Search

School architecture is often taken for granted both in use (where it is naturalized) and in writing on education policy (tending to feature simply as policy setting.) Built policy instead points up the active and ongoing role of the material environment in shaping education. From financing and procurement to the design of individual classrooms, the paper works across architecture, sociology and policy studies to clarify the relationship between different dimensions of physical and social space and so provide a useful theoretical ground for future work. What is special about school-building and architecture that enables them to do policy? How are they used to do it? By whom? From city planners to students, a range of actors use different space-organizing resources to attempt the instantiation of (and challenges to) policy in built form. These processes are explored first theoretically, then empirically through a new Academy school in England. The paper deepens understanding of what policy is, emphasizing its intimate if taken for granted spatial characteristics, its ongoing-ness in built form and its travel by means of circulating images of buildings and spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out the theoretical and methodological approach of a study of the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest in relation to the Trust schools initiative in England. Drawing on the discourse theoretical approach of Laclau and Mouffe the paper argues that the politics of consensus associated with New Labour reconfigures the field of politics, closing down legitimate democratic space. Building on this approach and that of policy sociology the paper outlines how the researchers seeks to address the following questions – if the space for legitimate democratic debate is so severely constrained then how does a social democratic government deal with the kind of opposition that Labour faced in relation to Trust schools? How do governments persuade dissident citizens to support unpopular policies? How are citizens mobilised to support such policies? This also raises questions about how, in such a restricted political space, do those questioning or resisting such policies, engage in the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interests? The reconfiguration of the field of politics and what this means for the constitution of legitimate democratic debate is the object of study of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical construct of social capital remains contested in terms of conceptualisation and measurement. The present paper follows the convention of distinguishing between trust, bonding, bridging and linking social capital, to conceptualise how religious communities promote and develop social capital within a specifically religious cohort. Developing this construct of religious social capital further, this paper proposes a measure for use specifically among religious communities to assess individual-level social capital. The Williams Religious Social Capital Index (WRSCI) provides a unidimensional construct of religious social capital taking into consideration the four elements highlighted. A sample of 720 members of six cathedral congregations in England and Wales completed a battery of items concerning social capital. Factor analysis procedures produced a 12-item index of religious social capital. Reliability analyses demonstrated that this index achieved satisfactory levels of internal reliability consistency. Construct validity was supported by the clear association between frequency of attendance and levels of assessed religious social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate social mobility processes affecting the lives of 15 young adults in Loughborough (aged 20-30) who experienced poverty and disadvantage as children. Using biographical narrations, the interactions between the labour market, welfare, educational institutions and familial relationships will form the framework for assessing the applicability of poverty 'transmission' theories and mechanisms. The paper's concluding comments highlight the complexity and vulnerability of young people's lives, reveal the structural and individual constraints on social mobility and address the role that institutions play in constructing the past and current life experiences of those young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the treatment of ontology offered by critical realism. It addresses much of the material elaborated upon in two editions of this journal. Three main groups of criticisms are made here of the critical realist treatment of open systems. It is argued that critical realism, particularly in the project in economics emanating from Cambridge, UK, tends to define systems in terms of events. This definition is shown to be problematic. The exemplar of a closed system provided by critical realism of the solar system is shown to be flawed in that it is not closed according to the closure conditions identified by critical realism. Second, the negativity of the definitions adopted is problematic for heterodox traditions attempting to build positive programmes. Furthermore, the dualism of the definitions is also inconsistent with Dow's approach, which has ramifications for the coherence of post Keynesianism. Third, the definitions tend to polarize open and closed systems and ignore the degrees of openness evident in reality. The polarization of systems leads to polarized methodology and unsustainable arguments to reject so-called “closed-systems methods.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new paradigm of early childhood allows for the construction of the child as active agents able to comment on their own lives. Historically children have been constructed using divergent discourses as either beings or becomings. More recently they have been seen as complementary and a further temporal state of having been allows for a richer description of the child. In play and role-play, the three temporal states can be observed and appear to inform the children’s understanding of complex world structures. This paper reports the research that was conducted in two Early Childhood Education and Care settings in England. The research was concerned with young children’s experiences of play and role-play in their early childhood setting. Observations and conferences demonstrate the ways in which the temporal states are established in their play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the significant characteristics of many poor neighbourhoods is that the schools which serve them are characterised by poor performance in terms of attainment and other measures. This feature is seen as critical in the reinforcement of disadvantage, its transmission between generations, and as a barrier to social integration. Government policies in the UK have increasingly targeted improved school standards and performance, while other policies on urban regeneration and housing may interact with this issue. This paper examines the particular role of homeownership tenure alongside the other factors (notably poverty) which affect school attainment. After reviewing existing literature it presents new analyses of attainment based on linked pupil, school and small area-level datasets for selected areas in both England and Scotland. This provides some evidence to support the contention that homeownership has an additional effect on school attainment, beyond that explained by poverty and other associated variables, although there is some uncertainty about how separable these effects are at school or neighbourhood levels. It also points out the significant role of changing tenure mix in housing regeneration in transforming the overall profile of neighbourhoods and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. H. Halsey has been a professorial fellow (now emeritus) at Nuffield College in Oxford University since his appointment in 1962 as Director of Oxford’s Department of Social and Administrative Studies. This paper explores his contribution to education throughout his career, as an academic and as a national and international policy advisor, and the interface between these two. Halsey worked in what he termed the ‘political arithmetic’ tradition throughout his career, with the dual tasks of documenting the state of society, and addressing social and political issues through ‘experimental social administration’, that is the field testing of social innovation and social policy in advance of national implementation. The paper focuses on Halsey’s ‘activist’ role in policy development in the UK and internationally, through his work on educational reform at the OECD and as research advisor to Crosland at the DES with the introduction of comprehensive schooling in the UK and in particular the Educational Priority Areas (EPA) programme, and traces through the impact of his work. His major contribution as one of the leading sociologists of education in the second half of the 20 th century is also discussed, but the wider impact of this aspect of his work requires a much more extensive assessment than is possible in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes a review of gentrification and global city research to develop an appreciation of the nature of gentrification taking place in central areas of Leeds in the UK. The literature review establishes an uneven and dominant set of social, economic and cultural relations between the city-region of London and the South East with other regions in the UK. It is proposed that these sets of relations will impact upon socio-spatial developments in regional cities in the UK and will provide the dynamics leading contemporary gentrification in regional financial centres. Using Leeds as a case study, quantitative and qualitative data are presented to develop an appreciation of the internal and external dynamics driving contemporary 'developer-led' gentrification in Leeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kari Polanyi Levitt has commented that her father's writing was met with a 'deafening silence' in England, a silence which she suggests is 'yet to be explained'. Given The Great Transformation was purposefully, situated in England Polanyi Levitt's point is an interesting one, and one which still deserves attention. But the last two decades have witnessed an intensification of interest in Karl Polanyi's methodological approach and theoretical insights, from England as well as elsewhere, and representing a range of disciplines. This raises a string of associated questions: interest from who? Why now? And how? Further we could ask: Does this new interest have the potential to redress the Polanyi Levitt charge without falling prey to an opposite one of misusing or abusing the Polanyi legacy? This paper contributes to the much larger agenda of examining in a serious way the usefulness and applicability of Polanyi's key ideas and methods, particularly as they apply to the burgeoning interest in markets and exchange within New Economic Sociology (NES). A sub-set of this agenda is to explore whether Polanyian insights provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of competitive processes and innovation than is currently available within Economics, Sociology or indeed Economic Sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is the standard qualification undertaken by pupils in England and Wales at the end of year 11 (age 15–16). GCSEs continue to play an important and central role in young people's educational and employment pathways. Within the sociology of youth, there has been recent interest in documenting the lives and educational experiences of ‘ordinary’ young people. In this paper, we analyse school GCSE attainment at the subject area level. This is an innovative approach and our motivation is to explore substantively interesting patterns of attainment that might be concealed in analyses of overall attainment or attainment within individual subjects. We analyse data from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales using a latent variable approach. The modelling process uncovered four distinctive latent educational groups. One latent group is characterised by high levels of overall attainment, whereas another latent group is characterised by poor GCSE performance. There are two latent groups with moderate or ‘middle’ levels of GCSE attainment. These two latent groups have similar levels of agglomerate attainment, but one group performs better in science and the other performs better in arts GCSEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on Julia Brannen’s contribution to the development of theory and methods for intergenerational research. The discussion is contextualised within a contemporary ‘turn to time’ within sociology, involving tensions and synergies between sociological and historical imagination. These questions are informed by a juxtaposition of Brannen’s four-generation study of family change and social historian Angela Davis’s exploration women and the family in England between 1945 and 2000. These two studies give rise to complementary findings, yet have distinctive orientations towards the status and treatment of sources, the role of geography in research design and limits of generalisation [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New medicines represent exciting possibilities to individual patients for improved futures through reduced morbidity, as well as the potential for disappointment where promised outcomes are not forthcoming. For healthcare systems these technologies can enable enhanced effectiveness as well as spiralling costs, depending on value-for-money offered. Amidst uncertainty over efficacy and pricing, institutions such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence have been set up to regulate the cost-effectiveness of new products. The increased transparency of this new regulation, combined with inescapable uncertainties, leads to the heightened politicisation of decision-making and an insidious subjectivity beneath a veneer of rational-bureaucracy. This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the influence of hope within such contexts. Conceptualised here as ideological, affective and prone to lapsing into trust, hope is considered to shape the lifeworld-background of regulatory decisions and mask uncertainty around effectiveness. These processes challenge regulator legitimacy and effectiveness within polycentric regimes, through the distortion of communication and the manipulation of blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws parallels between the market trend in the English NHS and Polanyi's (1957) The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press: Boston (originally published in 1944 in the United States as The Great Transformation, Rinehart: and Co: New York, and in 1945 in England as Origins of our time, Gollancz: London) account of how the rise of markets provokes a self-protective counter-reaction that tries to re-embed economic relations in social relations. We report findings from a qualitative study of NHS contracting, which examines the recent move to harder-edged contracts with greater use of financial penalties and incentives. In practice, use of these techniques tended to be confined to nationally-mandated sections of the contract rather than emerging from local bilateral agreements, and when things went wrong the parties relied more on cooperative behaviour than on the provisions of the contract to find solutions. Making the current contracting system work depended more on existing relational networks than on the incentive structures created by recent 'marketisation' initiatives, but the inability of the market to evolve as expected has encouraged policy makers to publish plans for further radical reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors describe the incremental approach to the marketisation of the English National Health Service (NHS) since the introduction of an 'internal market' in 1990 until the 2010 White Paper, 'Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS', and the subsequent Health and Social Care Bill published in January 2011. The introduction of a competitive market for a universal, tax-financed health system requires fundamental changes in regulation in order that market bureaucracy can be substituted for direct management. The components of reform are insufficiently captured by the framework of hierarchies and networks in new public management theories of decentralisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of UK mental health practitioners' experiences of working with the contested condition, dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD). Our interviews focused on the issues of treatability, risk assessment and decision-making in multi-disciplinary teams. We discuss the approach of values-based medicine (VBM) as a useful framework for interpreting the data: respondents cited both explicit values (based on occupational training) and implicit values (based on personal beliefs and subjective perceptions). There was evidence of conflicting values -- within individuals, between occupational groups, and between individuals in occupational groups -- which led to widespread uncertainty and caution about whether and how those with 'dangerous' personality disorders could be treated. These disputes were resolved by a 'slide to pragmatism', whereby practitioners, reluctantly acknowledging their own empowerment in the process, sought to make whichever choice was least risky for their own professional reputation, and most pragmatic, given the resources available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the policy of promoting 'mixed communities' in the UK context. It describes the various policy instruments available for the pursuance of this goal and sets out the assumed benefits and underlying mechanisms intended to deliver beneficial outcomes, especially for disadvantaged areas. It goes on to analyse the effects of housing tenures and of housing tenure mix upon the incidence of serious problems and of the desire for local service improvements within neighbourhoods in England, using the Survey of English Housing. The findings indicate that the level of social renting is a more important influence upon neighbourhood conditions than the degree of tenure mixing. Furthermore, the findings provide more support for tenure dispersal policies than for tenure dilution strategies such as promoting a modest degree of owner occupation on social housing estates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transfer from primary to secondary school in England and Wales is a status passage, from child to teenager. Research on the anxieties and anticipations surrounding that transfer over a 30-year period shows continuities and discontinuities. As well as the contrast of sociological approaches, the perceptions of children in 1977–1978 and 2003–2004 are compared to explore whether their anxieties and anticipations have changed. The transfer studies conducted by Galton in the 1970s are shown to have revealed concerns and enthusiasms among children that are an enduring feature of British pupils’ lives. Two different sociological approaches to researching children are contrasted, one current in the 1970s, the other predominant in the new century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The following sociologically orientated study explores how two physical education (PE) teachers at two secondary schools in North West England construct the notion of 'healthiness', and how this informs their health-based PE practice. The research process was influenced by figurational sociology [Elias, N. (1978). What is sociology? New York, NY: Columbia University Press], and the use of in-depth, reflexive interviews allowed emergent beliefs of the teachers in relation to 'healthiness' to be made evident, as contextual elements of their lived-in world surfaced. Within health-based PE, the teachers embodied a 'healthy role model' to match dominant PE discourses, whereby teachers must work on their capacity to help pupils learn, and work on their own 'healthy bodies' simultaneously. It is suggested that notions of 'healthiness' constructed by PE teachers develop within the social contexts of their personal and professional lives as complex spaces that provide dilemmas, opportunities and possibilities within which the teacher constructs, adapts and embodies a 'healthy role model' to enhance both long and short term (self) interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rivalries in ‘mob’ or ‘folk’ football were some of the first and most intense in the game, illustrating that such feelings pre-dated the game’s modern form. The parishes of St. Peter’s and All Saints in Derby and the areas represented by the Up’Ards and Down’Ards in Ashbourne defined early football’s highly competitive nature in both the city itself and in the county of Derbyshire. However, whilst the ‘conflict’ in the city has not survived, its Ashbourne counterpart has remained and thrived. Furthermore, the intensity of the rivalry in the city of Derby has provided a ready depiction of local hostility in sporting contexts. But, what were the real reasons for the Derby spectacle’s demise and Ashbourne’s sustained popularity? This essay is underpinned by the figurational sociology developed by Norbert Elias, noting in particular how the nineteenth century Western European ‘civilizing process’ played a crucial part in events, at the same time minimizing the effect of industrial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst 'biographical disruption' remains important for explaining how people rebuild biography following the onset of chronic illness, it does not self-evidently explain the problem of managing a fluctuating chronic condition such as non-specific low back pain. Chronic illness rarely leads to long-term improvement; the trajectory is not always linear, and sudden or gradual improvements alongside deterioration are commonly experienced. In the case of low back pain, self-management often involves utilisation of non-pharmaceutical approaches, personal resources for accommodating pain and disability, as well as managing symptoms with clinical treatments to relieve pain. Such a multifaceted approach -- not only concerned with the reduction of symptoms -- shifts focus beyond the 'disease' state and a single point of disruption, drawing attention to the use of 'health maintenance actions' to facilitate a proactive response to illness management. We propose this new approach as an alternative way of understanding the experience of patients with fluctuating health conditions such as low back pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an international move towards home treatment of acute mental health difficulties. This has been based upon trial data which do little to develop understanding of how or why this approach is as effective as it seems to be. In order to explore this question the study interviewed patients who had recently used the services of a crisis resolution home treatment (CRHT) team in the English East Midlands. Triangulated parallel qualitative analyses of 33 semi-structured interviews conducted by service users trained in research techniques demonstrated that successful CRHT reflected practitioners' ability to provide clients with a sense of feeling safe, accepted and understood. Unhelpful outcomes followed when participants did not experience such unconditionally supportive relationships. These findings further endorse the primacy of relational factors in mental health practice. They are discussed in relation to the Dodo Bird verdict upon psychological therapies and systemic difficulties acknowledging an inconvenient truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study, designed as a pilot, aimed to explore lay perceptions of air quality from participants who were selected to represent three different social categories: age; health status; and geographical location. We compared responses from younger with older participants who held memories of about air quality prior to the Clean Air Act (1956). We also explored possible differences in perception due to health status by including some participants who identified themselves as having asthma. Finally, we compared possible differences in perception between two economically and geographically distinct areas of Greater Nottingham in England. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 22 participants recruited through schools, church groups and residential homes. Our findings suggest that no air (apart from the seaside) is perceived as automatically safe and therefore healthy. We found that perceptions of 'good' air seem to vary with age and health whereas experiences of air quality are associated with socio-economic status. Perceptions of air are shown to be suffused with historical significance, as well as embodying projections embedded from within the local environment and material context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Review of History is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the social history related to apocalyptic prophecy in 1844, Norfolk, England. It mentioned that in 1844, there were two men who returned from the U.S. have attracted some women about their prophecy of the forthcoming apocalypse, because of the people's sinfulness, Sabbath breaking and alcoholism. In addition, the author explores the origin of the prophecy in Norfolk, which was being rooted in a connection of cultural influences, that examine the prophecy, people's reaction and their apocalyptic imagery and perception of the circumstances.

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much research into community, racism and racialization has been conducted in metropolitan urban settings. It is only recently that race in rural areas has received some attention. A key theme of existing research on race in rural areas has focused on the issue of racial violence. Drawing on interviews with a variety of ethnic minority groups in East Kent the article will focus on broader issues of race and ethnicity in a semi-rural area. The study explores the meaning of race, ethnicity and belonging in the partially rural setting of East Kent, UK. The article will raise issues around the intersection of the regional and global, the problematic notion of ‘community’, and the fluidity of racialization in a setting in which many ethnic minorities were transitory and mobile. We conclude by highlighting the ways in which community, racism and racialization are embedded in differentiated discourses and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samples drawn from marriage registers in Birmingham and rural Norfolk, England, which report the occupational status for both the groom and his father, were matched with the 1851 and 1881 English censuses, which also contain occupational information. After performing several checks for selection bias, the author concludes: First, although most occupational mobility took place within 10 years of marriage--when the groom was roughly between the ages of 25 and 35--some continued after he turned 50. Second, approximately 35 percent of the men in each area eventually had an occupational status different from their fathers, and about 30 percent changed occupational status over their careers, belying the stereotype of impenetrable walls between classes in Victorian England. Third, upward occupational mobility seemed to slow in both regions as the period under consideration progressed. Fourth, although occupational mobility rates overall were comparable in these urban and rural areas, it was much easier for an individual to rise from an unskilled to a skilled status in Birmingham than it was in Norfolk. Fifth, and perhaps most surprising, literacy had a greater effect on social mobility in rural Norfolk than in urban Birmingham. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses and comments on the sudden closure of the Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) at the University of Birmingham in July 2002. The origins of cultural studies are delineated and its reception within and outside Birmingham University is tracked. The relation to sociology and its own 'cultural turn' is observed. Explanations for the closure of CSS -- amidst the enormous popularity and influence of cultural studies - are sought in the ongoing stresses and strains influencing universities in the current era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes an approach to understanding changes in political responses to crime in England and Wales over the last third of the twentieth century and developments in criminological knowledge over the same period. To explore the association between these in some empirical detail, we argue, would provide a historical-sociological understanding that is currently lacking, notwithstanding Garland's significant intervention in The Culture of Control . We take issue with some aspects of Garland's account, on both methodological and substantive grounds, and delineate certain distinctions between his 'history of the present' and the historically situated hermeneutics that we favour. The latter, we suggest, can be more attentive to particular political and intellectual struggles that have had a formative bearing on the current field and, as such, offer new perspectives on the position of crime and punishment in contemporary political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features the Qualitative Data Archival Resource Centre which is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex in England. The main aims of the Centre are to locate, assess and document qualitative data and arrange for their deposit in suitable public archives. It also aims to disseminate information about and encourage the re-use of these data. One major function of the Centre is to maintain a database with information on the extent and availability of qualitative research material from a range of social science disciplines.

This article presents findings about English, French, and Swedish mobility tables from the early 1970s. The reanalysis shows that the vertical dimension of mobility is stronger and more autonomous than one would conclude from earlier analyses. It is necessary to introduce several parameters for class inheritance in order to fit the data, and such parameters account for more of the association between class origins and destinations than does the vertical aspect of mobility, but income and occupational prestige do not help to explain it. The findings suggest complementarities between vertical and non-vertical models of class mobility. The data for England and Wales and Sweden were rendered comparable in terms of a nine-category class schema developed by the classification of English occupations. Social Fluidity in Industrial Nations developed models of class mobility that assumed nominal measurement, while Vertical and Nonvertical Class Mobility combined a model of vertical mobility. The constriction of the English, French, and Swedish classifications initiated a round of comparative mobility analysis, based upon national surveys of the early 1970s. Such tables were constructed from unit record data, yielding greater detail and stronger claims to comparability than many cross-national comparisons.