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This paper argues for the integration of a greater awareness of reproductive conduct into sociological theory and research. Instead of conceiving the relationship between demography and sociology as one where sociological concepts are used to illuminate demographic concerns, the paper works towards the development of a demographic perspective in sociological understandings of modern society and its historical development. The argument will be for the notion of the 'reproductive self', with a greater emphasis on understanding human identity as stretching over time and generations, rather than as self-contained, timeless and autonomous. The paper will show that such a conception of human identity enables us to improve our understanding of a range of theoretical issues, including the relation between social structure and action and the rationality of human action, as well as revealing the historical roots of a number of long-term trends which are usually treated as changes typical of the second half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

This paper evaluates Kieran Healy's recent contribution to the structure-agency debate. Supervenience, I argue, has multiple uses, it entails different ontological perspectives depending on which entities it is applied to and which conditions are placed upon subvening and supervening entities. Healy's use of supervenience is unclear. On the one hand, applied to individual--society relations it does nothing more than restate the trivial truth: no people -- no society. On the other hand, if supervenience is to be applied to structure-agent relations the consequence is extreme voluntarism. In either case it simply fails to address Healy's key concern: conceptualising social constraint. I then argue that an alternative way of grasping structural constraint in the present might be to view past-tense 'activity dependence' as 'Cambridge events'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a fourfold typology referring to different definitions of the social-structure concept, and of a critique of Giddens's and Bourdieu's strategies for transcending the divide between objectivist and subjectivist sociologies, this paper argues that rapprochement rather than transcendence is the way to overcome the existing fragmentation and for bringing closer together structural/structuralist and interpretative paradigms in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines and evaluates recent contributions by Nicos Mouzelis and Margaret Archer to the structure-agency debate. Mouzelis offers an internal reconstruction of Giddens's structuration theory; Archer an external alternative. I show that, although representing an advance on Giddens's position, Mouzelis's account fails because he relies on the former's definition of structure as comprising rules and resources. I then examine Archer's solution to the problem. I argue that her definition of activity-dependence makes her account of the relationship between agents and structures unclear. I outline an alternative account in terms of supervenience, and argue that it contains the minimum ontological claim necessary for a realist understanding of the structure-agent relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological reconceptualisations of the structure/agency divide have motivated important theoretical advances in the discipline, and the development of 'structuration theories' and 'analytical dualism' has promoted fresh thought about dominant views of the human agent. These approaches have sought to release sociology from any residual reliance on the oversocialised conception of the individual that formed part of the legacy of Parsonian sociology. It is the argument of this paper, however, that while structuration theory and analytical dualism focus on the creative powers of human reflexivity, as part of their rejection of the 'oversocialised agent', the theoretical weight they place on consciousness neglects the socially shaped somatic bases of action and structure, and results in an undersocialised view of the embodied agent. If the relationship between socialisation and agency needs analysing in terms of embodiment as much as in terms of the cognitive internalisation of norms and values, however, there are good reasons for structuration theory and analytical dualism rejecting attempts to ground subsequent notions of the embodied agent they may develop in dominant, static notions of the habitus. These minimise creativity and make it difficult to analyse social change. An important challenge for future reconceptualisations of the structure/agency divide, then, is to construct a sociology which recognises the significance for human agency of a socially shaped form of embodiment, yet which refuses to make the embodied actor a mere product of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the development of social network analysis, tracing its origins in classical sociology and its more recent formulation in social scientific and mathematical work. It is argued that the concept of social network provides a powerful model for social structure, and that a number of important formal methods of social network analysis can be discerned. Social network analysis has been used in studies of kinship structure, social mobility, science citations, contacts among members of deviant groups, corporate power, international trade exploitation, class structure, and many other areas. A review of the formal models proposed in graph theory, multidimensional scaling, and algebraic topology is followed by extended illustrations of social network analysis in the study of community structure and interlocking directorships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the contours of current, practical explanatory problems in stratification theory showing the similarity of issues in apparently diverse approaches, both Marxist and non- Marxist. There are two related purposes. The first is to show the specific nature of the current crisis, locating paninular explanatory failures. The second is to illustrate the more general issue of the way in which the central epistemology of self-conscious social science derives from and describes failures in social scientific practice. This is well illustrated in the response to current problems. Both purposes are served by Laying bare the procedures by which attempts are made to convert the contradictions inherent in explanatory failures into contradictory features of social experience which could be explained by consistent theories. Contradiction is thus, apparently, removed from its role in specifying the need for theoretical development, to encapsulating the processes by which current social arrangements are reproduced. However, we show that despite initial plausibility such attempts merely displace explanatory contradictions rather than solve them. The attempts are justified by an explicit or implicit action frame of reference which, though it is central to abstract discussions of the nature of social science, is invoked in practical social science only in circumstances of explanatory failure in an unproductive attempt to insulate the theories from the consequences of their failure. Productive social science is the resolution of contradictions in the transformation of theoretical objects and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the sociological importance of popular class imagery has gained considerable attention in recent years, much empirical research continues to interpret class identifications and conceptions of class structure as evidence of fundamental class perspectives. This paper challenges the underlying assumptions of this position by directly examining popular sentiments about class and inequality. The results show that neither nominal class affiliations, nor conceptions of class structure, encompass ideologically homogeneous perspectives. Working and, especially, middle class identifications embrace diverse class sentiments, and these discrepancies within class affiliations are reinforced by differences in political preferences. Similarly, conceptions of a dichotomous class structure are not inevitably associated with particular class sentiments any more so than are conceptions of society as a graded hierarchy. In modem societies, where many traditional, ascriptive class barriers, distinctions and privileges have been eroded, class assumes a more fluid and indefinite meaning in social consciousness, diluting the links between class affiliations, conceptions of social structure, and class sentiments proper. In essence, class sentiments cannot be taken for granted, and require systematic investigation in their own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article commences with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the `sociology of sociology' enterprise. It is argued that a careful use of the approach can be illuminating in so far as it relates perceived internal contradiction in a given work to the wider intellectual milieux. The first section deals with the way in which some writers have depicted the strains between individuals and their worlds. I then go on to examine the way in which George Brown and his co-workers have chosen to explain the relationship between the `social structure' and the aetiology of depression in women. There then follow two sections dealing with the ambivalent relationship between two strands in Brown's work a the impulse of `romanticism' and the constraint of `classicism'. This ambivalence it is argued, derives from his assumptions regarding the nature of man and scientific method. The paper concludes with an examination of the way in which an adherence to a `scientific' methodology negates the `romantic', political implications he claims for his work. 1 do not offer any alternative research strategies, but simply point out that a more self-consciously `political' theory is required with a lesser dependence on clinical classification, if we are to understand the social nature of mental illnesses such as depression in the hope of finding socio-political remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]