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This paper addresses the somewhat neglected topic of envy and its relationship to education and social inequality in Britain. Drawing on the work of Rawls, Runciman and Crosland, the paper proposes a distinction between envy as a vice and ‘justified resentment’ aroused by perceived injustices in the social distribution of primary goods, including education. Various pejorative uses of the term ‘the politics of envy’ in UK politics are examined. The conditions necessary for a politics of justified resentment are then analysed. Current developments in higher education in the UK are discussed with reference to signs of the emergence of new social resentments among the relatively highly educated. Prospects for a wider politics of justified resentment are assessed in relation to a range of emergent policies and priorities of New Labour in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper links the history of educational research in the United Kingdom to changes in the philosophy and practice of science. Its thesis is the claim that the lifetime of the British Journal of Educational Studies corresponds to a notable ferment in the social sciences, sometimes characterised as 'post-positivism'or 'post-cartesianism'. After the Second World War, the philosophy of science was subjected to a series of challenging criticisms, many of them directed against so-called logical positivist ideas developed in Germany and Austria during the 1920s and transported, often by refugees, to the UK and elsewhere in the following decade. To accommodate these criticisms, social scientists grappled with new ideas, methods and assumptions. Over the last 50 years, the history of educational research — and educational studies — has been deeply marked by the circulation of these criticisms, by efforts made to surmount them, and by new controversies fostered in the wake of such revisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been a re-appraisal within political science of the characteristics of various kinds of public policy failure. At the same time, the political significance of education has grown in most liberal democracies. The present paper examines public policy in British education since the mid-1970s and asks: What goes wrong in policy-making and when does manageable failure slide into full-scale crisis? Various episodes of policy are explored and set against the theoretical framework developed by Mark Bovens and Paul t'Hart in an attempt to distinguish those policies in recent British education that have been controversial, those that have been manageable failures and those that turned into disabling fiascos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I take issue with the claim of Ozga (1992) that because of the poor quality of many recent texts on education management, and their lack of a sociological perspective, they are not proper material for analysis in the British Journal of Sociology of Education. I argue that sociological analysis of such texts is an urgent priority because they have gained credibility among education practitioners and provide a spurious legitimacy to new right policy directions. This general argument is illustrated by focussing on four specific limitations of one of the most popular current texts on education management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the impact of changes in social science doctor of philosophy degree, instigated by the Economic and Social Research Council in Great Britain. Imposition of a more restrictive time limit for the submission of doctoral theses; Introduction of compulsory training courses in research methods for students.

The years 1914-18 form what is, in some respects, the "dark ages" of British historical demography. Studies of European population movements in this century have either ignored the war or have dismissed it as unimportant in the long term. The reticence of historical demographers about the war is surely related to the statistical confusion which plagues studies of the 1914-18 conflict In the aftermath of the war, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sponsored a series of books on the economic and social history of the war. Most military and naval reports are also afflicted with substantial inaccuracies. Every combatant nation published several sets of statistics relating to its own losses. Unfortunately, no two sets are identical. The only alternative to using these general estimates is to trace the war losses of each of the three armed forces. What we need are sources which distinguish between the military effort of Britain and that of other Allied countries. If they record the incidence of casualties over time, and if they distribute British casualties by theatre of operation, by branch of service, and by rank, the reliability of the total can be checked against other records.

This article looks at a selection of significant episodes in the history of organizational and management research, and the policies in this field of the UK Social Science Research Council. The episodes begin in the Council's early days in the mid-1960s, and run through its high-profile efforts to improve management research at the end of the 1980s to the start of a new initiative sanctioned by the Council in 2001. They have been chosen because they are important milestones in the development of the field. They also illustrate a central issue which has been evident throughout the period: whether management research should be framed as essentially different or merely seen as carrying some sort of deficit or remedial gap with respect to the other 'founding disciplines'. They also illustrate an important dilemma facing the funding agency in its longstanding if erratic attempts to engage with the processes through which social science research is used - namely the tension between the goals and rhetoric of excellence and relevance. One episode which illustrates these issues particularly well is that of the Open Door Scheme, a radical SSRC innovation in the 1970s which encouraged non-academic participation in the selection of management research topics. Changes within the funding agency over the same period are crucial for this story. We reflect on their relevance for the episodic developments within management research. From these points of enquiry, we derive a historical, institutional analysis of the interactions between public research funding and management research, of the interplay between the worlds of practice and research, and the ways in which a dialectic has been constructed between concepts of use and relevance, on the one hand, and excellence and rigour on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the differences between the American and British International Political Economy (IPE). The author stated that IPE is about the complex linkages between economic and political activity at the level of international affairs. The dominant version of IPE is developed in the U.S., where most scholarship tends to hew close to the norms of conventional social science. In Great Britain, IPE is less wedded to scientific method and more ambitious in its agenda.

This article presents results of a research project examining the effects of social capital on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance. The first main part of the article is a review of literature of relevance to the study. The second part reports the main quantitative results of research on the role of social capital in SME markets in the UK. It compares SME performance and social capital usage across UK regions, with samples stratified according to degrees of knowledge intensiveness of firms and economic status of their area. It shows, perhaps surprisingly, that for many SMEs the "market" is more or less wholly constituted by social capital. The third main part of the article investigates in depth a number of representative and illustrative cases of SMEs deploying social capital in distinctive ways within markets. It shows that without social networks most firms cannot function in markets. It shows high performance firms to be the most intensive users of social capital. This research on social capital underlines the distorted nature of mainstream (neoclassical) economic theory by demonstrating "relational embeddedness" to be an important indicator of SME performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years social economists have been utilizing a broader than conventional perspective for examining the behavior of economic agents. While traditionally the focus has been on the one-dimensional maximizing “individual with this newer approach the focus is on the multidimensional “person.” Thus the name “Personalist Economics.” Long ago the British writer Thomas Carlyle devoted volumes of pages to the sorts of topics and issues that are prominent in the personalist approach. Here are explored some areas of overlap between Carlyle's and today's personalist perspective, and some questions that might be raised about the two approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manichaeus, according to the Oxford dictionary, was a Persian philosopher of the third century A.D., who believed in dualism, the coexistence of good and evil, with Satan coequal with God. The author suggests that economics likewise has a heavy dose of dualism, though he hesitates to characterize views that differ from his as evil or satanic. The author wonders if there are any absolute answers in economics and his answer to most questions are "It depends." An example of Manichaeanism can be seen in Great Britain when, after parliamentary investigations in the nineteenth century, a legislation was enacted requiring inspection of ships before they left port, checking their loading and general seaworthiness, as too many ship owners had sent fully insured vessels off with subsequent loss of ship, cargo, and crew. No legislation was needed in Norway because ship owners, as the Scottish bankers were alleged to do, regulated themselves to a high standard. According to the author life itself is Manichaean. It has two rules, to look before one leaps and he who hesitates is lost.

This article discusses the sociological dimensions of early years education in Great Britain. The article begins by clarifying the terminology associated with early years education and outlining the diversity of early childhood provision. It then proceeds to explore the manner in which several government initiatives are inextricably linked to a wide range of issues including equality issues, political issues related to the nature of the relationship between children, families and the state and philosophies and ideologies of early childhood education, theories about child psychology, changes in employment patterns, the economic situation of families and the influence of views relating to child-rearing and women's role in society. Most practitioners in Great Britain currently use the term "early years education" to describe the phase of education which concerns children aged between 3 and 8. The adoption of the term acknowledges the view that young children below the age of 8 have clearly definable needs and characteristics and, furthermore, that the education of young children should be viewed in terms of a continuum from birth to 7 rather than as occurring in discrete stages: at home, in nursery and in an infant class.

This article presents information on the criticism faced by the public schools education curriculum in the 1860s in Great Britain. In general critics found the curriculum of the public schools inadequate in two ways. In the first place it was too narrow. In the second place it was irrelevant to the new industrial society which had established itself. It was inevitable therefore that much of the debate should concern itself with the importance of expanding the curriculum through the development of the Sciences and the so called Modern subjects such as History and Geography. And it was likewise inevitable that considerable attention should be paid to the role of the mother tongue as a necessary field of study within a reformed curriculum. The article further informs that the debate on the mother tongue took place through Commission, through pamphlet, through speech, through editorial, with great vigor over a whole decade. The author comments on the clarity and insistence with which the failure to teach the mother tongue was picked out as a major deficiency of the school curriculum and the obscurity and half-heartedness of any practical proposals to remedy the deficiency.

This article explores the significance of ideas, values and collective representations in shaping political economy by examining the case of free trade in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Its aim is to tie a historical perspective on the importance of political culture to the current methodological debate about political economy in the social sciences. The opening critique of sectoral approaches is used to move the focus from material interests and economistic method to cultural significance and the interpretative framework underlying free trade. Shifting the attention to the knowledge of historical actors themselves reveals the formative role of ideology, historical memory and political language in constructing free trade as a collective good. Free trade was associated with a historical vision of national identity and societal self-development, and a moral ideal of the consumer, rather than with free market capitalism. The discussion concludes with some general thoughts on the importance of giving greater attention to political culture in the study of political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Recognising that one way to address the logistical and safety considerations of research conducted in humanitarian emergencies is to use internet communication technologies to facilitate interviews online, this article explores some practical and methodological considerations inherent to qualitative online interviewing. Method: Reflections from a case study of a multi-site research project conducted in post-conflict countries are presented.  Synchronous online cross-language qualitative interviews were conducted in one country.  Although only a small proportion of interviews were conducted online (six out of 35), it remains important to critically consider the impact upon data produced in this way. Results: A range of practical and methodological considerations are discussed, illustrated with examples.  Results suggest that whilst online interviewing has methodological and ethical potential and versatility, there are inherent practical challenges in settings with poor internet and electricity infrastructure.  Notable methodological limitations include barriers to building rapport due to partial visual and non-visual cues, and difficulties interpreting pauses or silences. Conclusions: Drawing upon experiences in this case study, strategies for managing the practical and methodological limitations of online interviewing are suggested, alongside recommendations for supporting future research practice.  These are intended to act as a springboard for further reflection, and operate alongside other conceptual frameworks for online interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]