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This article reacts to Ian Craib' response to papers by Stevi Jackson and by Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden devoted to emotions in the May 1993 issue of Sociology. First, Craib suggests that sociological commentary on the emotions is as crass and insensitive as psychoanalytic discussions of society, and that a sociology of emotions might restrict rather than extend people's understanding of emotional life. Secondly, the present authors relate that although they recognize that Craib's main charge is directed at the two specific papers mentioned, he is nonetheless in danger of treating these as representative of the sociology of emotions more generally. They note that Craib is guilty of a methodological sin: namely that one cannot simply generalize from two case studies to the field as a whole. The present authors' next point concerns the issue of stereotypes--a criticism which is especially directed at Duncombe and Marsden's paper. The present authors relate that on the one hand they agree with Craib that stereotypes are not particularly helpful in characterizing (post)modern social life. Fourthly, Craib asserts that whilst sociological concepts such as work, power or equality might be extremely useful for thinking about the economy, or political or social structures, it still has to be established that they are appropriate for talking about emotional life.

How people refer and how they infer are key empirical questions for the sociology of knowledge. In the present paper, I suggest that in the course of social interaction much referring activity is self-referring, and much inference self-validating. This occurs to the extent that our inductive inferences become permeated with feedback-loops or `bootstraps': I offer a simple general form of representation to assist in thinking about bootstrapped induction. In the second half of the paper I indicate some of the interesting consequences of the existence of bootstrapped induction: I cite the self-fulfilling prophesy as a special case where the induction is destructive, but emphasize the role of bootstrapped induction in constituting stable institutional forms. Finally I raise the question as to how far the bootstraps can be eliminated from patterns of inference: I suggest that this problem might be best attacked by sociologists of natural science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the community situation of shipyard workers on Tyneside, certain aspects of their orientations to work and general social perspectives, and the relationship of these to each other and to the structure of social relations at work. In terms of their community situation shipyard workers would seem to come close to Lockwood's traditional proletarian type of worker. There is evidence to suggest, however, that these workers' social perspectives are not at all clearly traditional proletarian. The explanation for this is found, at least m part, m the much greater complexity of social relations at work than are accounted for in the model of traditional proletarianism. The paper suggests that existing typologies of the orientations and social perspectives of workers need to be refined by more detailed studies of the structural and relational aspects of both work and community situations. The paper concludes with a brief examination of changes in both industry and community and the likely effect of these on the social perspectives of shipbuilding workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN A RECENT paper Mr. Runciman concludes by inviting replies to his argument that it is logically and conceptually useful to employ the tripartite distinction between `class' `status' and `power' in the analysis of social stratification. Mr. Runciman does not, of course, deny the existence of links between these three dimensions, but suggests that such links must be seen contingent empirical relationships and not necessary logical ones. I hope that the following paper will provide such a reply. It must be clear that the following criticism is directed, in the main, to those parts of the paper in which Mr. Runciman is concerned with the logical and conceptual problem. The essay in question also contains a clear and valuable assessment of the problems encountered in any attempt to measure the three types of inequality. In the first part of the paper I propose to give a critical assessment of certain central aspects of Mr. Runciman's argument and, in the second part, I will put forward a very brief formulation of what I consider to be a more meaningful alternative view of the relationships between class, status, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]