social formations, producing 'national' sociologies. Thus, while providing a view of Britain in 2025, this paper also asks questions about the imaginary that constitutes Britain and the ways in which it will be re-visioned as part of the 'global cosmopolitan society'. This re-visioning is not, however, the preserve of sociology and the paper elaborates popular imaginaries on the future of Britain. A recurring theme within visions of the future is the binary between utopias and dystopias, refrained in relation to the impact of new technologies and discussions of cyberspace. The paper examines the impact of these debates on the sociological imagination and the future of the sociological enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines three aspects of demographic change and conjectures about their wider impact on British society. Two features of fertility behaviour are highlighted. The first deals with ethnic variations and the likely continuation of high fertility rates amongst women of South Asian origin. The second involves the continued bifurcation between career women and those for whom motherhood remains a central life project. International migration is also assessed and the contradictions within the 'Fortress Britain' strategy exposed. Britain will continue to receive migrants from overseas and British society will become increasingly multi-ethnic. The paper also examines the tensions between an increasingly ageing population and the development of increased ethnic and cultural diversity. The paper concludes with some implications of these changes for the discipline of sociology itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of 'working utopias' (WUs) and explores their relation to social movements. WUs are used in a variety of ways by social movements, it is argued, and they play a central role in the reproduction and advancement of movements. They reproduce the movement habitus and illusio, extend and reproduce networks, generate new forms of knowledge and practice, and serve, to some extent at least, as 'proof' of the validity of movement claims. Two utopias from within radical mental health movements are focused upon in the paper: the Kingsley Hall therapeutic community and the 'Trieste experiment'. The significance of these working utopias is explored by way of interviews with movement activists who have been involved with them in various ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following debates within this journal regarding the absence of adequate studies of resistance in the contemporary fields of industrial sociology and organisational behaviour, this paper seeks to understand its reasons and consequences. Through an examination of the history of approaches to the study of power and resistance at work, the grounds for this debate are considered and illuminated. The paper then suggests how this debate might be taken forward through developing the ideas of tactics and strategies and episodic and dispositional power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critique of the argument that the category of 'work' is no longer useful in theories of society and suggests that sociology needs to be able to explain why work is not in fact being decommodified, and why the new middle classes appear unable to offer substantive challenge to alienated work and the instrumentalism of modern societies. The central focus of the paper is an examination of the extent to which public service work is subject to processes of rationalisation and degradation. Qualitative data, on the restructuring of local government, illustrates the argument. Senior officers' responses to the double-edged requirement of justifying and implementing reforms, according to a cost-quality rhetoric, are explored. The paper asks to what extent the trust relationship, embodied in the service class contract, is eroded by market principles. It suggests that divisions are emerging within the public service class between the entrepreneurial 'strategists' and the welfare professionals. It assesses the extent to which public servants continue to engage critically with processes of rationalisation and suggests that conservatism and defensiveness may be the predominant responses, particularly if expectations raised by devolution and democratic renewal are confounded by intensification and insecurity. In conclusion it contends that ongoing rationalisation and state policies to 'remoralise work' suggest that Offe (1985) and others such as Beck (1999) are over-optimistic in forecasting the demise of 'wage slavery'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role and meaning of nostalgia, and its opposite nostophobia, in the contemporary railway industry. It charts the way the past is passively and actively used by organisational actors, management as well as at the political level. It is argued that in the contemporary railway industry history and heritage are selectively annexed, negatively in order to win consent for change, and positively in an attempt to recapture the 'golden age of railways' for marketing purposes. The paper makes sense of these processes by deploying a framework derived from various writers on issues connected with nostalgia and the emotional attachment to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have recently witnessed the emergence of a range of naturalistic studies concerned with work, interaction and technology in complex organisational environments. In this paper we examine a seemingly individual and isolated activity, which involves the use of relatively basic technology to guide a vehicle in accord with a highly regulated signalling system. The paper considers the ways in which operating a vehicle is systematically co-ordinated with the actions of others. These actions, whether by passengers or colleagues, are only 'visible' by virtue of various technologies; technologies that offer restricted and even distorted access to people and their conduct. In one sense, therefore, the essay is concerned with explicating the socially organised and interactionally sensitive 'intelligence' which features in the day-to-day work of drivers on London Underground; a rapid urban transport system which carries more than a million passengers a day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders the possibility for unification of sociological theory by the rational choice model. This is induced by the claims of rational choice theorists that extending this model from economics to sociology can be conducive to establishing a unifying paradigm and method to be given 'paradigmatic privilege' within sociology. The outcome of such an extension of the economic approach has been 'sociological rational choice theory' or 'rational action theory for sociology'. Within sociology, such a rational choice model is regarded as a major theoretical or/and methodological innovation and thus a 'new' promise for sociology's unification. Overall, the paper suggests that these 'ecumenistic' claims of rational choice theorists cannot be taken at face value since they are predicated upon dubious views of the relations between economy and society and between economics and sociology, including inadequate interpretations of neoclassical economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article emerges from a project that examines the relationship between forms of labour, in the context of managerially directed organisational and cultural change, in a light engineering firm on Tyneside. This material is situated within contemporary and historical accounts of workplace interaction. The paper will address the new emphasis on culture and its manipulation, that is increasingly forming a locus of interest in current literature. Whilst stressing that there is much in these accounts that was common in earlier writing the paper draws out what is distinctive about contemporary concerns. These issues are developed in the empirical account through an analysis of the manipulation of difference along the axes of gender, age and skill. The findings are located within a wider framework of the shift from post figurative to cofigurative culture. In this view there is a reworking of both the substantive relations between generations and in the form of relationships of age and gender. The result of this analysis is an account which, whilst stressing the radical change that has taken place nevertheless recognises that even the 'cleansed culture' is subject to contradictions stemming from the employment relationship. Further, that within the context of the social reproduction of the workplace, shopfloor experience is chronically implicated in the construction of autonomous cultures. As such the analysis provides a more positive interpretation of resistance to such change than that available in many recent accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines relations between 'tinkers', or 'Travellers', and settled society in Ireland since the late nineteenth century. It argues that the racialisation and defamation of Travellers then reached new heights with the development of a rural fundamentalist nationalism which fused with Social Darwinism and caused Travellers to be treated as social anachronisms in an increasingly settled and sanitised society. This in turn meant that Travellers were located outside the moral and political structures of the Irish state and placed at the 'hostile' end of a continuum running from tradition to modernity. As a result of renewed modernisation through industrialisation in the 1970s through to the 1990s, new strategies of social closure have emerged which are causing Travellers to be located at the outer edges of Irish society. The paper finally suggests that the constant structuring and restructuring of economy and space in Ireland have fostered 'fortress' mentalities here. This is aggravating divisions, both at national and local level, between subaltern Travellers and hegemonic sectors in Irish society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as its starting point the 'irrational passion for dispassionate rationality', so prevalent in Western thought and practice, this paper traces, through the emotions, current debates surrounding the ambivalent nature of modernity as both order and chaos, conformity and transgression. Reason and emotions are not, it is argued, antithetical to one another, rather there is a need to fundamentally rethink existing epistemological models and ontological ways of being and knowing. These issues are traced, on the one hand, through the increasing rationalisation of Western society, the latest expression of which, it is claimed, is a new form of 'postemotionalism', and, on the other hand, through the resurgence of more Dionysian values and collective forms of effervescence. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of these contradictory features and the corporeal dilemmas which underpin them, speculating on the 'fate' of emotions at the turn of the century in the light of current postmodern theorising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the character of the debate about 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' methods in feminist social science. The 'paradigm argument' has been central to feminist social science methodology; the feminist case against 'malestream' methods and in favour of qualitative methods has paralleled other methodological arguments within social science against the unthinking adoption by social science of a natural science model of inquiry. The paper argues in favour of rehabilitating quantitative methods and integrating a range of methods in the task of creating an emancipatory social science. It draws on the history of social and natural science, suggesting that a social and historical understanding of ways of knowing gives us the problem not of gender and methodology, but of the gendering of methodology as itself a social construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The workplace has been extensively and variously evaluated as an environment which--like others--contains risks to health. This paper unpacks such risk assessment by problematising the relation between hazards and risks. Three positions are set out. In the first (materialist or realist), risks map directly onto underlying real hazards. In the second (constructionist or culturalist), hazards are natural, while risks are social constructions. In the final (postmodern) position, both risks and hazards are seen as constructions. The paper goes on to consider the implications of the latter position for assessment of risks in the workplace, arguing that risks are often discounted in the on-going choices made by people who do some things called 'work' and evaluate their continuity of sense-of-self as their 'health'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]