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The paper critically reviews some recent contributions to the debate about the nature of race and racism. It questions the analytic and empirical divorce between race and racism for which Floya Anthias and others have argued. It suggests that disconnecting race and racism while insisting on the retention of a concept of race could well give rise to a view that race is, after all, a valid scientific concept denoting a real biological division of the human species. This paper argues, instead, for a focus on race as a social relationship rather than a category of human being. It suggests that race and racism are inextricably linked and that, moreover, recently discovered new racisms depend for their power on the continued influence of biologically determinist modes of conceptualising human difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Pinch and Clark's recent article on the strategies of market pitchers for managing local economic reasoning. We suggest that their research is illustrative of the lack of seriousness and relevance to social issues of a small proportion of sociological studies. In developing this argument, the paper considers the methodology, ethical issues and substantive content of the article. We conclude by noting that, whilst the study of the work of market pitchers is clearly an important research topic, such study should have regard to local social and economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of technological change is now well established. However, much of the sociological work in this area has been concerned with the identification of international/national general trends or tendencies towards either deskilling or enskilling. As yet relatively little attention has been devoted to the detailed ethnography of the effects of technological change as experienced by those directly involved. Where such work has been undertaken it tends to point towards a more complex reality than is commonly acknowledged by the more quantitative or general theories. Using data from a qualitative study of employment relations in the general printing industry this paper seeks to set detailed micro-level analysis within this wider context of technological change, thereby drawing attention to those areas of diversity and complexity which may be overlooked by more general theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]