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Arriving in the UK after exile from Nazi Germany, Karl Mannheim taught sociology at the London School of Economics and then also at the London Institute of Education, where he was awarded a chair just a year before his untimely death in 1947. In his later writings and teaching, Mannheim argued that the sociology of education could make a crucial contribution to the new type of society he regarded as essential if the problems of liberal democracy were to be overcome, and the slide towards totalitarianism avoided. And the period immediately after his death was a key phase in the development and establishment of the sociology of education in Britain. Jean Floud, who took over teaching the subject at the Institute of Education after Mannheim's death, played a central role in this, but, while she had studied with him and served as his research assistant, she adopted a very different approach. This focused, in particular, on whether the existing structure and operation of educational institutions restricted social mobility. As a result of this change in focus, Mannheim's work had a very marginal role in the subsequent history of British sociology of education. In this article, I compare Mannheim's and Floud's competing conceptions of the character and role of the subdiscipline, and how these fared in later developments within the field.

It is widely assumed that researchers must normally secure informed consent from participants if research is to be ethical. But what exactly are people being asked to consent to? Most obviously, it is to supplying, or providing access to, data; but are they also agreeing that this data can be used in any way relevant to the research, or do they retain a right to control its use? A third question is: are they consenting to themselves being included within the focus of study, so that asking for consent amounts to assigning a right not to be researched? A further question concerns whether there can be group rights not to supply data, to control the use of data, and/or not to be researched? Such claims have been made by spokespersons for the disabled, indigenous groups, commercial organisations, governments, and religious cults. Justifications for these various rights usually appeal to the principle of autonomy, in one form or another. Yet this principle, being universal, must also apply to researchers themselves. So, does this imply that researchers have a right to carry out research? As this makes clear, there are conflicting rights-claims around research. This paper will examine these and their implications.

‘Critical’, ‘activist’, or ‘engaged’ forms of social research are influential in many fields today. They insist that researchers ‘critique’ the phenomena being investigated, and they demand that research should be designed to bring about ‘social change’. A variety of political arguments have been used to support this commitment. Among the main ones is that ‘uncritical’ research detached from practical progressive action is either trivial or reinforces the status quo – that any claim to objectivity is inevitably ideological. However, there are three other arguments, of an ethical character, that have also been employed to justify social research being ‘critical’, ‘activist’, or ‘engaged’. These appeal to: urgency of the social issue being investigated; the reciprocity that ought always to operate between researcher and researched; and researchers’ complicity in the status quo, especially where they are taken to be a member of a privileged group. In this paper, I will critically examine these arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few decades, there have been efforts to transform qualitative inquiry, drawing on resources from both imaginative literature and art. There have long been tensions within social science that have encouraged the use of these resources, but the recent "literary turn" is more radical. The assumptions underpinning it are examined, and it is argued that what is most important is the purpose for which modes of expression are employed and how well they serve this. The problem with the literary turn is that it frequently involves substitution of the purposes of art or politics for those of social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the concept of vulnerability in the context of social research ethics. An ambiguity is noted in use of this term: it may refer to an incapacity to provide informed consent to participate in a research project, or it may imply heightened susceptibility to the risk of harm. It is pointed out that vulnerability is a matter of degree, and that there are different sources and types of harm, which must be taken into account in any judgment about whether additional precautions are required to protect particular categories of research participants. Furthermore, such judgments must be sensitive to the particular context in which research is taking place. This is one of several considerations that raise questions about the desirability of the sort of pre-emptive ethical regulation that has become institutionalized in many countries over the past few decades, a form that is more appropriate to medical rather than to social research. However, this is not to deny that a concern with the vulnerability of research participants is necessary on the part of social researchers. Furthermore, it must be recognized that researchers themselves may be vulnerable to harm in the research process. Finally, some discussion is provided of the way in which a concern with vulnerability can conflict with other considerations that researchers need to take into account in doing their work. The key point is that vulnerability is a complex and controversial concept, and it requires careful handling in thinking about social research ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to some recent discussions in the Journal about how interview data can be used. While recognising the value of detailed analysis of the discourse employed in interviews to identify its formal features, it is argued that such analysis is not essential for all the purposes for which interview data can be employed in social research; that informal understanding of everyday language use, built up through ordinary experience and during the course of inquiry, can often be relied upon. It is also argued that practical cautions against taking interview data at face value must not be conflated with philosophical doubts about whether interview data can serve as a source of evidence about anything beyond the interview context. [For the original article, "Beyond Performative Talk: Critical Observations on the Radical Critique of Reading Interview Data," see EJ1259552.]