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This paper draws on a wide range of researches to stress the importance of social context to the sociological understanding of religious experiences. It argues that individualistic definitions fail to take into account real group experiences such as those resulting from the reforms of Vatican II. For the sociologist, it is important to explore general patterns of group experiences and the meanings attributed to them. The paper discusses some of the methodological and conceptual problems in this area before considering evidence for the patterning of religious experience according to differences of generation, gender, class, level of urbanization, institutional involvement, and status inconsistency. The paper concludes by locating religious experiences in the context of modernity. In contrast to related theories of secularization, it draws attention to the recent work of Hervieu-Léger which suggests that utopian future expectations create space which can only be met by new forms of religious experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper describes an attempt to construct a typology of progressive Catholics using data obtained from a survey of the delegates to the 1980 National Pastoral Congress of English Catholics eighteen months after the Congress. Progressivism is regarded as the espousal of the new elements of religious ideology and pastoral emphases which have emerged since the Second Vatican Council.
Following earlier attempts using smallest space analysis and factor analysis, this paper describes the use of cluster analysis to identify distinct groups of individuals and discriminant analysis to identify the separate dimensions which distinguish between the clusters. Seven dusters ware identified in terms of six discriminant functions. An analysis of the social and religious characteristics of the seven types indicated that there was no simple unidimensional scale of progressivism. The paper concludes with some suggestions for a more comprehensive classification of progressive Catholics which might be explored in the case of other or more representative samples.
This paper set out to construct a typology of progressive Catholics using data from a survey of delegates to the National Pastoral Congress. Following preliminary investigations using smallest space analysis and factor analysis, cluster analysis was employed to identify seven types of respondents with characteristics defined by six discriminant functions which were found to be theoretically meaningful. The social and religious characteristics of the seven dusters indicate that they may be regarded as seven distinct types of progressive. The typology that resulted from this study (Table 3) indicates that only seven of a possible 64 combinations are relevant for this particular sample. There is no reason to suppose that this would be the case for other samples, such as a nationally representative sample of English or American or Australian Catholics. However, on the basis of the present research, a number of key... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remarkably little is known about the processes and extent of educational and occupational assimilation, convergence of social mobility experiences and patterns of intermarriage of England's largest immigrant community, the Irish. In this paper assimilation is regarded as a process in which both cultural and structural differences between the immigrant group and the indigenous population are progressively reduced over an extended period of time. Using nationally representative data from the General Household Surveys of 1979 and 1980, first and second generation immigrants from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were compared with a control sample of 'English', with all analyses run separately for men and women. It is concluded that, while there is generally a substantial measure of assimilation of the Irish in England by the second generation, there are important differences between immigrants from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland -- the former showing much higher levels of educational and occupational achievement by the second generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international consumer market in the western industrial nations is largely the product of the affluent post-war period. It has grown out of a concern that the legal principle of caveat emptor is inadequate to protect the consumer in the modern, complex marketplace by consumer education and protection, improved consumer information and a general concern for the consumer and physical environments. Consumer groups are typically seen to be self-help groups for the educated middle classes with little concern for the disadvantaged consumer, and there is no evidence that they have seriously challenged the dominance of producers and distributors. Two contrasting approaches to the structural analysis of consumer groups in the political systems of western industrial nations are considered, the pluralist approach and the conflict approach. It is argued that the analysis of power in the marketplace demonstrates that there is substantial producer dominance in the marketplace. The paper concludes by identifying five structural weaknesses of the consumer movement: negligible communication between consumers; the inability to mobilize; the rejection of effective (but politically radical) forms of action; the acceptance of existing market arrangements; and the provision of ideological support for these arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews post-war trends in food consumption in Britain based on an analysis of the annual National Food Surveys. Long-term trends are distinguished from the consequences of short-term shortages and changing welfare and subsidy policies. The data are used in particular to illustrate the interaction between social class and family size effects. In the second half of the paper emergent food trends are considered in the light of three sets of factors: economic and political, technological, and social and cultural. It is concluded that food behaviour is fundamentally a social phenomenon imbued with cultural significance and meaning, and reflecting traditional beliefs and values and dominant power differentials both within families and between different social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]